August 10, 2009

Write or Wrong is a feature devoted to answering your questions concerning personal statements, writing style and (to a lesser extent) college and graduate admissions.  If you have a question you’d like answered, email us at: wow@flashpointeducation.com.  Be sure to indicate whether you’d like your question to appear anonymously or be attributed to a specific name.  We’ll be publishing new questions and answers every couple of weeks or depending on the volume we receive and the overall level of interest.

THE FIRST WORD

Q:  I started my personal statement two months ago, but I’m still on the first paragraph.  I just keep starting and stopping, deleting, and then starting over!  What’s the best way to actually finish a personal statement?

A: How to begin a personal statement depends a lot on the sort of person you are.  Some of us plan out elaborate itineraries that account for every minute of a family vacation and others just hop on a plane with an overnight bag.  There isn’t a formally correct way to prepare for writing a personal statement, but if you’re someone who feels a little uncomfortable when you’re flying by the seat of your pants, you might want to lay out the proper groundwork; go ahead and create a structural and thematic outline.  If you’re someone who enjoys a little bit more spontaneity, then you might be better off hitting the ground running.

However, if you’re having the kind of difficulty you describe in your email, it sounds like it’s time for a change.  One of the most intuitive solutions for writer’s block is also one of the least utilized: stop doing what’s not working!

Many applicants outline themselves to death.  In fact, they spend so much time on preparation that if you didn’t know better you’d swear they were looking for any excuse not to start the actual writing process.  If you’re unable to make any real progress on your personal statement because you’re dead set on adhering to an outline that just isn’t working, the solution is probably not to make yet another tweak to your outline, but to instead get to the nitty gritty of writing.  If, on the other hand, you’ve started draft after draft with zero preparation and come away with nothing to show for it, you might be better off taking a step back and spending a couple of days strategizing about what to write (and what not to write) before you sit down in front of another blank page.  Forget about how you think “should’ write a personal statement and allow yourself the flexibility to try a completely new approach if your current one isn’t working.

Generally speaking, though, personal statement writer’s block has more to do with intimidation than preparation.  Is your personal statement important?  Of course it is; that’s why this website was created.  But if you allow yourself to get overly hung up on all that’s at stake, you’re unlikely to ever complete that ugly first draft that is so vitally critical to the process. 

Wanna know a little secret?  Most great personal statements are the fifteenth or twentieth drafts of really horrible ones.  So take a deep breath and power through a draft.  Commit to finishing, even if you hate it, even if it seems fatally flawed, even if it doesn’t read like somebody’s Harvard statement that you read on an online forum.  Ask a parent, counselor, or faculty member to proof it on a specific date so that you can’t back out.  And just go, just write, and do it with the understanding that you’ll probably produce something that feels second-rate.  Once you have, once you’ve read that first draft and cringed, celebrate a little and remind yourself that every great statue began as a raw and unformed chunk of rock.  Then get to work on chipping away and turning it into a thing of precision and beauty.

To steal a quote from Robert Schuller, “It’s better to do something imperfectly than to do nothing flawlessly.”

AIN’T NO THANG

Q: Is it okay to use contractions in a personal statement? I have heard conflicting things and I am really not sure anymore…

A: Well, it’s not okay to end your sentences with three periods, but that’s another lesson for another day.

Contractions and their use will continue to be a hotly debated topic.  To compound matters, the whole issue has become a little clouded by several generations of well meaning teachers who have taught kids to never, ever use words like “don’t” and “can’t” in an academic setting.  The truth, as always, is a little less clear cut.

Without a doubt, contractions should not be used in formal writing.  You wouldn’t be too likely to include them in a doctoral dissertation, on your resume, or as part of a submission to a technical journal.  Personal statements, on the other hand, are explicitly personal pieces of writing.  (There are exceptions.  You don’t approach a surgical fellowship essay the same way you’d tackle an undergrad application essay.)  Part of the idea is to allow whoever is reading your statement to get a glimpse into the sort of individual you are.  Take away the grade point average and the test scores and show me the applicant.  Show me a real human being, personality and all.  Isn’t that the whole point?

That being said, the common sense rule regarding contractions should be that while you do not want to use them needlessly, you allow yourself the freedom to include contractions when they prevent a passage from sounding stilted or overly-formalized.  You include them when not doing so would make a sentence sound like it was written by an android instead of Ralph from Poughkeepsie.  You include enough glimpses into how you think, live and, yes, talk that the reader feels like they’ve met a real person.

You’re a lot more likely to be rejected because you weren’t able to honestly and clearly express who you are than because you included a few apostrophes along the way.

GOOD AS NEW?

Q: I am applying to several schools that use the Common App but also ask you to submit a second personal statement on a topic of your choice.  Is it wrong to reuse the same essay for the supplement applications?  I am applying to a bunch of schools and only have so much time for essay writing.

A:  This is a fairly common and fairly easy question.  If the topic is free form (write about anything you want) then you are almost always better served by taking the time to write one great essay that works for several schools than you are by trying to draft a handful of entirely new pieces that will likely be subpar.  Conversely, it’s almost always a bad idea to create a generic essay for the “Why Stanford?” or “Why Penn?” essays and just change the names of the schools.  In cases like these, you want to include specific information that demonstrates a familiarity with the school and creates a compelling case that you would be a good fit.

A stickier situation can arise when you recycle one school’s supplemental prompt and use it for another school where you’re allowed to write about anything you want.  Let’s say I’m applying to UChicago and Yale.  Chicago famously uses some rather distinctive supplemental essay prompts and for the 2009-10 application cycle one of them concerns describing a time when you got caught.  If I complete this essay for my Chicago application and then, noticing that Yale will allow me to write about anything I want, send New Haven an essay about the time I got caught, well, I’ve just been caught again.  The world of academia is a rather small one and since both Chicago and Yale are prominent schools, it’s likely that the Yalie who reads my essay will realize almost immediately that they’ve received Chicago’s sloppy seconds.

Now let’s be clear, this isn’t the end of the world.  If the essay is great, they’re not going to reject me just because I’ve double-dipped.  But it’s reasonable to wonder how serious I am about attending Yale if I couldn’t even take the time to write an essay specifically for my Yale application, so it’s probably a chance I wouldn’t take.  If, on the other hand, I had written a killer essay in response to a prompt that isn’t obviously attached to another school, I wouldn’t see anything unethical or potentially damaging about including it with my Yale app.  Let sound judgment be your guide and always, always put your best foot forward.  Even if it means one more sleepless night.