How to Write a Personal Statement, 6 Tips + Free Resources for Applicants

With admissions officers receiving thousands of applications per year, writing a compelling personal statement is crucial in making you stand out among other applicants and securing an acceptance into the program of your choice. One of the hardest parts of any graduate school application is writing the personal statement. In spite of the challenge, writing a great personal statement is within your reach and it is one of the most effective ways to showcase your readiness for any graduate program. I have 6 tips here to help you write your personal statement, and I’m including a list of other free resources that is worth checking out.

Just Start
Address the Prompt
Make it Personal
Write a Reflective Narrative
Share a Chapter of Your Life, Not the Whole Book
Edit, Revise, and Seek Feedback

So what does an applicant need to do to write a successful and compelling personal statement? Here, I’m going to share a collection of my advice, advice that I was given, and tips from other successful applicants on tackling the personal statement. By no means am I an expert on how admissions work at medical school or other graduate programs. Still, some of my friends asked me for advice on this, and I wanted to help them and add to the free resources that exist for applicants. What worked for me may not be the best strategy for you, and there are always multiple paths to success. Think of this as a tool on your way to finding the path that works for you.

These are the approaches that I think will help you write a personal statement you are proud of and that will make you stand out to admissions officers. While my personal experience is with the medical school personal statement, the advice i’m sharing here can be helpful for any graduate program!

How to Write a Personal Statement You’ll be Proud of

1. Just Start

It can be really hard to get started on the personal statement. I found it most helpful to free write and see where my thoughts took me. Maybe recording voice notes, outlining your ideas, or creating bullet points works better for you. It doesn’t matter, just get started so that you can get rid of the blank page. Instead of waiting for a moment of clarity to get started, get started and the clarity will come with the process. Begin with reflecting and focusing on the most important moments in your life that led you to apply for your specific program.

2. Address the Prompt

Do research on what the personal statement for your graduate school application calls for. Depending on the program, there might be a clear and defined prompt that you are to answer.

For those applying to medical school, here are some questions pulled directly from the 2020 AMCAS Applicant Guide, created by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), that you should consider for writing your personal statement:

Why have you selected the field of medicine?
What motivates you to learn more about medicine?
What do you want medical schools to know about you that hasn’t been disclosed in other sections of the application?

In addition, you may wish to include information such as:

Unique hardships, challenges, or obstacles that may have influenced your educational pursuits
Comments on significant fluctuations in your academic record that are not explained elsewhere in your application

3. Make it Personal

Why do you think they call it the personal statement? It is because the personal statement should be personal! Make your personal statement about you. Your voice, thoughts, values, and reflections should be clearly woven throughout the essay. Open up about your fears, failures, or weaknesses. Brag about your aspirations, successes, and strengths. The reader should leave with a sense of who you are and what is important to you. The main goal here is to make your personality come through your writing, and to be authentic and honest with yourself about why you have chosen to take this particular path in life.

4. Write a Reflective Narrative

The genre of the personal statement is a reflective narrative. The personal statement should answer and include specific details that speak to these 4 open-ended questions: 1) Who are you? 2) Where are you at in life right now? 3) How did you get there? 4) Where do you want to go?

In order to capture all of these components in your personal statement, you need to plan a clear organizational structure. The narrative should have a logical progression that is easy for your reader to follow and should include transitions that clearly tie all of the elements of your story together.

For me, when answering these questions I wondered how far back should I go, or if I should only focus on the most recent events of my life. It can be really hard to choose which life events to include and how to talk about them in your essay. I chose a classic and simple tactic: I told my events in chronological order. I intertwined my decision for choosing medicine throughout a narrative that chronicled the most important events from my childhood, high school, and undergraduate years. Within my essay I reflected on how these experiences related to each other, my decision to choose medicine, and my vision for where I see myself in medicine in the future.

5. Share a Chapter of Your Life, Not the Whole Book

What are the aspects of your life that truly speak to your decision for pursuing ______? Fill in that blank with whatever it is that you are pursuing. It could be medicine, a graduate degree in communications, a degree in law, a masters in business administration, anything. Imagine that you are writing a chapter of your life, not a full autobiography.

Your personal statement is not your resume or your curriculum vitae. Within your personal statement, you should not, under any circumstances, “resume dump.” By “resume dump” I mean to say do not include every single activity that you feel is related to your field of choice or have partaken in within the personal statement. For those applying to medical school, the AMCAS already has a section alloted for this, the work/activities section. Consider that including too many events/experiences in your personal statement can come off as superficial and suggest that you haven’t given the proper time to reflect on the reasons for choosing a specific path.

I chose to only include three pivotal life events/experiences to write about in my personal statement for medical school. Because of this, I was able to give each event the attention and detail that was required to show and convey the importance of those experiences in my life. There is no magic number of experiences to include, the takeaway is to include what is most important to you and be able to show why.

6. Edit, Revise, and Seek Feedback

It can be very helpful to have a fresh pair of eyes to look at your essay. You should both take time away from your writing so that you can look at it with fresh eyes and seek feedback from other people! Getting feedback, rewriting, and editing are crucial to writing a personal statement that you are proud of.

Take a look at grammar, word choice, sentence structure, flow, transitions, everything. Also, I want to add that sometimes getting too much feedback and suggestions can take over your essay. As the writer you should be open to constructive feedback and incorporating changes into your essay. However, you don’t want your voice to get lost or distorted, so keep that in mind during the editing process.

You will probably end up with multiple drafts, or even multiple versions of the same draft. Writing is a continuous process and it will take time before you have a complete body of work that you feel confident in.

Conclusions on Writing the Personal Statement and Other Free Resources for Applicants

These are my 6 tips that I think will help you write a compelling personal statement you will be proud to send in with your application to graduate school. Take the time to reflect and tell your story! You’ve already done so much hard work leading up to applying, so don’t let the personal statement hinder you from going after what you want.

The last thing I want to say is there are so many free resources out there for applicants to graduate school, from the things you will come across on the internet or prep books that you can find at your local public library. These are especially useful for us low-income and first-gen applicants. Before rushing to pay for any materials or prep classes, do as much research as you can on finding the best resources for yourself.

Ask others for help, whether it is mentors or other people who have gone through the process. We are not doing this alone! As I come across more resources and get suggestions/tips from others, I’ll update this list for yall and try to keep it as organized as possible. Do you know of any other free resources that you believe are helpful in the graduate application process? Share it with me or leave a comment so that I can add to the list.

Free Resources for Applicants to Graduate School

Medical School

Graduate School

List of 40+ grad school blogs, vlogs, and podcasts by students of color

GRE Prep

Application Materials

Law School

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How to Write a Personal Statement, 6 Tips + Free Resources for Applicants