I’m Debbie Backrack, I’ve been a college writing instructor for over 25 years.
And I’ve helped hundreds of people write their statements of purpose successfully.
I’ve also been on the other side of the desk and I’ve read these statements for
admissions committees.
I have a good sense of what people are looking for and how to get started with it and how
to do this successfully.
The main goal of the statement is to make all these numbers about your, your transcripts,
your GRE scores, take all these numbers and make them come alive, make you alive as a
person.
We call this putting your face on the page.
You’re here because you did not take a direct route to grad school and admissions is excited
about that.
They want to know about that, maybe you were a cook in Alaska and from talking to people
you decided “oh I wanted to be a social worker”, or maybe you’ve been a midwife
your whole career and you realized there’s not enough research to support how you want
to help your client and you decided to become an epidemiologist so that you can create that
research.
These are the “ah moments” they are looking for, when did you get inspired, what excited
you about coming into their program?
That’s what they’re looking for.
So here’s how not to get started: don’t put the question in front of you and stare
and stare and panic and look at your watch, and go” it’s due in three”, don’t
do that to yourself.
Many of us have done it but I want to give you 2 ways you can avoid that.
Number one: think about categories, jobs you’ve had, skills you have, awards you’ve won,
10 things that related to this career you’re thinking about that you think really would
really fit.
10 things from your life that have nothing to do with this potential career and make
all these categories and just fill them in, fill them in with whatever you think of including
things that are probably bad ideas and won’t come into your essay but just give it to yourself.
And then let it sit a little bit and have a friend come and look at it with you and
pick out what might help tell your story and focus who you are.
Because you are often can’t see what in your own story might help tell it.
So I have a personal example of this; I was writing an essay about failure and I’ve
thought about times I’ve failed, a job I didn’t get, an award I didn’t get, and
a friend of mine said “oh how do you cope with all that failure?”
I thought “what are you talking about” but I’m at poet and I send out hundreds
and hundreds of poems all year and maybe I get 3 accepted.
And she was just amazed that I wasn’t distressed by this.
I thought “oh I don’t think of that as failure” that’s interesting, that makes
for a much more interesting essay and a new focus on it that I wouldn’t have thought
of myself.
So bring someone in to help you figure that out.
I also recommend free writing and this is a technique where you have to ask your personal
editor you know the one that tells you that’s a stupid idea, you spelled that wrong, you’re
never gonna get into grad school- that person.
Tell them to go you know take a break, take a cup of coffee, they’ll get a chance to
proof read but not right now.
And then you sit down and you set a timer for maybe ten minutes and you write.
And you just write and write and you just whatever comes whatever connecting ideas that
you didn’t think of you just let it all flow.
You’re kind of tapping into your subconscious a little bit and what happens is images you
didn’t think would come, there’s a lot of power in your writing that wasn’t there
before.
Again, this is not your final draft, I understand you are writing a professional document but
this is a way to get moving with it.
Once you’ve figured out how you want to focus your essay, what you want to say, it
needs to be interesting.
It doesn’t, you don’t want boring, flat, stilted, I think a lot of people worry that
when they’re writing something professional and and it’s that it has to be very formal.
You’re not completely casual but it needs to have vividness to it.
The way you do that is to use sensory details; sights, sound, touch, taste, smell that’s
one good way, concrete nouns, please could everybody please ban the words things, and
aspects from their writing- just ban them.
You don’t want to say “there are many things about your program I like”…you
want to say “I want to attend your program because of the psycho educational diagnostic
intervention center.”
Ah, then they know you’ve done your homework and you know about them, you’re specifically
interested in them.
You never want to give them the feeling that you’ve written the same essay for 10 different
schools.
You need to focus on them and what they’re offering.
While we’re on the subject of banning could everybody try to ban the verb to be, is, was,
were.
Go through your easy and try to get rid of those words and replace them with active verbs.
Right there if you just do that it’ll tighten your writing, elevate it and make it more
powerful.
That’s like the one, my gift to you take that and you will improve your essay enormously.
Show them you know them, refer to specific courses, programs, professors, research, show
that this program is a good fit for you not just that you’re a good fit them.
Show them that you have really paid attention and interested.
You need to follow the rules.
If they say 500 words, you need to make sure that it is not exactly 500 but under 500 words.
You cannot be 503 because for one it shows it at the bottom of the screen, they know
it’s 503 and it’s disrespectful, it shows them you weren’t paying attention, that
you didn’t care and that will set a tone with them.
By the same token you need to make this perfect in the sense that the grammar, the punctuation,
the the spelling needs to be perfect and that’s another way of showing you understand that
this is a professional document, maybe you were not perfect on apostrophes.
Get help with them because this document needs to reflect your knowledge that it’s a professional
document.
Make sure to answer all parts of the question.
So if they say “talk about a time you failed, what happened and why?”
make sure you get to all 3 parts.
I’ve talked a bit about have your friend come look at your categories with you or have
someone help you with apostrophes; it is good to get help.
This is what professionals do and this is what you need to do.
And I know a lot of people come from cultures where it’s not ok to get help, where you’re
supposed to do your writing all by yourself.
So I want to say to you as representative of American academic life, it’s ok here.
Now, I want to be careful, I am not saying go ask your friend the English teacher to
write it for you, that’s not ok and you know that.
So we’re talking about getting feedback, having them ask questions but don’t let
them take out their red pen and completely redo your essay for your that’s over the
line.
You want to leave yourself a lot of time.
When I work with students we usually do 4 one hour sessions; one on prewriting, drafting,
revising, and proofreading.
And that’s in addition to all the time they’re spending by themselves working on it.
So you want to make sure you’ve sort of got time for all of those sections.
If you write the application the night before, you are not giving yourself your best chance
and that’s what we want for you that you give yourself your best chance.