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I'm Debby Bacharach. 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 you -- 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. Maybe you were a cook in Alaska
and from talking to people you decided, "Oh, I want 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 clients, and you decide to become an epidemiologist so that you can
create that research. These are the aha moments they're 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 days ..." Don't do
that to yourself. Many of us have done it, but I want to give you two ways you can avoid
that. Number one: Think about categories -- jobs you've had, skills you have, awards you've
won, 10 things that relate 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 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 thought
about times I'd 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 a poet, and I send out hundreds and hundreds of poems all year and maybe I get three accepted.
And she was just amazed that I wasn't distressed by this. I thought, "Ah, 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 you try free writing. And this is a technique where you have to ask
your personal editor, you know the one who 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 proofread but not
right now. And then you sit down and you set a timer for maybe 10 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.
Once you've figured out how you want to focus your essay, what you want to say, it needs
to be interesting. 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 -- sight, sound, touch, taste, smell. That's one good way.
Concrete nouns. Please could everybody 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 psychoeducational 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 essay 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 and 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 are interested.
You need to follow the rules. If they say 500 words, you need to make sure that it is
exactly, not exactly 500 words, but under 500 words. You cannot be 503, because, for
one, it shows it at the bottom of the screen. They know it's at 503, and it's disrespectful.
It shows them that 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 are not perfect on apostrophes.
Get help with them, because this document needs to reflect your knowledge that it's
a professional document. Make sure you 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 three 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, 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. So,
we're talking about getting feedback, having them ask questions. But don't let them take
out their red pen and just completely redo your essay for you -- that's over the line.
You want to leave yourself a lot of time. When I work with students, we usually do four
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.