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Center for Research & Fellowships

More on Crafting Your Personal Statement

Advice on How to Craft Your Personal Statement

What follows are ways to begin thinking about, and then to begin writing, the statement, but they should not be taken as instructions for the statement itself. Experiment early and broadly. Try all of the different suggestions that follow. Combine them in different ways. See how they lead you to find your own voice and your own particular structure. There are no short cuts here, just guidelines for experimentation and discovery.

Further Study: Start from the crucial fact that you are applying to have others pay for your further education. Two questions arise immediately. Why should anyone else pay for your education? Why should you receive this support instead of the many other, highly, talented candidates applying for it? In effect, why should you win? Your answers to those questions ought to shape every aspect of your candidacy.

Off the Bench: But remember also that for the evaluators you are still, as it were, “on the bench.” You have not yet gotten beyond the world of scrimmage. The big struggles begin later. Do not inflate your record or make claims that are not based scrupulously in fact. Don’t exaggerate your achievements or underestimate the difficulties ahead. Keep in mind that if the problems/issues/difficulties you intend to contest had been susceptible to immediate or clear or easy solutions, those problems would have been solved long ago. Be honest! Be modest!

Problems and Issues: It is helpful to keep in mind a distinction, urged by Professor Luke Bretherton of Duke, between problems and issues. Problems he defines as matters that cannot be resolved or solved. Issues are aspects of problems on which advance is thinkable. Poverty, for example, is an insolvable problem: it will exist as long as this world reproduces profound asymmetries of resources and talents. But aspects of poverty, for example, inadequate education or housing in American inner cities, can be ameliorated if not entirely ended. What is your problem; within it, what is your issue?

Through Line: Evaluators expect to see a candidate living out what scripts call a through line. They are suspicious of any interest or activity that has only emerged recently. They want to see an interest/commitment dating back to before college, maturing during the undergraduate years, and reaching prospectively out into the post-graduate years (funded by the fellowship) and the mature career. That does not mean they do not value growth and change, but they expect those developments to be organic: one stage leading to another. What is your through line: past, present: immediate future, long-term future? Your candidacy depends heavily on the clarity and persuasiveness of that narrative.

The Op-Ed Approach

Although personal statements are unique, they also share elements with the op-eds you find in major newspapers. In both types of writing, an individual attempts to persuade an audience of strangers to adopt a position about which the writer deeply cares. Of course, in the personal statement, that position is: I am someone in whose work and future you should invest. Which turns out to be not so different from writing to persuade others to invest in alternatives to fossil fuel, in nuclear disarmament, or in the myriad other causes which generate successful op-eds (successful in that they cause readers to take notice).

So it might be useful to take the op-ed as a paradigm as you work toward what will ultimately be your personal statement. What is it you “work on”? What will you work on using this fellowship? Try using that as the center of your practice here. Ultimately, you will probably only use parts of the op-ed structure, but those parts will be more robust because of this exercise.

Op-eds usually combine most, if not all, of the following elements.

Hook: The hook is a brief opening which grabs the readers’ attention. It is often a single salient fact or a brief, arresting anecdote. Even before the reader knows what the remainder is going to argue/claim, attention is “hooked” into the piece that follows.

Context: The context grounds the hook. It briefly allows the reader to see why the topic under scrutiny here is important, why it matters to the reader, and why it matters to the world. In effect, it raises the stakes for what follows, telling the reader that what you do matters not just to you, but to them and everyone else.

Supporting authorities: The most successful op-eds use other authorities to bulk up the writer’s case. By showing how major figures support the op-ed’s claims the argument moves beyond the individual writer’s opinion. This is a crucial point for fellowship candidates. Often they mistakenly believe they need to make a sort of “I alone” claim. But that winds up undercutting the seriousness of the proposal. In fact, by affiliating oneself and one’s work with that of recognized leaders in the field you gain, rather than lose, heft. Remember: in the world’s eyes, you are still only an apprentice.

Acknowledgement of alternatives: The most persuasive op-eds acknowledge the validity of other, even opposing positions. This makes the argument seem more objective and avoids the trap of appearing tendentious. Again, this is a crucial move for candidates to make. Showing a broad understanding of a field, and a healthy respect for the differing opinions of others can only make you appear more mature, balanced, and therefore reliable. Avoid like the plague anything that event hints of the binary.

Data/Evidence: In every op-ed a crucial paragraph offers the data/evidence that supports the writer’s position. Only the weakest writers rely on only logical or moral arguments. We live in a data-driven age, and no argument succeeds that does not produce solid supporting evidence. But the evidence has to be robust. It cannot be hypothetical, or conjectural, or merely anecdotal.

Claim: This is the key to the whole, usually found only half way or even two-thirds of the way through the whole piece, after the reader has been thoroughly prepared to receive it. The claim should be as succinct and as memorable as possible—a sentence or two, nothing more.

Closure: The reverse hook, another scene, anecdote or the like which re-anchors the piece. In the personal statement the closure is usually concerned with the future of the candidate: we see, as it were, what the individual will do with the further training the fellowship will provide.

Revision: Necessity drives most students to write at the deadline. That’s fatal to something as important as the personal statement. The rewards that come with winning fellowships are life-changing. The earlier you start your preparation, the more likely you are to succeed in your efforts.

Seeing the Whole Picture

Remember that a fellowship application contains many elements: your resume; your transcript; your statement (and in some cases answers to subsidiary questions); a large number of recommendations from others, and the official endorsement. Integrate these thoughtfully. Your academic references should connect to the highlights of your transcript, and to your plans for further study. Your non-academic letters should highlight the major features of your resume. Avoid repetition. If you are, for example, a varsity athlete, you will surely want a coach or the supervising Athletic Director to write for you. But there is no need for two such letters covering the one heading. Make every letter count on its own. Only when you have planned out the relations among transcript, resume, and letters, will you be on firm ground for deciding what should constitute your personal statement. All of the other elements background your statement, but, at the same time, your statement should not simply repeat or echo what is offered elsewhere in the application.