First of all, let's look at the writing skills of personal statements about studying in the United States.
First, select the content you want to put in PS.
The first step is to make a resume. Making a resume can give you a summary of your previous study work and a preliminary classification of your experiences, such as on-campus activities, off-campus activities, project activities or volunteer activities. When preparing your resume, you should figure out which activities highlight your experience, such as a project activity, highlighting your research ability, communication ability, leadership and so on. Thinking of these when doing a resume is to pave the way for PS later.
Before you start to do PS, you should study your resume again and pick out about three or four experiences. In describing these experiences, focus on what you did and highlight the details. Or what difficulties are encountered in the middle and how to solve them. Instead of a longer and more lengthy resume. A detailed description will make you look more vivid and impress people who watch your PS. Through your description, you will have a preliminary understanding.
As I said before, you have to choose three or four experiences, so which one should you choose? Pick out some unique experiences that can highlight your ability, which is also the most suitable experience for your major. For example, the applied major attaches great importance to the applicant's organizational leadership, so it focuses on activities that can highlight your organizational leadership, or this activity shows a lot of your abilities and focuses on organizational leadership. It should be mentioned that some schools will ask you to provide a PS, and some schools will ask you to submit two or three short essays (mainly in business). Each essay has its own focus, so it is necessary to carry out the above writing process according to the focus. For example, some articles ask you to describe your long-term and short-term goals, some may ask you to describe your greatest achievements, some may also be moral dilemmas and so on.
Second, after selecting the most professional experience, how to organize these contents?
This is the idea of your whole PS. To develop this PS, what kind of thinking is very important, not only the overall thinking of the full text, but also between sentences and paragraphs. Of course, the final perfect work is definitely not achieved overnight and needs to be revised many times.
The whole idea can be written in chronological order, clear and easy to understand. In addition to the chronological order, you can also arrange it according to your own mental journey. For example, something that makes you interested in your major can also be placed at the beginning, but it requires certain writing skills, and the ideas behind it should be well grasped, so as not to give people the feeling of anticlimactic.
The logic between sentences is to see whether they are coherent or not and whether their meanings conflict, so as not to give people a feeling of great leap in thinking. The same is true of the connection between paragraphs. How several experiences are organically linked gives people the impression that it is a person's experience, not a few things piled together. This is very important for the consistency of the whole PS. Therefore, PS must have been revised countless times from the first draft to the final draft, not only in terms of words, grammar, sentence patterns, but also in logic.
Third, finally, what else does PS need besides highlighting its proud experience?
PS is not only for you to highlight your abilities, but also for the reasons why you choose this major (some schools call it the purpose state (SP)) and your future study and career planning. These are also very important, and the school requirements must be indicated. This part can be revealed in the middle part or explained at the end.
This paper discusses the reasons for choosing a major. It is generally said that this school is excellent in this major, with excellent professors and good reputation in software and hardware. In addition, when talking about professors, you can learn more about professors in this direction, including his research topics, show some interest in his research on PS, and also describe your views and enthusiasm in this direction. The professor will naturally be more interested in you when he sees that you are interested in him. Future study and career planning is to describe how you will study in this school in the future and what kind of work you will do after graduation, so that people can know that you have your own plans and goals and independent ideas.
After completing the first draft of PS, the next work is to revise it repeatedly. It is basically a delusion to do a good job at once, or even revise it several times. We should grasp the revision, fluency, logic and the proportion of each part from the whole article. After the whole, it is to modify the details of the article, use words, grammar, sentence patterns and cohesion. In short, the final version is basically a version where you can't see any problems and others can't see too many problems.
What are the misunderstandings in personal statement writing about studying in the United States? Please read on.
The content is complicated and flashy.
Most domestic articles are too long, such as college entrance examination compositions, which generally need a lot of space to describe. As a result, many students are prone to make mistakes when writing study abroad documents, and they use a lot of space and gorgeous words to modify them, resulting in lengthy and flashy content.
Talk big or empty.
The reason why admissions officers look at PS is generally to understand students directly through documents and locate students quickly. However, many students often say loudly when writing study abroad documents, what to serve the motherland, the society, the people's lofty ideals and so on. Not paying attention to reality and full of empty talk, which is not what admissions officers want to see.
Fraud, malicious plagiarism
This is the worst behavior. Some students exaggerate themselves when writing study abroad documents, which is unrealistic. They forge descriptions of their achievements and write things that don't exist, such as what competitions they have participated in, what prizes they have won and what experiences they have had.
There is also copying other people's documents and doing some fancy things without combining with your own actual situation. UCAS (British Undergraduate University and College Admissions Service Center) uses high-precision duplicate checking software. If it is copied from other places, UCAS will inform you of the university you applied for. The serious consequences are beyond the capacity of ordinary people.
Regardless of priority, logic is chaotic.
Many students are often confused and confused when writing documents because of their English level, so it is estimated that the admissions officer has no mind to read documents.
Therefore, when writing, whether your English level is up to standard or not, or your English level is very high, please ask professionals or experienced people to check and revise it after writing.
Irregular writing and improper use of words
PS is a very formal document, so don't use some colloquial words (kinda, sort, wanna, it's, can't, should not). You'd better ask someone who speaks good English to help you correct it. As an international student, being able to write PS fluently is definitely a plus.
Finally, let's see how many words should be written in the personal statement of studying in the United States.
First, official website has clear wording requirements.
For example, TESOL of the University of Pennsylvania is within 750 words, LLM of Cornell University is within 750 words, landscape architecture of the University of Virginia is within 600 to 750 words, and architecture of the University of Florida and the University of Pennsylvania is within 500 words.
Two, official website does not stipulate how many words, but there are length requirements.
For example, the MPP major at the University of California, Berkeley requires personal statements to be 3-5 pages long, with font 12 and double spacing; The LLM major of UCLA requires that personal statements should be no more than 3 pages long, with font 12 and double spacing.
Third, official website has neither a clear word requirement nor a space limit, but will leave a personal statement text box in the online application. There is a word limit, and more than a specified number of characters cannot be entered.
When we say the number of characters here, we mean counting spaces. For example, the TESOL professional SP of the University of Florida requires less than 5,000 words, and the jewelry design professional SP of the State University of new york at Newport requires less than 4,000 words.
Faced with so many requirements, you are thinking, how many words are double-spaced on two pages, and how many words are 5000 words? The number of words required by each school is different, and some of them have not even been required. So how much is appropriate to write?
In general, we will design our SP in the early stage, and the length is about 800- 1000 words. If we meet schools with special requirements in the later stage, we will make corresponding adjustments. However, it is of course best if you can know in advance the number of words required by the school you want to apply for, and then determine what to write according to the requirements.