I’m trying to write my personal statement for law school and i’m having so much trouble- I feel as if I’m selling myself..I realized that in many writing we are required to “sell” ourselves. For example in resumes under objectives..does anyone actually write just to make money? Anyone have any tips on being able to make ourselves sound more genuine?
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on May 7th, 2009 at 3:20 pm
I went through this exact same thing recently when I had to write my personal essays for transfer applications. It took me FOREVER to finally come up with something that I felt “sold” me while still painting an honest picture of who I am. Eventually I came up with something I was really happy with, and I did this by constantly CONSTANTLY writing and brainstorming. Rather than sit down to pound out my essay, I spent a week with a notebook attached to me, just jotting down everything I could think to say about myself. Writing these thoughts and reading over them later gave me an idea of what I really wanted to say about myself.
Hope it works for you! Good luck!
on May 8th, 2009 at 9:50 am
If you write something where you’re saying, “I’m a good leader and I’m responsible and These are my goals” it’s not going to come across as something interesting to read. It’s starting to seem like my advice is always the same, lol, but just tell the stories that will show them how you’ve lead or how you’ve taken on responsibility. They have your resume or CV then don’t need for you to go into depth about those things in your personal statement. Don’t write something that will bore them or something that sounds too “cookie cutter.” Use this as an opportunity to put your personality on paper and tell them why your awesome. So for every point you’re trying to sell them on think about an example from your life where you accomplished that point and talk about that.
on Jul 19th, 2009 at 8:02 pm
True true. Here’s a good strategy for improving writing style that can really apply in writing your personal statement.
Grammatical sentence openers: http://penningtonpublishing.com/blog/grammar_mechanics/how-to-improve-your-writing-style-with-grammatical-sentence-openers/