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Grad apps, Step 6: Write your application essays.

By heather posted February 19, 2009

Essays and Personal Statements

You know yourself.

Adcoms, however, don’t know you. All they have to go on is your GPA, some test scores, some letters from some people who know you, and these: your application essays and/or personal statement. With that said, your essays and personal statements are, well, personal. So I can’t (or won’t) tell you what you should write.

What I can–and will–tell you is what characteristics your essays should and should not have. There are reasons adcoms ask specific questions: 1) to figure out how well you can follow directions, 2) to learn more about your writing and communication skills, and 3) to find out more about your specific qualifications for their programs. Here’s a good starter list of dos and don’ts:

DO Be honest.

DON’T “stretch” the truth.

Never, ever “stretch the truth” in an application essay or personal statement. More often than not, these kinds of things have a way of coming back to bite you. Think of it this way: the applications process is tricky enough on its own. You’ll have enough to keep track of with your various schools and programs and different essay questions and personal statement guidelines and deadlines. You’ll need to make sure you’re naming the right school, sending the right targeted letters of recommendation, meeting the right deadlines, answering the right essay question, and keeping to the appropriate margins and word counts for each school’s essays. Telling the truth means you have that much less to remember.

There are ways to deal with the less-than-pleasant elements of your past as they apply to graduate applications. There are few things that are absolute deal-breakers. Should you need to address something like a grade slump, an altercation with the law, or a blemish in your employment past, adcoms want to know that you learned a valuable lesson from the experience and that the problem is in your past and won’t happen again.

Besides, admissions folk see enough applications to develop some pretty good instincts on honesty, fluff, and outright falsehoods in applications, and I’ve heard plenty of stories about applicants being asked about elements of their applications in interviews. If you have to lie to get into a program, it’s not the right program for you. Trust that the admissions people know who and what they’re looking for, for reasons that are quite often beyond an applicant’s knowledge and/or understanding. They’re professionals. Trust them; if you’re who/what they’re looking for, then you’ll get in… and if not, well… that just wasn’t the school or program for you.

DO: Use spelling and grammar checkers.

DON’T: Submit any writing samples with spelling errors or grammatical mistakes.

In the age of built-in spelling- and grammar-check, there is absolutely no valid excuse for submitting a writing sample that contains spelling errors or grammatical mistakes. Such blunders are often considered inexcusable, and rightly so. If you’re applying to graduate studies, your most basic writing skills should display competence. A lack of such attention to detail also reeks of laziness and shoddy work, traits not so highly sought after in the graduate school admissions process.

But beyond mere lack of error, there are other crucial elements to keep in mind.

DO: Follow directions.

DON’T: Exceed the allotted word limit, page count, or margins.

You are not the first person to feel like you are worth more than 500 words or two pages or whatever the particular limitations might be. I know I might sound repetitive here, but trust that the adcoms know what they’re doing (not to mention that they’re really, really busy).

Great writing necessarily involves great editing. A truly great story includes all of the relevant story elements and nothing superfluous. Need more tangible examples? Think about what happens to a joke’s punchline when you flub the build-up with too much padding, or recall a bad movie you’ve seen that seemed to carry on and on for hours with little plot development (“Swept Away” comes to mind), only to leave you feeling underwhelmed at the end (and robbed of three hours of your life).

But don’t take my word on it: When asked why he wrote a particularly lengthy letter, Mark Twain allegedly replied, “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.” A little bit of editing can go a long way.

DO: Answer the questions asked.

DON’T: Stray from the topic.

To do so, your submissions must be on-point. Failure to do so can cause adcoms to think one of two things about you: 1) you didn’t think the question asked was worthy of an answer, that you know what they want better than they do, or 2) you’re unable to comprehend directions. Neither portrait is a desirable one.

Here’s something important to consider: In the applications for many different schools offering similar programs, you may find a high degree of overlap in essay question prompts. While it is definitely okay–and smart, even–to consolidate your efforts by using some of your answers to similar questions from previous applications, you should make absolutely certain that you have adequately tailored the response you submit to the particular question asked on the correct school’s application.

DO: Communicate skillfully.

DON’T: Answer the question(s) like a simple Q&A.

This is a writing sample–a rare chance for you to shine–and, as such, your writing should positively exhibit your communication skills. Being free of spelling or grammatical mistakes is a start, and staying on point is also helpful, but you’ll need to exhibit some real panache if you want to stand out from the crowd.

In regards to tone, know your audience. Schools are looking for serious students, so you’ll want to convey maturity and commitment in your writing. The structure of your writing should illustrate your ability to introduce, develop, and conclude an idea. Your language and sentence structure should be complex enough to exhibit your linguistic skills, but shouldn’t be plugged with excessive displays of esoteric language.

DO: Be true to yourself in your writing sample.

DON’T: Copy someone else’s personal statement or write your essays “by committee.”

Remember that this might be a school’s best chance of getting to know the real you. Be yourself in your essay. Speak in your own voice. Don’t retool the essay of someone else who got into XYZ school, and don’t get the input of your twelve closest friends and family members. Doing so only makes it more likely that your writing samples, when considered as a whole package, will sound disjointed and confusing. They’re not applying to XYZ school; you are. You know your reasons better than anyone. You know why this is the perfect school or program or field of study for you better than anyone else does. No one will be a stauncher advocate in this process.

Trust your own voice and run with it. Many applicants choose to write personal narratives, others choose to write persuasive essays, while others feel that neither option fits and choose a style more personal. There is no right or wring way to write, so long as you stick to the dos and don’ts above. Find the best way you can use this opportunity to prove to schools why you’re the right fit for their program and get to work.

Finally…

DO: Write several drafts over time.

DON’T: Procrastinate until you have only two days to submit your essays.

Trust me on this one: you’ll need time to be able to edit your essay(s) properly. Even the best writers can’t edit their own material without giving the brain some time to recover from writing mode. Give your head a little time to distance yourself from the first draft. Come back a few days, maybe a week later, and give it a fresh look. You’ll be much better equipped to find the problems in flow that need to be fixed or the linguistic oddities you’ll want to smooth out. I recommend dedicating the same day every week for a month to the process. On your application calendar, maybe block off every Saturday morning for the month before you intend to submit your applications. Use this time for drafting, writing, editing, revising, and finalizing your essays. You’ll be glad you did.

Now go get inspired! Read a few pages from your favorite book or poem or speech. Take some notes. Print out the essay questions or personal statement guidelines and start outlining what you want to say. When you’re ready to move on, we’ll get on with the business of submitting those applications you’ve been working on for so long!

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Grad apps, Step 5: Solicit and obtain letters of recommendation.

By heather posted February 16, 2009

Recommendations

5 of 8 in a series

People dig you.

Well, let’s hope they do, at least, because once you’ve requested that your transcripts and documentation be sent to schools, it’s time to find a few people who are willing to vouch for your aptitude for graduate studies:

Step 5: Solicit and obtain letters of recommendation.

Adcoms (admissions committee members) don’t know you. Most graduate programs don’t even offer interviews. In most cases, all they’ll see of you is a short stack of paper, and they’ll probably have hundreds or thousands more very much like yours from other applicants who want to get into their program just as much as you do. Standing out from the pile can be difficult, but it’s absolutely crucial to gaining acceptance (and, perhaps, scholarship offers) to your desired program(s).

Chances are good that your “numbers” are more-or-less set. If you’re considering graduate school, then you’ve either finished your undergraduate education (in which case you can’t do anything to nudge your GPA up any more) or are very near the end of it (in which case you have very little time to make even a small positive change in your GPA). You may still have time to improve your standardized admissions test score(s), which can definitely help. But more likely than not, your best opportunity to shine comes from two sources: your application essays and your letters of recommendation.

Solicit recommendations early.

Since the letters of recommendation aren’t fully under your control, you should solicit them before you start working on your application essays. Give yourself two to three months before you plan to submit your apps so your recommenders (who are probably busy people) have time to write an insightful, well thought out, glowing recommendation.

Ask the right people.

Hopefully, when you started this process, you took my advice and followed up with some potential recommenders. If you haven’t done so yet, now’s definitely the time. Make a quick phone call or send an email. Invite him/her out for lunch or coffee.

But who should you ask? Schools typically have guidelines for applicants regarding who should recommend a candidate and how many letters must and can be sent. Before you start asking around, visit each school or program’s website. Peruse the “admissions” section. If you haven’t already done so, print out the application and slip a copy into your application file box. The admissions page or application will contain guidelines for recommendations.

Follow instructions.

Nothing bugs an adcom more than an applicant who doesn’t follow instructions. Don’t send more letters of recommendation than a school accepts. It won’t make you look any better. Two letters of recommendation is a fairly common requirement; three are often accepted (and some schools will accept even more). Most schools want at least one recommendation to come from an academic source, although there is a little bit of wiggle room on this guideline. Unless otherwise specified, it’s usually best to solicit at least one academic recommendation and one professional recommendation (particularly for business school applicants).

Some highly competitive programs even require a Dean’s Certification form/letter, which can be tougher to obtain, so work on making communication in-roads as soon as possible to facilitate the process.

Applicants come from a variety of backgrounds and apply at various stages of their lives, and adcoms know this. If you’ve been out of school for quite some time and you have a difficult time contacting your old professors, schools will generally accept recommendations from less traditional sources. It’s not uncommon for candidates still in undergrad to submit exclusively academic recommendations; similarly, candidates returning to school after years in a career path often submit exclusively professional recommendations. While this may not be ideal, it’s certainly acceptable.

Get the best recommendations possible.

Most importantly, your recommendations should be absolutely stellar. If you’re not sure how positively a potential recommender will endorse you, ask. Try something direct, but courteous, such as: “How strongly would you be comfortable recommending me to [graduate school or program]?” If he or she seems at all hesitant, this is probably not your recommender of choice.

You may know an alum of one of the programs to which you’re applying. If so, a targeted letter is a great idea. A targeted letter is one written particularly for one specific program by someone who has close ties to that school or program. In such a letter, the recommender can address your aptitude for that particular program. Such a recommendation is likely to carry more weight, considering the intimate knowledge the recommender has with the school. But here’s a word to the wise: make sure you don’t send the targeted letter to any of the wrong schools. Want to insult an admissions committee? Then send Stanford a letter that outlines why you’d be such a great fit at Harvard Business School. That’s almost a guarantee that you’ll be placed in the “reject” pile.

While an alum or board member can be a great recommender if he/she knows you well enough to endorse your application to graduate studies, submitting “celebrity” letters just for name recognition won’t do you any favors. Like I said before, the most important element of any recommendation is its quality. Your recommenders should be able to address your aptitude for graduate studies in your particular program of choice. They should mention things like your work ethic, your attention to detail, your attitude and how you interact with other students or co-workers, your intellectual curiosity, your written and verbal communication skills, your logical aptitude, your critical analysis skills, etc.

Provide resources.

I hope this point is obvious, but it’s still worth stating. Make sure you provide your recommenders all the proper forms and guidelines they need. If particular school requires a specific form, make sure you provide it along with your request.

To make their jobs a little bit easier, provide a résumé to each recommender and supplement the résumé with notes. Include a story that illustrates a particular skill or trait that he or she might include in the letter, but make sure the story is relevant to the particular recommender in question. If you have one, provide a draft of your personal statement or another writing sample.

Also, be sure to provide envelopes that are already addressed and stamped. Recommending you shouldn’t cost the gracious writer anything and shouldn’t be a hassle. And I’m sure you want the letters to get to the right places, so do the legwork yourself. In short, make it as easy as possible.

Set a deadline.

Don’t forget that recommenders are people, too. They have other priorities, most of them more important that writing a letter of recommendation for a graduate school applicant. To help the process along, set a deadline for him/her and make sure to follow-up on occasion–maybe every two weeks. Don’t be annoying, for sure, but check in with a quick email asking if he/she has had a chance to look over the forms and materials you presented and ask if he/she has any questions you might be able to answer to help with the process.

Show your gratitude.

Be forewarned that some schools require a very specific recommendation form, and any good recommendation will take some time and effort to be well-written, so you should be extremely courteous and thankful of anyone willing to jump through such hoops for you. Once your letters are in, do more than just say thank you. Send “thank you” cards to your recommenders. Take them out to lunch or coffee. Make sure your recommenders know they did the right thing by signing their names to your application to schools. A little bit goes a long way.

Once your letters of recommendation are taken care of, it’s time for you to start writing. Next up in the series: application essays and personal statements.

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