about writing a personal statement. Now, a personal statement is one of the documents

that you will have to submit to a university when you're applying for admission there.

Not all schools want it, but most schools do want some form of written document from

you to apply with. Now, personal statement is just one type of document, but that's the

type I'll talk about today. I'll mention the other types, but that will be a separate video

for them, because it's a different approach to each one. So, before you do - before you

do - before you start writing your personal statement, you have to be ready. Now, what

this means is you can't write a personal statement the night before. You can't write it a week

before. Some people spend anywhere from six months to a year preparing their personal

statement. Now, personally, I don't think you need a year, you just need to work hard

for awhile, but you need more than a week, okay? There's a lot of work to do, I'm going

to show you some of the things you need to keep in mind, we're going to look at six different

things you need to understand about the personal statement, but this is such an important document,

such an important piece of paper, that you have to spend time on it. You have to know

what's involved, okay? So, we're going to start with that.

First of all, know the parameters. Now, what does this mean? I've seen lots of people;

I've seen lots of examples of personal statements where the people did not get onto the school's

website and find out what they actually need to do. They didn't look at the instructions.

They didn't look at the limits. They didn't look at anything. They just started writing

a personal statement, okay? What they didn't understand is what font size can you use?

Usually the school will tell you, they will give you some instructions about what you

can and can't do, okay? If you think, oh, I don't have enough to write, I'll use a 14

font, a size 14 font, to fill up the pages, okay, they - the admissions committee, the

people who read this, they will see a 14 font - garbage, you're done, you're not getting

into this school. They didn't even read one word yet. They saw you couldn't follow instructions,

you obviously can't be a good student - goodbye, okay? Know the font. Know the spacing. Do

they want double-spaced or single-spaced? Some of them don't care, they say you can

write double or single, but make sure you know. If they want double-spaced, send them

double-spaced personal statement. If they want single, make it single. Some of them

will tell you how - the margins, they want one inch each side. They want two inches on

the top and bottom, one inch on each side. Make sure you format your personal statement

the way they want it. If you don't, it means you can't follow instructions, and this is

for a personal statement. How are you going to do when your teachers give you instructions,

right? You can't follow these basic instructions? You won't follow your teachers' instructions,

they don't want you at their school, you're done, they haven't even read your personal

statement yet.

Now, very, very important. Some of them will give you a word limit. Some of them will say

no more than 1000 words. Some will say no more than 1250 words. Some of them will say

900 words. Make sure you know what the limit of words is. Now, they might not give you

a word limit. They might give you a character limit. Character means like, each letter and

space and period and comma, each one of these is a character. A 900 character usually includes

spaces, so make sure when your final draft is ready, you do not have more than 900 characters.

Now, again, don't sit there counting each one. Make sure you do this on Word or some

sort of word processor that can count for you, okay? And you can look at the top of

the tabs in Word, for example, and there'll be a place that says word count. There will

also show you character count. Make sure you don't go over your limit. Some of them will

just give you a page limit. No more than two double-spaced pages. Okay. No more than one

single spaced page, it's almost the same thing, but again, know how much you need to write,

don't go beyond it. If they're giving you two pages, don't write half a page. If they're

giving you one page, don't write a page and a half. Generally, I say anywhere between

a page and a quarter to a page and a half should be enough. That's usually the standard,

but again, every school will have their own instructions. Make sure you know what they

want. Make sure you give them what they want. Okay?

Now, some of them will just say "Write a personal statement", basically, why do you want to

come to this school, or why do you want to join this program. Others will give you a

very specific question, okay? If they give you a question, make sure you answer that

question. Make sure that you build your - you construct or organize your personal statement

around that question. If you ignore the question, you're - again, you're ending up in the rejection

file, you know, you aren't getting admitted. Now, keep in mind, the personal statement

is not the only thing they're looking at, but if you have very good grades, very good

extracurricular activities, very good volunteering but you still have a terrible personal statement,

all those things might not help you. On the other hand, if you have so-so grades and so-so

everything else but your personal statement is amazing, that could actually get you into

university. Very important document, okay? And sometimes, you will have everything the

same, they'll - let's say there's five seats in a class, in a particular course. There

are ten people, each of them have basically the same grades, the same experience, the

same volunteer experience, etc. What's going to make the difference between who gets in

and who doesn't? The personal statement, okay? Don't underestimate the value of this document.

Now, the next thing, and this where a lot of people make a mistake. Do they actually

want a personal statement, okay? Or, do they want a statement of intent, or a statement

of purpose? Call it both ways. Do they want an essay? Do they want a personal statement

of intent? Make sure you understand what it is they're asking for. A personal statement

and a statement of intent are not the same thing, okay? This - the way you write this

and the way you write this are different, okay, and that's why I said I'll make a different

video for the statement of intent because, right now, we're just concentrating on the

personal statement. So, let's take this question and go to the next step.

So, we're taking about a personal statement. What is the first thing you have to notice

about personal statement? First thing you have to notice is that they want a person.

It's personal, okay? What they don't want to know is they don't want to know what are

you, they want to know who are you. They want to see the person. They want to see the personality,

okay? They want to see the person that's going to be coming into their classrooms and interacting

with other students, interacting with faculty, interacting with school staff, somebody who

can lead, somebody who can work hard and succeed and go on to give the school a good reputation

once they enter the working world. So, they want to see a person.

Now, what does this mean? They want to know your personality. They want to know, what

have you done or - that shows who you are. They don't want to know what's on your transcripts.

They see your transcripts. They know what's on your transcripts. Don't tell them that

in the personal statement. Again, you can take out highlights. I was in the top 3% of

my class in whatever, sure. That's not on your transcript, necessarily. But don't tell

them I took this, this, and that course and I got A's in everything. Yeah, they know,

they can see your transcript. Don't tell them that here. They don't want to see a student.

They want to see a person. Okay? And I'll say that many times. If you have to submit

a CV or a resume, don't tell them what you've done in terms of work or volunteer experience.

They can see it in the resume. They can see it in the CV. Show them the person, don't

show them the worker. Show them the person, don't show them the student, okay? All of

that, they have other documents for. Again, all they want to see is the person.

Now, you're asking, okay, yeah, I understand, you've said it enough times, but I could tell

you that - I've said it to people ten times, and they still didn't do it. Very, very important

to make sure they see a person, okay? They want to see uniqueness. They want to see some

sort of imagination, okay, they want to see creativity. If you go online, if you do a

Google search, or Bing or Yahoo or whatever search engine you use and you put "personal

statement samples", the internet's full of them. Read some of these. You will read examples

of what not to do and you will read examples of what to do. I once read a sample of a girl

who got into all the ivy league schools. How did she organize her personal statement? She

basically put all of her information into a story about going to Costco. For those of

you who don't know, Costco is a huge supermarket in the States and Canada and everywhere. She

compared her life and she compared her academic career and her work experience to a shopping

trip to Costco. Now, you're thinking, well, that's a little bit strange. Yeah, it is a

little bit strange, but it worked, and what did it show the most? That she was thinking

outside the box. So, this is very important. Think outside the box, be creative, be original,

be fresh. The people who are going to be reading your statement, they're going to be sitting

in a room, they're going to have a stack of statements, okay? It's extremely boring work,

but they have to do it, and the more boring your personal statement, the more average

it is, the more bland it is, the more unoriginal it is, the more tired you're making them and

a little bit more angry you're making them. Don't make them angry, give them something

fresh, wake them up. As soon as you've woken them up, you already have an advantage in

your admissions process, okay? Very, very important. Be a person. Don't be a student.

Don't be a worker.

Now, I'm going to talk a bit more about how you should do this, especially the introduction

paragraph is super important. We're going to talk about that soon enough.

Okay, so now, as I mentioned, time, right? So, your next step is to plan. Now, you have

to plan your - you have to plan your overall approach to the personal statement. So, what

you have to do is you have to find your theme or your arc. This is an arc, basically, right?

So, this is what is holding your whole personal statement together and then all the information's

going to come under this, under the arc, and it's all connecting to one central idea, and

that's why I also call it a theme. Like, if you're into sports, that could be your theme.

If you're a refugee from somewhere and you're looking for a better life and you're looking

for a second chance, that's your theme. Or, another way to look at it is your "in". The

one thing that lets you into the story and then you build your story from there, right?

Very, very important to have this theme. You're not going to just list down random information.

You're going to tell a story, okay, and that's what you're looking for. You're looking for

the plot of the story of who you are and you're going to present that to the admissions committee,

the people who are reading it. Again, I can't stress this enough, take time to do it. And

you'll be surprised, I've helped lots of students write personal statements, okay, and it's

amazing to me. Like, they always send me their first draft and I always - almost always send

them back an email and I say, "Yeah, we're going to have to start from the beginning,

because you're not doing what a personal statement is. You're not telling me a story, you're

giving me facts, a lot of the facts which I can get from your other documents, okay,

so we're going to start from scratch." And what I do is I create a list of questions

for them, and what you can do is create a list of questions for yourself. But be very

broad with your questions, okay? Make sure you ask all the who, what, when, where, how,

which, etc., why, why do you want to come to this school? Why do you want to study this?

When did you know you wanted to study this? So, you're applying, for example, to medical

school, okay? Why are you applying to medical school? Why do you want to be a doctor? Did

somebody push you to be a doctor? Did you ever have an experience at a doctor's office

where you came out and you said "You know what? This is what I want to be, this is what

I want to do with my life." What is that point in your life, that light bulb switched on

and you realized this what you want to study? If you're going into business, why? Why do

you want to go into business? Do you want to be rich? Okay, good. You're not going to

say that on your personal statement. What you can say is why do you want to be rich?

Do you want to make lots of money so that you can help poor people? Do you want to make

lots of money so that you can control the world? Do you want to be president? Always

ask one more question. Whatever your answer is, go a little bit more. Again, very important,

I want you to dig deep into yourself. Don't be afraid of asking yourself these questions,

okay? Now, when I help students write a personal statement, I send them minimum fifteen questions,

sometimes thirty questions, and I'm not going to use all the answers in the personal statement,

I'm not going to ask them to do that, but I want them to think. I want them to find

that little piece of information, that little piece of their history to build a story around,

okay? I want them to find their theme, okay?

Ask non-typical questions. Don't say "Why do you want to be doctor?" Okay, obviously,

that's a question you need to think about, but I want you to think, "Why do you want

to help people? Why does seeing somebody sick become unsick make you feel good? How does

it make you feel good? What situation - what example, what experience in your life has

helped you understand that feeling about yourself?" Okay? Lots of questions. Give non-typical

answers to typical questions. Even if you're - in your list of questions, you have very

typical questions, "Why do you want to go to this school?", look for non-typical answers.

Why do you want to go to MIT? Well yeah, it's the best technical school in the world, but

why MIT? Why this particular school? There are lots of good technical schools. Well,

MIT has, on-campus they have this particular building where you can do this, that, and

that. Be very, very specific with your answers. Now, all the details you're going to collect

are going to help you come up with your theme, with your arc, the one thread that goes through

all this information and connects it all together, the one thing that helps you create a story,

okay? Because, again, they have your transcript, they have your CV, they want to know who you

are as a person, okay?

Think of it like this: when you get to university, you're going to meet lots of new people and

you're going to meet new classmates, new teachers, new people who are not your classmates but

go to your school, in your dormitory, you'll meet them at the cafeteria, whatever. You're