Examples of Personal Statements’ Common Downfalls
If you have to go through thousands of examples of personal statements, you will see mistakes that keep popping up. If the same mistakes keep happening, knowing about them will prevent future problems with personal statements. These errors can threaten to destroy even the chances of applicants with excellent GPAs. This is because these errors are too common and can at anytime be prevented once proper proofreading has been done. They speak of the applicant’s carelessness, or even apathy. So, if you really want to be part of that college or graduate school, you have to make an effort to prevent these five examples of personal statements’ most common downfalls.
Examples of personal statements’ stylistic and technical errors
Yes, you probably have the best essay content in the whole county but style- and grammar-wise, your personal statement is just… hopeless. The first thing that can really mess up your personal statement is your grammatical, and other technical, errors. Add misspellings to these and you have just completed an image of utter carelessness. Your targeted school will definitely wonder if you have had an education at all. Or, if the institution is convinced that your high marks have not been invented, it may get to the real point of the matter. Yes, your desired school may see carelessness or maybe rushed unpreparedness on your part. Despite glowing praises from your references, your personal statement speaks for itself. You do find many examples of personal statements with careless errors and they can definitely make the job easier if all applicants have acceptable grades. The second thing that can mess up your personal statement is being gimmicky. This includes using clichés and overly fancy words. You’ll end up trashing your essay with other examples of personal statements that put style over substance. Last, but not the least, a style error you must avoid is handing over an essay version of your resume. Do not be redundant; you could have used the space for more important stuff.
Examples of personal statements’ content problems
Content wise, you must avoid vagueness at all times. You may have written a lot but if your targeted school does not understand anything, it will be for nothing. You have to back up every claim that you have. Then, remember that you do have an audience. So, avoid offending your audience through bad humor or through sensitive topics.
Learning from examples of personal statements
When you take away all the content and stylistic errors, you will get a clean essay. However, you still have to keep in mind that you still have to put in relevant content. Making your essay one of the best examples of personal statements do not have to mean that you will lie to your targeted school. Just avoid the 5 common personal statements mistakes and put in a well-thought of representation of who you are and why you deserve to be accepted. The very best examples of personal statements will not do if they are not personalized.
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