Senior English and criminology and criminal justice major
It’s that miserable time of the year. Yep, it’s graduate school application time. Thousands of us, including yours truly, are hunting down old professors for letters of recommendation, cramming in the last few chapters of the test books and trying to make our freshman-year field trips look like community service. Whether you’re applying to graduate school, law school, medical school, business school or even your future career, you know the deal.
So many of us will also be writing a personal statement, the epitome of making a big deal out of something seemingly unrelated. “Of course I’ve wanted to be a lawyer since birth; it’s my destiny.” We’ve been conditioned to use what I call “sob stories” as the main focus of personal statements because they allegedly capture attention, evoke empathy and quicken acceptance letters. Be careful with using a sob story; they might be more detrimental than heartwarming.
Now when I say “sob stories,” I want to be clear that I’m not patronizing anyone’s personal story. The phrase is just for fun; I proudly call my personal statement a sob story. A story about overcoming a hardship is interesting to read and can personalize you beyond a resume. But if you don’t back up that story with action, it stays just that: a sob story.
As a teaching assistant, I’ve seen my fair share of personal statements, and so many of them rub me the wrong way with their sob stories. This hardship happened to you, you overcame it and you found your passion. And then what? Passion immediately translates into credentials for graduate school? What did you do to act on that passion? Did you do anything? OK, you moved around a lot as a child, you learned how to be adaptable, you developed a passion for immigration law and that’s why you should go to Harvard (taken out of my old personal statement, with love). Did you do any community service with an immigration office, help foreign exchange students with their English, make a short film about the depravity of human trafficking? No? Why do I want you in my law school?
I’ve seen so many great sob stories take a dive when the writer equates his or her passion for, let’s say business, to the reason they would be a good addition to the business school. What kind of graduate school wants to admit someone who has a passion he or she doesn’t act upon? Wouldn’t your personal statement sound so much more legitimate if your sob story evoked a passion for business and then you went on to do [insert internship/community service/project/thesis here] to experience and build upon your passion? Graduate schools want to admit doers, not feelers.
If you did nothing to explore and practice your passion, I can’t imagine what you do with things for which you don’t have a passion. And we know graduate school has many of those things.
We know we aren’t supposed to reiterate our resumes in our personal statements, and I’m certainly not advising that. I simply am saying that validating your passion with action makes you sound mature, proactive and dedicated. Graduate school admissions departments have heard every sob story you can imagine, and they aren’t about to be stunned by yours.
They want to ensure that if you step foot on their campuses, you’ll uphold their standards of hard work and commitment, whether you’re passionate about it or not. Your goal is to prove that effort to them, not to prove you have the capacity to like stuff. Your Facebook profile is sufficient proof of that.
Margaret Zelenski is a senior criminology and criminal justice and English major. She can be reached at mzelenskidbk@gmail.com.
