personal statement

 

After the networking with potential mentors, I would say that the personal statement is probably the next most important piece of the application. Like the average person, I absolutely hate writing personal statements. It is very hard to craft these narratives, and honestly I don't think my personal statements to my undergrad and master's program were all that great. 

When I began the process of putting together my PhD personal statement, one of my career counselors told me that this personal statement does not need to be flowery or super "creative," and that I could just get right to the point and discuss my research interests. So that helped ease some of my anxiety of having to produce this *artful* narrative of my life. 

So I then drafted a pretty straightforward personal statement that discussed why I was passionate about my research, what skills I gained throughout my MPH education, and why I needed a PhD to pursue my career goals. 

I then sent this draft to my Stanford summer internship mentor, and she gave me some quite alarming feedback (given that it was a week before I needed to start submitting my applications). She told me it was "good, but not great." She told me that, yes, PhD personal statements don't need to be super flowery, but should still tell a story. And my personal statement was missing that element that would help make it stand out. 

When this happened, I was actually attending the 2018 APHA conference in San Diego. Even with all the conference buzz around me, I hunkered down. With the help of a Stanford program coordinator that I was friends with, we sat down and did a line-by-line edit of my personal statement, not only better crafting my "story" but also making my prose much more robust. 

My old personal statement opened with the sentence: Promoting preventative health practices through education is my passion. 

And in my revised version I changed it to: “Do you know what a JUUL is?” 

So you can already get a sense of the type of overhaul I did with my personal statement. I still kept a lot of my details regarding my research interests and experiences, but just rearranged it into a better "story." When my Stanford mentor reviewed the edited version, she only had great things to say and very little edits. 

Again, I don't like to brag about my work, but I will have to say I was quite proud of the finished product of my personal statement. And I have had professors later on tell me that they were impressed with what I wrote. 

I'm always happy to share my personal statement, so please contact me if you would like to see it! My only rule is that I will not share my personal statement with people until they have started writing or drafting theirs (to prevent my story from producing any bias or interfering with creativity!) Just contact me!