I presented this to the student interns and wrote this blog post to share some of the many lessons I learned. It is my intent as well as to share my presentation and style to practitioners who present on this kind of material. I don't want to hoard knowledge. It is important to know that there is no magic formula or “correct answer” when it comes to writing personal statements; however, this is just some lessons I learned along the way to begin to develop my voice as a writer. It is valuable to learn from many sources and begin to find your voice. Uiha...e hele kakou!
The best way of learning how to write personal statements is to write a personal statement
Two days before the presentation, I sent an email to the attendees to fill out a pre-evaluation form. This was a mock scholarship “personal statement” activity from a real scholarship. There were 10 required questions with a character limit of 200 characters to answer.
On the day of the presentation, I included the student’s responses in an interactive-activity to improve the responses. Hold that thought…we’ll get back to that.
On writing a personal statement
1. Who you? (what’s your name)
2. Where you from?
3. What high school you went?
These are vital information to us because the follow-up question from the requester is: Do you know … so and so …?
Just like in the way we greet people in the Hawaiian Islands, it is important as a writer to grab the reader’s attention and interest from the beginning. First impressions matter. Be creative.
Here is some quick advice to summarize in a nut-shell my full presentation (available to download here: http://bit.ly/1M1z1wD )
- Elements of the scholarship process: FOLLOW DIRECTIONS
- Full-fill ALL application requirements
- Transcripts (if you don’t have the GPA for it, apply any way.)
- Reference Letters (Be courteous to those writing the LOR and give them ample time to write positive recommendations.
- Personal Statements (PS)
- Deadlines (hand it in on time)
- Know the seasons
- Season for Senior HS → Freshman of college
- Summer:
- Prep ALL applications (now)
Select schools you want to apply to
Apply to UH Manoa!!!
Take SAT/ACT - Fall:
Apply for schools
Apply for scholarships - Spring
Apply for Financial Aid (comes out January 1st of each year)
Apply for scholarships
- Freshman year of college and beyond
- Summer (Find internship/work; find more scholarships; begin to draft outlines and apply for scholarships)
- Fall (Find internship/work; find more scholarships; apply to scholarhips)
- Spring (Find/Apply for summer internship/work (deadlines form January to April); Apply to scholarships; Apply for FAFSA!)
- REPEAT THE PROCESS
- Use technology & GET ORGANIZED! (develop a system)
- Use dropbox
- PERSONAL STATEMENTS BUILD UPON PREVIOUS PERSONAL STATEMENTS
- The personal statement I have today was adapted from my first personal statement from 2005. It has gone through ten years of revisions.
- Use an independent Professional Email Address
- Email Addresses brand YOU!
- Use a professional name:
- [email protected] (not professional)
- [email protected] (professional: first and last name; etc.)
- Use a professional name:
- Use a separate professional e-mail from you @school.edu and @work.com that will be with you for the rest of your life--it helps you with compartmentalizing your life and during those transitional points of your life such as gong from school to work or job transitions.
- Always BACK-UP your work
- Save your work on CD
- Save your work on back-up hard drive
- Save your work in folders by chronology, and use a categorizing system that will be easy for you to look things up again
- Types of personal statements
- Structured versus “unstructured"
- Structured personal statements: closed ended questions
- Unstructured personal statements: open (but focused) ended questions
A. CHARACTERS// limits: Brevity: “short & sweet”
Similar to a “snapchat” post where you have seconds to make a first/lasting impression
B. WORD// limits: Succinct: “to the point”
Similar to “twitter” post where you have 140 characters to tell your story
C. PAGE// limits: Compact: “make a long story short”
Similar to “Facebook” post where you have 63206 char (~70 pages) to draw your picture
Think like a reviewer. Review your answers and think to yourself how would the reviewer think: red (no); yellow (meeeh) or green (YAAAS!).
Pre-evaluation activity
Thank you for holding that thought about the per-activty, here's the connection to apply it to the presentation:
Purpose: Hands-on example to practice writing responses for a scholarship
Activity: (1) Students were given a Google Forms link to fill out a real scholarship form with 10 questions and 200 character limit. (2) Example responses were included and students evaluated response in as the scale of “red”: no; “yellow”: maybe; and “green” yes.
Here's an example:
- Writing tips for your personal statements
- There’s no magic formula or “correct answer”
- Tell a story. Tell the truth! Don’t plagiarize
- Grab the reader’s ATTENTION … … … ...and sustain it!
- Have an active voice
- Passive voice: The PowerPoint was made by Lelemia.
- Active voice: Lelemia made the PowerPoint.
- Active voice is preferred because you are telling and showing a story!
- Passive voice: The PowerPoint was made by Lelemia.
- End strong! Make it connect
To end strong, make your ending connect to the beginning (especially for personal statements with WORDS and PAGE limits)
- Writing tips from my friends on FaceBook
- Lawyer: “short, sweet, and pack a punch”
- Anthropologist: “simplicity with words.”
- Cousin: “For what? Essay, political? First state who they are, what, why, facts the hit da <3”
- Political Scientist: “From the heart <3”
- Lawyer: “It feels uncomfortable to talk about yourself, but don’t be shame! No sked um go get um! Shine bright!
- Pacific Island Studies: “Let their own voice heard! Think big picture I am, I believe, grounded and connected to bigger goals, ambitions. Fun fun!”
- Globe-trotter, Professional athlete: “Personal accomplishments, obstacles overcome, and future goals” <3
- Electrical Engineer: “Everyone has a story. Not every story makes front page... writing style can make all the difference. Dr. Seuss books don't have the greatest depth but she knew her audience. Same here.... Believe it or not, more essays lose credibility for poor editing - misspelled words, incomplete sentences, etc. It is just as important to write well as it is to have great content."
- High School Teacher: "Be themselves, write about something that matters, and pay attention to conventions!"
- Social Work Student: "Articulation is key; say as much as you can in a few words as possible! And, be memorable, you want your personal statement to standout!"
- Environmental Consultant: Ask them to know the meaning and history of their name. That's a good start and to write their morals as of today, what they believe to be Pono.
- Studied Biochemistry: Make sure they have multiple people proof read it. It's not going to be perfect the first time around and different people will catch different errors. Their essay may have the most moving and heartfelt content but if it's filled with easy to fix spelling/grammatical errors then it won't help them at all.
Make rainbows out of your essays.
“Scholarships + Personal Statements” Award Notification:
I also would like to mahalo (give thanks) to you the reader of this blog post and make available this valuable resource.
Click to the Google Documents link to scholarship & personal statements resources: http://bit.ly/1MjZLqf
Take Home Messages
2, Know when to apply
3. Know how to “get” & stay organized
4. No scared, APPLY!
5. Don’t know? Be resourceful
6. Always thank your letters of references with a hand-written note.
Every indigenous ecosystem needs water to grow. Become a spring and share what the legacy of this knowledge and the knowledge you build from this so it lives on through your descendants’ descendants.