Personal Statement

[ArkansasHog]

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Should I address my low gpa in the personal statement, or should I let the schools view it how they want while looking at the gpa section of my application?

Also, is using all 4500 characters frowned upon? I know they will be reading hundreds of personal statements, do schools prefer them to be short and sweet?

 

[drumstix]

1: yes, but try to answer all of the things they asked for, so you can't waste all your characters on that lol
2: no, long as you covered everything in whatever amount of characters up to the max 4500, you're good to go

 

[Loptometriste]

No, do not address your low GPA in your personal statement. Talk about what makes you a good candidate. Discuss your maturity, optometric experiences, motivation, and drive. Don't talk about your bad parts--only the good. You are in essence selling yourself, so don't bring yourself down. Address that in an interview or maybe in a supplemental. My optometrist strongly recommended this, and I do too.

I used pretty much all of the 4500 characters. I just needed that much to say it all. I tried to cut as much fat as possible. Don't try to fill in space to make it to 4500, but if you can't do it without going to 4500, then use it all.

 

[paasnaas]

No, do not address your low GPA in your personal statement. Talk about what makes you a good candidate. Discuss your maturity, optometric experiences, motivation, and drive. Don't talk about your bad parts--only the good. You are in essence selling yourself, so don't bring yourself down. Address that in an interview or maybe in a supplemental. My optometrist strongly recommended this, and I do too.

I used pretty much all of the 4500 characters. I just needed that much to say it all. I tried to cut as much fat as possible. Don't try to fill in space to make it to 4500, but if you can't do it without going to 4500, then use it all.

I agree, talking about a low GPA in a personal statement is a big NO. Your personal statement should be describing all the positive aspects of yourself, your experiences, motivation, etc!

 

[kdiddy89]

Should I address my low gpa in the personal statement, or should I let the schools view it how they want while looking at the gpa section of my application?

Also, is using all 4500 characters frowned upon? I know they will be reading hundreds of personal statements, do schools prefer them to be short and sweet?

I would actually have to disagree with the GPA. I believe it's very important to mention your bad gpa in your personal statement. The 2 most important factors are GPA and your OAT. If you have a crappy gpa, you better be ready to explain why it was you have performed poorly. If a school has a choice between 2 candidates, both who have poor gpas, but one of the candidates has gone on to explain what the reasoning is behind the poor academic performance, the school will most likely prefer the candidate who described his weakness, while outlining his or her strengths.

 

[tbair200]

I guess it depends on what you were going to say about your poor gpa. most schools have supplementals that allow you to explain poor academic performance so i don't think you need to include it in your personal statement. just my opinion!!

 

[drumstix]

I would actually have to disagree with the GPA. I believe it's very important to mention your bad gpa in your personal statement. The 2 most important factors are GPA and your OAT. If you have a crappy gpa, you better be ready to explain why it was you have performed poorly. If a school has a choice between 2 candidates, both who have poor gpas, but one of the candidates has gone on to explain what the reasoning is behind the poor academic performance, the school will most likely prefer the candidate who described his weakness, while outlining his or her strengths.

What if you addressed it (and therefore covered it properly) in the Personal Statement -- should you also explain it in a school's supplementary section? For instance, some schools have additional essays asking candidates to explain any extenuating circumstances, or why they got bad grades, etc... Should they further expand on the items briefly covered in the Personal Statement, or should they just skip those questions because they've already covered those points in the Personal Statement?

Kind of confused about that.

 

[tbair200]

What if you addressed it (and therefore covered it properly) in the Personal Statement -- should you also explain it in a school's supplementary section? For instance, some schools have additional essays asking candidates to explain any extenuating circumstances, or why they got bad grades, etc... Should they further expand on the items briefly covered in the Personal Statement, or should they just skip those questions because they've already covered those points in the Personal Statement?

Kind of confused about that.

I think it is entirely up to you. Won't hurt to state it again if you for example had bad grades for a semester bc a family member was sick or something. Depends on your reasoning I suppose.

 

[dakop001]

In my opinion, you should use your personal statement to write all the positive things about yourself. This basically gives you a chance to "sell yourself" in writing and attract the reader. You can always explain bad grades in a school's secondary application (i'm sure most of them have a section for this).