In addition to writing my own PS, I've done a lot of editing for dental school, PA school, officer program PS's. So here are my tips for personal statements:
- Make sure it's personal. Everyone can speak in general "I want to help people" terms, but why specifically do you want to be an optometrist (as opposed to any other job)? Was there one experience that sparked your interest? What will you contribute to the field?
- Use your natural voice. Don't use a lot of fancy words that look like you just scanned thesaurus.com. Read it outloud to yourself. Does it sound like a cleaned-up version of you? I think a main purpose for interview day essays is to ensure that it matches your personal statement, so it's important that your PS is true to you.
- Unless you REALLY have a great heart-wrenching story or are very good at writing humor, avoid gimmicky formats. A lot of PS help books tell stories about the football player with the stutter, etc., etc. Not everyone is one of those applicants. But if you are, by all means, if you can explain and sound sincere, go for it. But it better make people cry.
- Have other people read it. I sent mine to a lot of people, including my HS English teacher. Five of them gave me really good feedback about format and wording and pointed out areas that needed clarification, and gave me suggestions how to make things more readable.
If you don't know where to begin, try writing your own resume, including education, community service, and jobs and then pulling things from that. I myself wrote about 5 or 6 "draft" essays, that were basically brainstorms of things I could talk about (one was all about the Navy's Stockdale leadership model and another was based on the Emerson "Success" poem). I didn't actually go with either of those but took the best parts of each to make my final PS. I also found that taking the time to put down my specific reasons for choosing optometry helped me to be more articulate during my interviews.
Hope that helps!
- p.dot
