STATEMENT OF PURPOSE THAT GOT ME INTO JOHNS HOPKINS

hello guys and welcome to my channel if you're watching this video then you're probably in the middle of your application to a university of your dreams or you're just planning your application but this video is about one of the most important parts of it and this is personal statement so believe me I've been there and I've done like seven applications in my life and I wrote all of those personal statements and I wanted to share my ideas um my thoughts about what should be in that letter now the first thing is that you need to remember that every single university has its own question sometimes they would ask you why would you want to apply to this particular University why this particular program and why at this period of time and some universities for example like Stanford if you applying to their MBA program they would ask you what matters most to you and why so completely different topics and the first thing you should do you should um analyze the universities that you're applying to and make this list of questions from their personal statements and make sure you have plenty of time so when I remember my application I remember that my first personal statement took me like I know two or three weeks because the first draft that I started doing um I deleted everything because I hated it and the same thing happened to my second and third because this is such a creative process especially when the question is so complicated like Stanford for example you cannot really just sit down in one evening and write this motivation letter this is something what I would recommend like open Notes um on your iPhone or whatever phone you're using and write that down that question and every day before you go to sleep just brainstorm a little and if you have some ideas write them down um so this way you would be able to summarize all of your ideas throughout like three or four weeks and then sit down and kind of make the whole text about what you've thought another thing you should understand that the university already has all of the numbers and facts about you from your application they know where you work they know all of the scores that you've scored on the standardized test they know your GPA um they even know your achievements uh from your previous jobs or uh volunteering experience because you have that on your resume so your personal statement is the only opportunity to show to the university what kind of person you are so I would say try to remember a book a person an event that really affected you during your life uh remember when something happened and you were like oh this is what I want to do in my life this is what I want to do next how I want to change my life so this is some something that universities are looking for in your personal statement something that formed you as a personality so really use this chance to show your stories and to share with the university what really affected your life choices and this should be done in a really friendly way um I would say it should be still academic it should be still formal but tell all of the edges of that story don't be afraid to tell that you failed or how you felt depressed or nervous because as I said they want to see a real person and I've helped a lot of students with their applications to American and Canadian universities and from my perspective your personal statement is around 30% of your whole application which means that you need to spend 30% of your preparation time on your personal statement so it really really matters because I know sometimes you're like oh this is just a you know just a letter um I would rather spend more time on preparing for gmad or sat or gr but really no it should be almost the same time as your preparation for standardized test another thing that I always recommend my students to mention is mention something about your University uh like when I was researching my universities when I was choosing a program to apply to I would really go through the list of the courses that they have and one of the universities I think it was University of Florida had the this course like um economics for startups and I was like wow this is the first time I see something like a course for startups uh in a curriculum and I highlighted that in my motivation letter so I said I'm applying to your University because you are the only University from my list that has this startup course and I'm so interested in startups and I would really love to participate and this really shows the university that you've taken your time you've done your homework and you researched the program and you know every aspect of it if you were able to connect with the professor um it's not necessary to do that but maybe what I did again I'm sharing with you so uh I went through a list of professors that um read the courses in that University and I went through their articles there was this lady um I think it was University of Illinois and she was a professor there and she wrote an article about com crash in 2000s and I read her article and I was like wow this is really interesting and I got really excited that I would have an opportunity to work with her and attend her lectures and maybe share some ideas so I also put it in my personal statement I wrote that I went through a list of your professors I read their articles and one of the professors really touched me she really touched the topics that are um of a major interest to me so yeah I would be amazed by the opportunity to work with such people and finalize your personal statement with something why why a university should admit you why they should so hire you because they are also working on their portfolio of students and they want you to participate in their activities to bring something new to a group of students so I would mention like um in my essays I would write like I'm very active socially I sing in different you know concerts uh that were in our universities well I used to sing um I travel a lot I read a lot I'm an active partic participant of different different activities so really the university should see that they're going to benefit from you being in the class and one of the most important things about your motivation letter personal statement whatever you call it it has to be checked and it has to be checked not by you because sometimes we have these thoughts in our head and we try to kind of put them into words and they do not really make sense to anybody else just to us and you do not want that to happen to you because as I said 30% of your application in just one piece of paper 500 Words 700 words and you want every single word to have a meaning and you want it to be really proper grammatically because also in uh universities use it to evaluate um how correct you are how is your grammar how able you are to communicate your thoughts the best way to do it is uh use the help of a professional I recently got connected to the guys from academic help. net and I realized that the whole resource where you can get all of your papers checked and not just your personal statement but also all of the essays you'll be writing throughout your University life and the most exciting thing is that they not only check your grammar because that's important but also they would tell you whether a particular word in a particular sentence would make sense or it's better to replace it with some other word uh they would do some research and they would tell you what's wrong what's right especially if you're a foreign student like my English was pretty good before I started my application process but when I wrote my motivational letter and I showed it to an American and he was like H Marina what did you mean by this sentence and it was like the whole waste of two lines of my motivation letter because um the people who would be reading it they wouldn't be able to get what I wanted to say another cool thing when you're uploading your personal statement to academic help. net they would also tell you your estimate grade which is super cool if you don't feel confident or you still want somebody to evaluate the content of your essay they would tell you your grade in terms of grammar content style so you will get the whole evaluation and you know what's the best thing about it is the price now when I was looking for help to check my motivation letters I researched a lot of websites and what I found was like $400 per motivation letter and I was like I don't have that money because I still need to pay for my exams sttion flights whatever but these guys they only charge like uh from 4.

5 to $7. 5 per page and your average personal statement is around one page or two pages um and I think it's great value for money so I will leave a link below you guys should totally check it and uh once you finalize your personal statement make sure you have like 4 days for somebody to check it like academic help. net and then when you get your personal statement back just reread it make sure sure they um corrected everything the price is different because of various deadlines I would suggest you have at least a week before you submit your application uh for somebody to check it so academic help guys uh can also do it in just one day but then you will have to pay more so it's $7.

5 per page but if you have like three days it's just $4. 5 per page which is amazing so my advice to you guys is start writing your personal statement as early as you can I would say like 4 months PR to submitting your application because you would need to have this thoughts you would need to summarize everything and you would need somebody to check it and then I would suggest applying to five or six universities that means five to six different motivation letters if one University requires two then like it's more so take your time have somebody check it use academic help.