hello everyone it is scala and i am back with a video all about how i wrote my personal statement and a few tips for you as well i have my personal statement in front of me and i will actually be reading from it which is pretty exciting my favorite part about applications was getting to hear other people's stories and why they decided to apply to school so i thought this would be a great idea to share my own um and to give you the joy that i receive whenever i read other people's so i guess
i'll first give a little introduction to myself so you're not like who is this girl trying to tell me how to write a personal statement is she an expert no i'm not an expert i am just a student who also wrote personal statements and um i guess a little bit of backup is that i got into most all the schools that i applied to i applied to harvard columbia catholic university university of virginia rice university uc berkeley and princeton university i always forget princeton because it's the one that waitlisted me it is a-okay we knew
it was not the best fit it would just be fun to be closer to home your personal statement says a lot about you so given that these personal statements and these the essays that i wrote definitely helped me get into these schools as well so i thought i would share my own personal statement with you and walk through the steps that i took to write it and make it the best that i could be that it could be because i'm pretty proud of it and proud of my writing so let's get started with the tips
my first one is to really set your goals so the goals that i had when writing my personal statement was to one express myself and enjoy the way that i'm expressing myself so be creative be innovative share a story give a narrative i knew that i couldn't just write about myself for two whole pages and like have fun doing that um without like giving some back background and allowing whoever's reading this to really get to know my personality in every bit of my writing i also made sure to ask why i was sharing a specific
story or um interest of mine or experience that i had to make sure that i was packing every single paragraph with facts and interests that really pertain to the school to what i wanted to to do in my future and of course to my life so i really emphasize that packing the paragraphs with whys and of course i have my essay right here and i'll be getting into it in certain parts and tell you my why for each of those each of these experiences life stories etc so i started with a narrative it's really important
to express your passions in your entire essay but especially to start off strong and give a good story or a good summary of who you are um and why this pertains to your career goals and the program that you're choosing um and to that specific school and their goals as well so i'll start by reading my first sentence or my first paragraph imagine a 21-room house made of stone and mortar surrounded by deep red sand and embedded in a forest my family's life began in this home with my father built in emo state nigeria when
my father immigrated to united states in the 80s he was determined to support families through his real estate practice just five years ago he led me into our current home in the u.s i remember standing in what would soon be my first non-shared room it was simply framed and incomplete but i was overwhelmed by the grand effect it would soon have on my family's life my father's personal connection to homes and my experience standing in my room for the first time motivated me to join habitat for mandy while pursuing my bs arc i'll stop there
so in that first paragraph you really get to know my interests and family of course being a really big one of them and my father's experiences which eventually led to my own within the field of architecture the theme of home is really spread throughout my entire essay i really loved and was interested in public interest architecture so i wanted to design for communities designed for families it makes me happy reading this even though it might sound a little cheesy and i know i will be cringing in a few years from now reading this out loud
um because it's so personal to me and it really does drive home things that i love so that is my why it's home it's this idea of integrating a community into every single thing that i do now as a student in my life as a even as a daughter i guess as my family life um and eventually my profession i would like to do the same so that is the reason why i'm expressing this right right away also just that first sentence is very visual i tell everyone to imagine if i could tell you to
close your eyes i would but that was a little too far as an architecture major something that's very visual and very creative um really speaks to my audience as well next we'll talk about your professional experiences so after introducing yourself as a whole maybe while you're interested in a certain program going into how you're prepared for that program and to be in that academic environment is very important and that speaks to your professional or just life experiences in general and when i say in general it can be anything like you can take the simplest things
that you've done in your undergraduate experience or in high school or just on your own during the summers or um in your free time and create that make that part of your narrative because it is your lived experiences shape who you are that is how you're prepared for this this next academic adventure so make sure that you're expressing that in your essay like maybe you never did habitat never did like a formal service activity but maybe instead you had an elderly grandpa a grandparent at home um and you took care of them and taking care
of them watching over them but also having them be a part of your life is a huge part of your story and what led you to that program so yeah just keeping those in mind the simple things count the simple things that make up your life to write about them especially if they pertain to that particular program that you're interested in i'll mention one of my professional experiences now in my essay um it's with an architecture firm but i just won't say the firmness it's not really necessary anyway it's also in the middle of the
essay so it's kind of confusing in the beginning but done simultaneously with a program at my school my internship with said architecture firm elevated my design thinking i iterated numerous design models for a local housing complex collaborated with students renovating their school cafeteria and worked as head social media coordinator for the firm i interviewed professionals across the field wrote and published five project articles and maintained the firm's instagram and linkedin social media profiles i am most proud of my publication on coven 19. the research i conducted for the white paper entitled impact design for senior
living and response to copic 19 enhanced my research capabilities and further solidified my interest in analyzing best practices to support vulnerable populations this paragraph really is the definition of packing in my paragraphs and really showing what i've done and what i'm proud of and how this can help me in the future all the experience that i've mentioned in here are directly translatable translatable yeah can be directly translated to my program of choice so yeah that is um just one example of a way to express your professional experiences and in a way that's not exactly bragging
that was probably one of the hardest things for me to understand in all and writing about myself for two whole pages being able to simply elevate the things that you have done is is very important in life in general so starting with these essays is a great way to begin i actually listed multiple different professional experiences but i don't want to get into all of them because it's pretty long and i don't think it's really necessary to so that one example um hopefully is enough to just show you how you can express um a certain
experience that you've had as well and now we're going to get into how we can connect our essay and our personal statement to the program itself so this is typically like your last paragraph you make sure that you have the program maybe professors you would like to be working with or research with or different organizations that you want to be a part of at that school just mentioning that at the end and really expressing that you're interested and are excited about the program that you're applying to i'll share a part of my paragraph so opportunities
to serve low-income families the homeless population senior living communities and minority groups have solidified my ambition to receive my masters of architecture from the university of virginia this fall i attended a professor's interdisciplinary course on community and gaze design featuring another professor this presentation on his work in haiti following the 2010 earthquake spoke directly to my interests i know i refer to the expertise of these committed professionals and contribute to uva's collaborative community through this renowned university i will design for the minority conduct research with intricate needs in mind and serve vulnerable populations through architecture
so yeah that was the final part of my essay and it really just spoke to one my interests i brought it all back so me listing low-income families the homeless population and senior living communities all pinpointed something in my um in the body of my statement the final bit is just directly to what the school can provide for me and why i believe it's a great fit i use uva because i think this is the first essay that i wrote and otherwise i just changed out the university name and the experiences which sounds bad but
honestly you do not have time to write six plus completely different essays saying basically the same thing like you would be saying the same thing anyway you would talk about yourself and you talk about your experiences in the same similar at least light so that's exactly what i did here um and then switching out that last paragraph do not forget to change the name and don't forget to change the information and then you're good to go for all of the essays further on so i thought i'd also share a few extra tips because this is
pretty daunting writing this took me quite a bit of time so i guess the first step that i have is to make sure that the overall theme of your essay flows with that school's general program initiatives or mission statements like are they particularly focused on your professional experiences are they more conceptual school um do they want to be world changers or are they hoping to really drill you on performance performance performance and kind of have that be expressed in your essay as well and that would probably come naturally because you're choosing these schools based on
your interests so it it probably would be that the school for me is more of like a world changer they want to change the world they want to produce students produce they want to educate students who are able to make a difference in the world so that is a lot of um what went into my essay writing the second is to be clear and be honest of course you want to be honest because this is literally talking all about you so in every paragraph and every sentence make sure that your words are genuine and if
you're writing something that you just feel maybe i'm not expressing this correctly or this might not be in line with what i want to express have some other people take a look at it and that's actually my next tip which is to have multiple eyes look at your essay before you send it out like just you're gonna have many drafts let's just say that um and each draft with every new person who looks at it there's gonna be some new edits it's very important that people look at this essay and can understand it fully oh
to go along with be clear i wanted to add that if you have specific goals in mind or for this program name those goals it'll name exactly what you want to do if you can name drop some professors for research do so name drop some organizations do so if you want to i don't know build the next eiffel tower name it say it honestly someone's going to be impressed by that you should definitely say that and yeah just being clear with your objectives but also especially your excitement for what your career is going to entail
by you going to that school and then this is a really important tip it's my final tip if you can't start writing if friday's just not your thing if you're just like feeling anxiety at all about starting this personal statement because it can be a lot it's two pages of your entire life's work just kidding not your entire life's work but two pages of who you are and why you what you want in life i guess that's basically what you're what you're putting down so if you just can't get there for some reason i just
want to encourage you to open up your laptop throw your phone away oh wait don't throw your phone away yet put a timer on your phone 20 minutes throw your phone away just sit and type type anything honestly throw some music on for me i started typing like multiple different ways i wanted to start the sentence like i literally had like 20 first sentences and i put it away next time i came back set that 20 minutes turned to music on through my phone and decided that i would just type about whatever i was feeling
at that moment in terms of each of these sentences so when i got to the sentence all about the 21 rooms i was like oh this is so cool i can like talk about my dad i can talk about real estate i can talk about architecture i can talk about habitat i can talk about it just it gives you all these ideas and i just had bullet points and you never know where inspiration can strike it can strike in those moments so just begin beginning is the hardest part just do it um take that 20
minutes and just type away whatever you can get out just do it i got um i ended up with i think four pages of like draft notes and bullet points and i then had an advisor who so graciously helped me in my mess and help me condense to create actual sentences and to put my life story into this two-page document and i want to encourage you also to have that person that's what your academic advisors are for currently in undergrad so if you are an undergrad or if you're in high school or in any any
stage in your life if you can find those advisors i definitely recommend it and yeah that is all i've got i think i think so i always like end these videos and i'm like maybe i could have said something else and something else so if you have any questions at all please let me know um i really do enjoy engaging um about this topic outside voices have really guided me to end up going to harvard for my master's program and if i can be that for someone else i would definitely like to so good luck
in your application process and i will see you later bye [Music] back with the video this this is me look out because here i come [Music] this is me
