Editing for perfection: the personal statement

This article contains a short guide on how to edit your personal statement and create tension and suspense within your writing. For most potential students, there are some clear reasons why they want to embark on college. Writing the personal statement for college presentations is one of the most difficult and overwhelming tasks for any potential student. This article will provide information on how to build tension and suspense and how to edit your personal statement, which is an area that students tend to overlook.

It is often said that personal statements are often autobiographical. This may well be true, because a wise maxim is “write about what you know.” And if there’s one thing we all know more about than anything else, it’s our own lives. Students often write only about the reasons they want to embark on a particular college course, and many personal statements lack emotion, suspense, and tension. However, in a job in fact, emotion is a key ingredient in successful personal statements. And while the lives of students may differ considerably from each other, we will all know the full range of emotions. It is important when writing your personal statement that you convey a sense of place to your reader and the way to do this is with the five senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch. It is very easy to forget that scenes, which are indelibly etched in your own mind, will not be equally clear in the reader’s mind unless you make them so in your writing.

Tension is one of the second most important elements of writing, closely related to suspense, the ingredient of “what happens next.” The problem for many students is trying to condense the personal statement into 600 words. Obviously, the admissions officer knows you only have this limited space, but nonetheless judges you by the four minutes it takes you to read your personal statement, if your personal statement includes tension and suspense, you will surely be a winner. The secret of a good personal statement is not to reveal too quickly, to keep us guessing, holding on to every word, thus creating tension and suspense. For there to be tension in your personal statement, there must be (or has been) something big at stake. Maybe this was your family life or what you think is your future. Perhaps the reason why you chose the course you want to study. Whatever it is, by not releasing the result too early, it will hold the reader’s interest for much longer. The following personal statement begins with a powerful, suspenseful introduction:

“The prospect of helping people has led me to fulfill many goals in life and this is truly my dream. Although it is great to have ambitions, now I want to translate my goals into reality. Becoming a nurse is a natural extension of my interest in After graduation, I found myself advising investment bankers on the stock market, secretly wishing for the opportunity to help others overcome illness and promote health. “

In this personal statement introduction, the reader is captured by why you chose to become an investment banker. The author of this piece has demonstrated a powerful introduction, the style is simple and direct narrative. This personal statement will surely provide valuable information on why you want to become a nurse.

To put tension in your personal statement, it will be helpful to describe a highly charged incident, part of a particularly difficult period in your life. Whatever it is, it will hold your reader’s interest for much longer. The following example shows the perfect build-up of tension and suspense:

“When the letter arrived by airmail with an American stamp, I knew immediately, it was from my university with my degree results, and I opened it with as much emotion as if it were a birthday present. With trembling fingers, I pulled out the sheets of thin blue paper, and my heart started pounding when I started reading. “

Remember that tension, like all techniques, is just another tool to make your writing more vivid and interesting to read. However, if you do use it, you should make it clear to your readers that the events you are describing have some bearing on the subject of your study. Otherwise, they will be confused, have to re-read to make sense of it, and may end up feeling irritated enough to stop reading.

Words and phases that are often used to increase tension include: bullied; heart was pounding; ferocity. Therefore, the tension and suspense builds up so that, metaphorically, we hold our breath, driven to read on to find out “what happens next.”

How to edit your personal statement to send to college

When you have finished writing, what do you do? Well, for starters, don’t be too quick to submit your personal statement before checking. Few, if any, experienced writers ever need to review their work. Some do the right thing, but most get their first draft of a Personal Statement on paper without worrying too much about how it’s written, and then when it’s finished, go over, prune, polish, and adjust the overall content. Therefore, this section is about how to edit the personal statement. It is recommended to check the following:

oThat you have not exaggerated with adjectives and adverbs. If you find that it does, use some of the former and, where possible, replace the latter with stronger verbs.

o Threat that you have not used clichés or hackneyed phrases, but have found fresh images always to describe yourself in the best possible way.

o Make sure you have not consistently used the same word in the same paragraph. This can be very irritating to the admissions officer and just takes a little more thought to rephrase, or very often it can be skipped without affecting the meaning. A thesaurus is useful for finding alternative words.

o Make sure your spelling and grammar are impeccable. When in doubt, consult a dictionary and / or grammar book or ask someone you trust to read it for you. Alternatively, send your personal statement to the editors of Get Into Uni Oxbridge http://www.getintouni.com, who will edit it for you, seamlessly.

o Make sure you have not used long, unwieldy sentences or paragraphs. If so, you must break them.

o That you’ve started your personal statement with a powerful introduction so that it grabs your reader’s attention, right away.

o That its structure is easy to follow and that each sentence is attached to the next line.

o That you finish with your future professional goals.

A key advantage is using a professional to edit and enhance your personal statement. However, if you are working in isolation and do not have that advantage, be careful not to allow your family or friends to read and comment on it. On the one hand, an exterior will be objective and critical: it can be full of praise or go to the other extreme when it comes to style, at least, it is concerned.

However, long before you have reached the point of review, it is important that your personal statement is a selling tool for you to get into your chosen university. If you want to interest the reader, it is important that you be your own critic. You’ll need to prune and polish, check grammar and spelling, re-see your style – in fact, you may need to rewrite your first few sentences to make sure your personal statement is powerful and will grab your readers’ attention instantly. A great way to help with this is to read examples of personal statements. These examples will give you a clear idea of ​​how you can improve your opening.

Get Into Uni offers students editing personal statements and tips on how to get an edge on the competition when applying for college. The website includes sample personal statements, a free writing guide, and lots of information to help you compose the personal statement.

Final note:

Your personal statement is essential to your application. Therefore, planning your personal statement is your first step towards success. Get a competitive advantage and ask for the best editing service on the web.

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