Cornell Brooks School Application Tips: The Personal Statement
Tom O’Toole, Executive Director of Public Affairs Programming, offers his perspective on making the personal statement section of your graduate school application truly stand out.
When it comes to graduate school admission, the personal statement represents your chance to truly shine. In addition to providing a tremendous opportunity to convey the quality of your writing to admissions committees, the personal statement allows you to highlight your purpose for pursuing graduate studies. Here are a few tips for making sure your personal statement reaches its full potential:
1) The Personal Statement is a Writing Sample
Some graduate schools require writing samples as part of their applications, and some do not. For those that do not, the personal statement is the only sample of your writing that the admissions committee will see. For this reason, it is important (particularly for a professional program where writing skills are essential), to tell your story in a clear, coherent manner, and to proofread carefully. Grammatical errors, typos, and colloquial language will severely diminish the professionalism and credibility of your statement. These errors will also indicate that you do not invest much effort into representing yourself well.
2) The Personal Statement is not a Restatement of Your Résumé/CV
One of the biggest missed opportunities that I see in personal statements is when an applicant wastes their entire personal statement restating, verbatim, every piece of information presented in their résumé/CV. This is a frequent error in cover letters, and it unfortunately carries over to personal statements as well. By simply restating the information on a résumé/CV, applicants miss an opportunity to highlight aspects of their background that are not included in their résumé/CV.
3) Are you Ready for This?
Another common error in personal statements is conveying that graduate school is the “logical next step” in an applicant’s career. Graduate schools want to admit bright, capable individuals who have a genuine interest in making intellectual contributions to their field. They are not keen on admitting applicants who are pursuing graduate studies because they cannot figure out what to do with their lives, or are avoiding a difficult job market.
Graduate school is a rigorous, challenging commitment, and conveying that it is the “logical next step” in an applicant’s career doesn’t convey a strong clarity of purpose behind the application.
4) Tailor
One of the many problems associated with the “revolution” in electronic applications is that electronic submission encourages applicants to be generic. The “point, click, apply” mentality that yields poor results on the internship/job market also yields poor results for many graduate school applicants. Each statement should be tailored for the strengths of the individual program in question, (convincingly) citing faculty, courses, and specific initiatives that the applicant intends to leverage as a student.
Part of what admissions committees are looking for in applicants is intellectual capability, but they are also looking for “fit.” As an exercise, if the applicant can replace the name of our program with any other gradaute program in their statement, and the statement still makes sense, the statement isn’t well-tailored to a specific program.
5) Tell us a New “Story”
After reviewing several hundred applications, admissions officers find that each statement tends to run together because applicants rely on many of the same strategies to tell their story.
The trick is to balance professionalism and maturity with creativity. Give us an example of how you resolved a problem using an interdisciplinary, entrepreneurial approach. Discuss a public policy space that you feel would benefit from a new infusion of energy or ideas. However you decide to tell your story, make it innovative.
Cornell Brooks School Graduate Degree Programs
At the Cornell Brooks School of Public Policy, we’re here to help you take the next step, from exploring your goals to equipping you with the tools to make a lasting change. Whether your passion lies in social equity, health care transformation, environmental sustainability, or data-driven public solutions, our graduate programs are designed for action-oriented changemakers like you.
All of our graduate programs emphasize real-world experience, cross-sector impact, and a tight-knit network of expert faculty and global alumni.
MS in Data Science for Public Policy (DSPP):
Master technical and ethical data skills to inform smarter, more just policy in a fast-moving digital world.
Master of Public Administration (MPA):
Develop broad-based leadership for roles in government, nonprofits, international organizations, and the private sector with our Ivy League MPA.
Master of Health Administration (MHA):
Lead at the intersection of business and health care in one of the nation’s most respected health management programs.
MS in Environmental and Sustainability Policy (ESP):
Turn your passion for the planet into measurable policy change in just 12 months.
