Efficient High School Personal Statement Examples
The average high school dropout makes $18,734 a year. The average high school graduate makes $27,915. The average college graduate makes $51,206. Those are pretty good odds in favor of the benefits of graduating from college. But to get into a really great college, you need a personal statement that shows your uniqueness and who you really are. Here’s how you can write one with less stress.
Steps for Writing the Perfect Personal Statement
Writing a great personal statement isn’t as hard as it seems once you overcome the fear of a blank page. Here’s how to bust it.
- Start with making notes: Let yourself be informal! Scribble down anything, anything at all, and then build on it.
- Organize the notes: Now here’s where you create your outline. Structure your notes coherently and clean them up a little bit.
- Write: The hardest part, but not as hard as you fear when you’ve got something to build on. You can find some personal statement examples to help you out.
- Get some help: Ask a friend to read over it and tell you what needs to be fixed.
- Final proofread: Give it one final go-over before you turn it in.
Keep or Don’t Keep: Personal Statement Tips
What should stay in your personal statement, and what should go? Here’s a quick list.
These should go:
- Plagiarism – it’s never cool, and you’ll always get caught
- Clichés – you really don’t want to sound like anyone else, right?
- Lists – No, your complete economics reading list isn’t’ important to the committee, nor is the list of countries you visited
These stay:
- Explanations for any inconsistencies – if you got bad grades freshman year because your grandma died, say how much you learned from that (but don’t lie)
- Why you want to go where you want to go
- What skills you acquired in high school that you can now apply to show you’ll succeed in college
Personal Statement Buzzwords and Trends
You know the value of trends, so here’s our quick look at the latest crazes in personal statement. The watchword right now is simplicity. You want to talk only about the stuff that’s relevant to your application, and keep it relatively frills-free. No jokes or slang – they just get in your way. What you do want is the right buzzwords. Check out your major or college, and see what words they use a lot. Make sure you’re using action verbs, too! Saying you “founded” or “lead” the book club is way more interesting than “was in”.
High School Personal Statement Samples
If you’re the visual type, here’s a sample outline to help you out.
- Paragraph one: Talk about how you became interested in your school/area of study.
- Paragraph two: Talk about why you’re qualified to go to this school/study this thing, and why you’ll succeed.
- Paragraph three: Talk about your plans for the future and what you’ll do in five years.
- Paragraph four: Finish up with a few strong sentences about why you deserve to go to this school.
Get the Greatest Personal Statement
As a student, you have enough on your plate. You deserve help to make your personal statement shine so that it’s as brilliant as you are. We want to help you on your academic journey to success with a few simple tips and samples like personal statement examples for jobs or for college. If you’re still confused, though, allow us to assist you some more.