<p>After the post-doctoral period, there are no more personal statements. As collegealum314 mentions, the “personal” statements are not really personal in the sense that a college admissions essay is personal. They are pretty much all about the scientific qualifications of the applicant, and the proposed research. (This might vary a bit from field to field, but this is true of all of the recent applications I have supported with recommendations.)</p>
<p>My advice on the essay? Don’t try to game it too much. You can absolutely write about the thing about which you are most passionate, even if the interest is nerdy, eccentric, or banal. The trick is to do it in a way that a) says something positive about yourself and b) takes into account a general audience. That isn’t some unreasonable expectation created by a corrupt admissions process; it is a pretty standard communication skill that will serve you well in many, many situations. Heck, just today I got comments from my advisor on a draft of a cover letter for a job, and her main criticism was that it was too narrowly pitched to the three specialists in my sub-field rather than something that would be accessible to members of a search committee that didn’t happen to have extensive experience with my topic. And she was 100 % right.</p>
<p>My own main college essay was on my love of a particular author, certainly a hard-core academic topic that would probably make QM nervous. The reason it worked is because it was, at its heart, a deeply personal essay about how my passion for these novels both reflected and shaped the kind of person I was. So while I couldn’t “write about the thing that mattered most” in the sense of doing a detailed literary analysis of a text, neither did I have to run away from or at all mask who I was. </p>
<p>There are plenty of ways for an applicant to show off exactly how good they are in a particular area, including sending a supplement with samples of their work. That isn’t the job of the essay; it isn’t a grant proposal, and I don’t see why it should be. </p>
<p>QuantMech, 1298: I didn’t ask about writing grant proposals and the comparison with writing college admissions essays. Nor did I say they are the same. </p>
<p>But alh was confused, too; a couple of us just clarified this for her, a few hours ago.</p>
<p>I had said, “Personally, that sort of challenge, editing, the more precise thinking, can be just as intriguing as the far flung thoughts and the rationales for them. I’m sure grown up QM does it for proposals, we’ve all done it, one way or another…” How that morphs into thinking I said they are the same is baffling.</p>
<p>Btw, I’d guess many of us here have written serious proposals. </p>
<p>@pizzagirl, you seem to have an issue with my posts. I may appear to be quite defensive, but that is because many of the things you say in your reponses strike a nerve.
I still carry a lot of baggage from my past experiences, but I do think I my opinions have validity and can add to the conversation. Maybe a lot (or most) of it is wishful thinking; I guess that happens when you are young. A lot of the opinions I have formed about people I have met might have to do with my own insecurities. Maybe I have become overly paranoid, but I often felt disrespected in high school and undergrad. People did and said things that made me feel small and like I was not good enough. Even after you have proved yourself worthy, it is a hard thing to let go of.</p>
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<p>It’s quoted so often that it may seem trite, but it really, really, REALLY is true most of the time:</p>
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<p>Feeling “often disrespected” is a red flag, imo. I have always been a quiet, reserved type. I was a good student, not in the “popular” crowd, but active in band and had a small set of close friends. I can’t recall ever letting someone else make me feel “small” and “not good enough” ever. That is a choice you make-you can’t control what people do or say, but you have total control over your own reactions and how you let the actions of others influence your thinking. Anything that has ever happened that I didn’t “let go of” was because I didn’t let it go, not because it was anything actually worth hanging on to. </p>
<p>Life is too short to waste one’s precious energy on things that happened a long time ago. JMHO.</p>
<p>For the record, in #1288 lookingforward wrote with regard to writing proposals and writing college essays:</p>
<p>"Thx, PG. I certainly don’t see them as the same. But the process of determining your goal/what you want to communicate, collecting thoughts, then editing/polishing is similar.
Included was, ‘Forming one’s thoughts with the goal of clearly communicating something to someone we want something from.’ "</p>
<p>I believe this followed the comments mentioned in #1302. I did not think that lookingforward had said that grant writing and college essays were the same. </p>
<p>However, I don’t think there is any similarity in the process of determining your goal/what you want to communicate, collecting thoughts, then editing/polishing," either. For proposals, one has determined specific research goals, and has been working on them for a long time, before one starts writing. “Collecting thoughts” is unnecessary–the thoughts are already there. Editing and polishing are similar to some extent, although proposals will normally have many pages in the list of references (journal articles and books), while college essays typically have none.</p>
<p>Didn’t Hemingway remark once about the “white bull” that is a blank sheet of paper? I haven’t been able to track the reference down, so perhaps it is apocryphal. But I think that writing a college essay is very like facing the “white bull” because the number of possibilities of topic is huge–unlike proposal writing. The audience is unknown–unlike proposal writing. </p>
<p>This is not to say that writing proposals is easier in general than writing a college essay, but in certain ways, for some people, it really is.</p>
<p>The activity that for me, now, would be most similar to writing a college essay would be writing a short story to submit to the New Yorker. It’s pretty clear that I would be getting back an unsigned letter saying, “Sorry, this does not suit our needs at this time.” Pretty much the equivalent of the response to QMC’s essays.</p>
<p>Did I say “letter” from the New Yorker in #1305? I meant “slip of paper.”</p>
<p>You are on an excellent track, Poeme, and one that is very challenging. I have been rooting for you for months at least on CC, maybe years (at my age, one loses track of the time so easily 
) At any rate, I wish you all the best (as off-topic as these remarks are, sorry).</p>
<p>I have just received a pre-emptive rejection slip from the New Yorker: “Don’t even think about it.”</p>
<p>Yeah, but the expectation for a college essay is a lot lower the than the expectation for a New Yorker submission.</p>
<p>A great college essay can help, and a really lackluster one can hurt, but most admissions decisions are not, from everything I’ve heard, coming down to how much someone liked your essay. So the bar you have clear isn’t “is this one of the best quality pieces of writing out of many submissions” it is "Is this a reasonably well written essay that gives me some sense of who this student is, apart from a laundry list of accomplishments?"You don’t have to be the most interesting person, in the sense of uncommon experiences or eccentric hobbies. You just have to show something about yourself. The take-away from a good essay can be “this is a fascinating human being with really unique life experiences and perspectives,” or it could be “this is a really reflective, sensitive person whose essay demonstrates maturity, compassion, and self-awareness.”</p>
<p>But again, even if your essay isn’t a total winner, that isn’t necessarily a deal-breaker. The essay is just one opportunity you have to distinguish yourself from other applicants. If the college wants you for another reason – including really off the charts academic performance – I imagine the essay would have to be pretty bad to actually keep you out. I bet there are plenty of students at Harvard and MIT who wrote fairly bland essays about volunteering in Haiti or the joy of solving a difficult math problem. </p>
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<p>@QuantMech </p>
<p>Are grant proposals in your field reviewed and approved/denied by a committee made up of academic peers from your field/related fields or by non-peers without the educational/professional backgrounds in those fields?</p>
<p>If it is the former, has it been your experience that academic peers and academia to varying extents, on average, tends to be much more tolerant of personality quirks, weaker social skills, and eccentricities compared with other professional venues so long as a given grad student/academic has the intellectual potential/goods and the academic awards/scholarships and/or a reasonably large and excellent publication record behind him/her? </p>
<p>Consideringly, would you say that likeability is more broad in your field/academia than in other professional venues?</p>
<p>Just wondering as I’ve noticed while taking grad classes, friends in grad school, and some academic conferences that they seem much more tolerant in those areas than non-academic workplaces. The only venues where there was MORE tolerance for such factors are creative/performing art venues/groups. </p>
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<p>Not everyone has the same capacity to exercise detachment from the peanut galleries in their lives and to expect everyone to have the same high capacity to do so as a given is IMO, unreasonable. </p>
<p>It’s the same comment I made in the ice bucket challenge thread in support of another poster who felt pressured after she received some pretty unsympathetic comments from certain posters. </p>
<p>And I’m the type who has no issues ignoring the peanut galleries in my life…but understands that not everyone has that capacity and they should be extended sympathetic support…not perfunctory comments to effectively “get over it”. </p>
<p>Writing a grant proposal is more akin to submitting a research paper for a peer reviewed journal. It is not about "likeability"or “personality quirks”. Is about writing a clearly written, understandable article with solid research and data to support the proposal (and findings, in the case of the article for publication).</p>
<p>QM’s analogy to college apps and submissions to the New Yorker is tongue in cheek, and dry wit, which seems to be missed by some.</p>
<p>As an aside, there was a segment on 60 minutes this past weekend about submitting cartoons to the New Yorker. Very interesting and amusing <a href=“So you want to see your cartoon In The New Yorker? - CBS News”>http://www.cbsnews.com/news/so-you-want-to-see-your-cartoon-in-the-new-yorker-2/</a></p>
<p>Forgot to mention- as another aside, articles written in newspapers and magazines are typically written on the 6-8th grade reading level. Wonder at what level college essays are to be written.</p>
<p>jym: great question.</p>
<p>It seems to me the New Yorker is generally written at a higher level than the typical 6-8 grade level of most newsstand print publications. I am very interested in the answer to the question of what the optimal level should be for college admissions essays.</p>
<p>adding:
Assuming QMC is an excellent writer for a 17 year old, can she write a successful college admissions essay in the style she later uses on a message board, a style aimed at a diverse, non-specialized audience? Or does she have to make it simpler to be acceptable? Will writing at a New Yorker level be seen as too pretentious for a 17 year old?</p>
<p>I agree with apprecticeprof. In this household, we encouraged the vanilla essay.</p>
<p>What you’d get back from the New Yorker is likely, “Sorry, we don’t take unsolicited submissions.”</p>
<p>Apprencticeprof, good insights. I’d say, for now, “reasonably well written essay that gives me some sense of who this student is,” how he or she will be on campus, etc. </p>
<p>QMC, if she writes “all over the map,” may be showing “all over the map” thinking. Does she want to? Is it what will help adcoms see her focus and drives, personal attributes- and, very important, her judgment skills in submitting such a piece?</p>
<p>According to google: New Yorker, NY Times, and USA today all are written at 10th grade level. Color me skeptical. </p>
<p>^Maybe the average 10th grader is reading at 8th grade level, though. Who knows what they actually mean by 10 grade level.</p>
<p>QMC, if she writes “all over the map,” may be showing “all over the map” thinking. Does she want to? Is it what will help adcoms see her focus and drives, personal attributes- and, very important, her judgment skills in submitting such a piece?</p>
<p>Interesting. Her posts read to me exactly the opposite of “all over the map” and usually I’m pretty impressed how every word seems very carefully considered and how concise the message is… different strokes and so on… </p>
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<p>And if you take a look at the comment sections that follow the articles, you might think that the newspapers overshoot that level by a fair margin! </p>
<p>Taking a dive into the cesspool of commentaries on AOL or HuffPo takes most illusions about our education systems away. They make the comments on sports’ boards look like Proust! </p>
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<p>Did you really think you have to write that to convince us from your visible detachment from the peanut galleries that actually live in a real world? </p>
<p>I am afraid that, despite your considerable intellect, you might miss a few tenets in the area of communications. At times, I think there is an online version of the Big Bang Theory. </p>
<p>Thanks, alh #1316. I do my best.</p>