{"id":692,"date":"2010-12-09T01:05:01","date_gmt":"2010-12-09T08:05:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.talyarkoni.org\/blog\/?p=692"},"modified":"2011-07-25T22:34:32","modified_gmt":"2011-07-26T04:34:32","slug":"repost-narrative-tips-from-a-grad-school-applicant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/talyarkoni.org\/blog\/2010\/12\/09\/repost-narrative-tips-from-a-grad-school-applicant\/","title":{"rendered":"repost: narrative tips from a grad school applicant"},"content":{"rendered":"

Since it’s grad school application season for undergraduates, I thought I’d repost some narrative tips about how to go about writing a personal statement for graduate programs in psychology. This is an old, old post from a long-deceased blog; it’s from way back in 2002 when I was applying to grad school. It’s kind of a serious piece; if I were to rewrite it today, the tone would be substantially lighter. I can’t guarantee that following these tips will get you into grad school, but I can promise that you’ll be amazed at the results.<\/em><\/p>\n

The first draft of my personal statement was an effortful attempt to succinctly sum up my motivation for attending graduate school. I wanted to make my rationale for applying absolutely clear, so I slaved over the statement for three or four days, stopping only for the occasional bite of food and hour or two of sleep every night. I was pretty pleased with the result. For a first draft, I thought it showed great promise. Here’s how it started:<\/p>\n

I want to go to,o grajit skool cuz my frend steve is in grajit and he says its ez and im good at ez stuff<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

When I showed this to my advisor he said, \u201cI don’t know if humor is the way to go for this thing.\u201c\u009d<\/p>\n

I said, \u201cWhat do you mean, humor?\u201c\u009d<\/p>\n

After that I took a three month break from writing my personal statement while I completed a grade 12 English equivalency exam and read a few of the classics to build up my vocabulary. My advisor said that even clever people like me needed help sometimes. I read Ulysses<\/em>, The Odyssey<\/em>, and a few other Greek sounding books, and a book called The Cat in the Hat<\/em> which was by the same author as the others, but published posthumously. Satisfied that I was able to write a letter that would impress every graduate admissions committee in the world, I set about writing a second version of my personal statement. Here’s how that went:<\/p>\n

Dear Dirty Admissions Committee,
\nSolemn I came forward and mounted the round gunrest. I faced about and blessed gravely thrice the Ivory Tower, the surrounding country, and all the Profs. Then catching sight of the fMRI machine, I bent towards it and made rapid crosses in the air, gurgling in my throat and shaking my head. <\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cToo literary,\u201c\u009d said my advisor when I showed him.<\/p>\n

\u201cMud,\u201c\u009d I said, and went back to the drawing board.<\/p>\n

The third effort was much better. I had weaned myself off the classics and resolved to write a personal statement that fully expressed what a unique human being I was and why I would be an asset to the program. I talked about how I could juggle three bean bags and almost four, I was working on four, and how I’d stopped biting my fingernails last year so I had lots of free time to do psychology now. To show that I was good at following through on things that I started, I said,<\/p>\n

p.s. when I can juggle four bean bags ( any day now) I will write you to let you know so you can update your file.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Satisfied that I had written the final copy of my statement, I showed it to my advisor. He was wild-eyed about it.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou just don’t get it, do you,\u201c\u009d he said, ripping my statement in two and throwing it into the wastepaper basket. \u201cTell you what. Why don’t I<\/em> write a statement for you. And then you can go through it and make small changes to personalize it. Ok?\u201c\u009d<\/p>\n

\u201cSure,\u201c\u009d I said. So the next day my advisor gave me a two-page personal statement he had written for me. Now I won’t bore you with all of the details, but I have to say, it was pretty bad. Here’s how it started:<\/p>\n

After studying psychology for nearly four years at the undergraduate level, I have decided to pursue a Ph.D. in the field. I have developed a keen interest in [list your areas of interest here] and believe [university name here] will offer me outstanding opportunities.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cNow go make minor changes,\u201c\u009d said my advisor.<\/p>\n

\u201cMud,\u201c\u009d I said, and went to make minor changes.<\/p>\n

I came back with the final version a week later. It was truly a masterpiece; co-operating with my advisor had really helped. At first I had been skeptical because what he wrote was so bad the way he gave it to me, but with a judicious sprinkling of helpful clarifications, it turned into something really good. It was sort of like an ugly cocoon (his draft) bursting into a beautiful rainbow (my version). It went like this:<\/p>\n

After studying psychology (and juggling!) for nearly four years at the undergraduate level (of university), I have decided to pursue a Ph.D. in the field. Cause I need it to become a Prof. I have developed a keen interest in [list your areas of interest here Vision, Language, Memory, Brain] and believe [university name hereStanford Princeton Mishigan] will offer me outstanding opportunities in psychology and for the juggling society.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cBrilliant,\u201c\u009d said my advisor when I showed it to him. \u201cYou’ve truly outdone yourself.\u201c\u009d<\/p>\n

\u201cMud,\u201c\u009d I said, and went to print six more copies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since it’s grad school application season for undergraduates, I thought I’d repost some narrative tips about how to go about writing a personal statement for graduate programs in psychology. This is an old, old post from a long-deceased blog; it’s from way back in 2002 when I was applying to grad school. It’s kind of … Continue reading repost: narrative tips from a grad school applicant<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[80,3],"tags":[439,704,440,437,436,438],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pEZxN-ba","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/talyarkoni.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/talyarkoni.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/talyarkoni.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/talyarkoni.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/talyarkoni.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=692"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/talyarkoni.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":800,"href":"https:\/\/talyarkoni.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692\/revisions\/800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/talyarkoni.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/talyarkoni.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/talyarkoni.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}