Creating a Personal Statement

Some examples of how this question is worded:

Please provide a personal statement describing your special interests and professional goals. Include a rank-ordered list of the three faculty members with whom you most want to work.
This should be approximately 500 words and address your rationale for attempting advanced study. Be sure to include previous research experience and how you became interested in pursuing advanced training and how you feel the program will guide you in that pursuit.

A written statement reflecting a commitment to psychology and plans after completion of studies.
Describe your interest areas in clinical psychology and your career plans. Describe your strengths and weaknesses for graduate study, and your need for financial support.

Keep in mind:

Spelling and grammar count! This is the first experience that faculty have with you as a human being, and not as a list of courses/grades, so make it count! Be careful with humor and long quotations from Freud, Jung, and the like (and I really wouldn’t quote Dr. Phil either…).

Be careful what you reveal in your personal statement. Your statement can help your application and it can harm your application. I would be personal, but not overly personal. Remember that sites cannot ask you about personal information—such as marital status and parental status—unless you reveal that information first. I would recommend having your advisor read through early drafts of this statement to help you craft the final product.

Writing skills matter quite a bit in the applications for both experimental and clinical programs. Spelling, grammar, word usage, style of writing—all of these will be judged in addition to the information you actually write down in the statement. Put forth a good first impression! You do not want to be viewed as careless for submitting an application with multiple typos, run-on sentences, and the like.

DO NOT DO THE FOLLOWING: If applying to a clinical/counseling program, do not state that you are applying to the program in order to help people. That is such an overused theme that application reviewers might stop reading your essay there! Instead, talk about who in particular you want to work with and why. What drew you to clinical work? What drew you to working with a particular population? What do you want to do with your career—how do you want to affect other people?

Please see this article regarding “kisses of death” in the application process.

 

Faculty Lists

You may be asked to include a rank-list of the faculty you would like to work with. If accepted, this is the list that the program will use to determine who you will work with, so make sure this list is accurate.

You may want to contact faculty you are interested in working with to see 1) if they are accepting students for the upcoming year, and 2) to inquire about upcoming research projects to assess your level of interest in working with that faculty member.

Again, remember that the information in this email can become part of your application so check for spelling errors before sending! Be formal—address the email to “Dr. XXXXX,” do not use abbreviations/text-speak, and sign the email with “Sincerely, Your full name and university.”

You may need to discuss how your research/clinical interests match with those of the faculty you list, so be thorough in writing about how you feel you match with the faculty member. Don’t be a stalker!