Updated: April 19, 2023
After making up all your ideas and expectations on applying to the educational institution, you may face the real tasks that you must do. Thus, you will come up with the question of how to start a personal statement. It is a little necessary step that you must do on the way to achieving a global goal of getting the admission offer.
Writing the whole essay is kind of a tough thing, but you have to start writing it to understand that the process is on and it doesn’t seem to be as frightening as you thought before.
Table of Contents:
How to begin a personal statement: process preparation
The beginning is always the most difficult and important part of doing something. However, to get the result, you should start the process. The same regards to your personal statement. Think over your life experiences, important points that you want to mention, recollect your best achievements in studying and everyday routine. It all matters if you want to get an excellent essay. You can write down a list of the things you want to tell the admissions committee. When everything is in front of your eyes, it will be easier to understand what exactly must be included in your essay. Preparing to write in advance would also simplify everything. Having some tips and examples in your mind can help you to cope with the task. You can read articles and blogs about personal statement, ask your admitted peers about their experiences of writing such an essay. Take into consideration that the writing process is long-lasting and get ready to spend time on doing it well.
Begin the writing with the thought that you will certainly deal with all the given tasks and, finally, you will get an excellent result. Don’t be afraid to try several times until you are pleased with the text.
It is better to write the beginning of your essay last as you will have the whole picture of your essay right in front of you. Therefore it will be simpler for you to understand what exactly you want to include in your essay. If you are not sure about a piece of information that you want to include, ask someone who knows you well to tell you whether that point of your life is worth including in your personal statement opening or not.
Personal statement introduction
The introduction is the most important paragraph of your personal statement as it formulates the first impression of the whole writing. That’s why it is essential to concentrate on it and write it in the right way. You shouldn’t write general statements or information that might be the same for every applicant. Be special. Be unique. Focus on catchy data. Your task is to commit the most impressive part of your life into the words. Evaluate the significance of your application, catch the attention of the reader, explain why you are writing the essay, what is your purpose of the application.
It is good to start writing with an impressive background fact: describe the situation that had an impact on your decision of applying to the educational institution or tell the impressive story from your life that considered your opinion about future specialization. It is up to you how to begin a personal statement, but memorize that this information must be uncommon and regarding exactly you.
Make a try to write everything in the evaluating, not describing tone. Provide the reader with the consequence of the depicted information.
Starting a personal statement: tips on doing it
When you have collected all the thoughts on writing your essay together, you may come up with the question of how to start off a personal statement. Here are several tips for you to deal with the given task.
- Start with the attention-grabbing fact
As mentioned above, tell the story that will differentiate you among other applicants, put the value out of it: what it brought into your life, how it influenced you. Try to catch the reader’s attention to it. - Leave doubts – just start
Even if you can’t remember something unusual, you should start writing. Recollect everything that somehow made an impact on you. It can be a talk while having family dinner, a film you watched and understood that the main character is your ideal prototype. - Write like you
Don’t try to pretend you are someone else, just naturally write the essay as you want to tell it to your closest person. It will transform into the essay paragraph further. At the beginning, the manner you write doesn’t matter. - Be sincere
It is not good to act as an ideal one, tell about the failures that happened to you. In no case, you mustn’t use someone’s background or life experience, projecting it on your life. You know, the admission committee can check everything. - Ask for help, if you feel like that
There is nothing bad about asking for help. You can refer to your parents or friends to hear their impressions of your essay. They can also help you to remember something valuable that you can use. Moreover, you can appeal for help from a personal statement editor to find out specific features about your essay. - Try not to preach to the reader with your experience
Even though you managed to do something out of the ordinary, don’t evaluate your actions like something mind-blowing. It may only spoil the impression of you as a person. Try only to provide the information and don’t view it from the wrong perspective. - Don’t use cliche introductions
For every admission tutor, it seems to be the same from essay to essay. Try to stand out from the crowd and introduce yourself as an uncommon personality. That will work in your favor.
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Personal statement introduction example
Personal statement introduction is a strong statement that formulates the whole mood of the writing. Don’t neglect using successful examples just to see how it works. Below you can find an example which demonstrates student’s motivation and interest in studying certain program at the university.
I’m interested in studying the Linguistics program because I’m sure that this is exactly that one thing that certainly will make my life fully completed.
My curiosity in this program is an explainable thing. Since childhood, I’ve been interested in people’s communication. Moreover, I even remember the moment when I pronounced the first word out of my mouth and the happiness of the people around. Whenever someone was speaking, I was just wondering how it works. Why do we hear some sounds and understand them as a piece of particular information? How does it produce the point of social connection? Languages are a kind of bridge that can connect people from all over the world. For me, studying branches of linguistics is a tool to help people from different corners of the world to find the key to understanding each other.
In this personal statement introduction example, you can find the applicant’s background, a catchy and interesting fact about spelling the first word out, and the connection to future specialization.
Starting a personal statement is a challenging step in every applicant’s life, but having enough patience and motivation can help you to deal with all the difficulties that may come up while writing. Don’t be afraid to use help, start beforehand and everything will be fine. Remember that the number of admitted students who coped with everything reached their goal and acquired success is huge and you can easily become one of them.
More information on how to start personal statement and other significant tips about admission essays you can find in the EssayEdge blog.
FAQ
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Information prepared by EssayEdge editor
Robin Wilson
10+ years of experience
Our editors on College, Graduate, Medical, MBA, and Law admission documents help you with brainstorming, proofreading, and editing to make your writing concise, persuasive, and original.
