Alert: I an not an essay expert, I am struggling with essays for grad school as you read. However, I am going to note some common, probably naive problems here that you may learn. Something may be helpful to you, and something may be wrong(just that I am not aware of). You should read it and think it through before you took my advice. Refer to more qualified if necessary.
I was honored to be the only representative in ShanghaiTech to join CSST18@UCLA. After I came back, I decided to do something to help my students to apply. So I volunteered to help review some applicants Personal Statement(PS) and provide some comments. However, out of my expectation, I found many common mistakes that people share. These mistakes including grammar mistakes, lacking a leading sentence, and poor architecture, etc. Thus I am writing this to point them out and hope I can provide some insights so that you don’t make these mistakes again.
Grammar
I was surprised to find that many of your work suffer from grammar problems. First of all, on average Grammarly would report 10-20 critical issues. (typos, tense, missing/wrong article, comma, etc.) I wouldn’t list them since I never took a close look at them. In my comments, I merely said that you should go through Grammarly.com every time you have work done. One notable typo many of you make is “Ph.D.”, not “PhD”, “Ph.D” or anything else. Another one problem worth mentioning would be the comma. There should be a comma in a listing before “and” and after each comma, there should be a space, no more, no less.
"Ph.D.",
"A, B, and C".
Paragraph
Every paragraph should have a leading sentence and that sentence should be everything. This is what everyone would expect to learn from TOEFL or GRE writing, and this rule stands even if you are writing PS. Any paragraph that has no leading would be confusing. I have seen paragraphs putting their main topic in the 3rd sentence, or there is no topic sentence at all. For example, someone started his PS with:
"After these years’ study of Computer Science,
I realize one thing:
it is a revolution which reforms our society in all dimensions,
something really thrilling and worth fighting for."
This sentence rarely gave any information about the applicant, nor what he is about to say in the first paragraph. I would discourage anyone from doing so. Keep that in mind: your PS should be plain and simple, anything more complicated than that would encourage people to skip your essay. Also, once you have settled your leading sentence, every word in that paragraph should serve the sole purpose of supporting that sentence. DO NOT SWITCH TOPICS IN A PARAGRAPH.
Formality
Formality is another pain. I saw words that are only used orally.
"I was 'totally' lost",
"... diversity can 'really' strengthen the learning environment",
"I 'just' prefer ...".
These words may sound right, but they are never acceptable if you write it down. PS don’t have to be as formal as papers, but it shouldn’t look like your 2-minute self-introductions transcript either.
One thing you have to keep in mind is your chain of logic. There are two aspects here. First one is your architecture. Paragraphs should be coherent, connected to support one idea/answer one question: “Why you should get admitted?”. Following this logic, you can write:
"Who I am",
"Why I am interested",
"Why I am suitable",
"My future plan"......
Many people have their paragraphs shattered around, and I can hardly tell what your PS is trying to convey. The second point of view is the logic in your paragraph. Your conclusion should be supported by your previous sentences. For example:
"Being a researcher is my future career plan.
Therefore, I strongly interested in PhD program of UCLA,
especially the computer science."
The previous sentence(My career plan) can provide little support to the later(I am interested in CSST@UCLA)
Details
Use of vague, big words; please be more specific, use details. First of all, obscure words. “I felt it my responsibility to use my knowledge to make some beneficial changes to feedback the society” never sounds right. Big, vague words like “responsibility”, “goals”, “achievements”, “plans” should never come out along. Wanting to be a professor is fine, but why? Feedback society, how? They need to be explained, in details. Secondly, terminologies. If you mention your lab, tell people your project, your contributions, your thoughts instead of “I joined X lab working on Y.” Be specific become even more critical when you are speaking terminology, think of your audience before you put any arcane words. One trick you can use is to ask questions about every word you use. If you mention DFS, then ask:
"What is Depth First Search(DFS)",
"Under what circumstance I find it useful?",
"How I learned it?",
"In which project did I use it?",
"Was the result of that project good enough?",
"What lessons did I learn from DFS?".
Every time you brought up a terminology, you have tons of questions after that, so don’t stop at the names, explain, in details. Finally, be careful with abbreviations, they tend to have multiple meanings that are not straightforward. One feasible way is to write the full name at the first time, use parenthesis to note that abbr. and use that abbr. later. For example:
"I learned a lot of algorithms like Dynamic Programming(DP).
I find DP useful when working on xxx problems."
However, this is no a good demo as “useful” is vague again, useful how? Where did you use it? I used “useful” because I don’t want to bother myself. :)
Self-destruction
Do not speak little of yourself and use any word but “good” to brag. In the U.S., “good/great” is ok, “ok/fair” means you failed. Use words like excellent, brilliant, perfect, extraordinary, etc. to demonstrate your ability instead of “good”. Besides, some of you are trying to be modest by saying:
"Although those results were not world-class ...",
"I could rarely say that I was as good as other students...".
But that’s unnecessary. First, we all know that no one is perfect, so don’t bother saying that again. Second, you want to tell people how extraordinary you are to suit in the program, not the other way around. By doing so, you might be showing that you are less qualified than others. If you do want to acknowledge your downsides to be more comprehensive, which I would argue against, make sure you mention what you want to do in the future to correct it. E.g:
"I started the project a week ago.
I haven't had a comprehensive understanding of all the details.
But I would read more papers and ask around to catch up in the next week."
General PS
Someone’s PS become General Statement that suits for everybody. General is hard to explain. One of your PS is so general that I can hardly tell who wrote. He described his high school life, putting ephemeris on how he passed College Entrance Examination(CEE). That PS can, I assume, fit into most students who survived CEE. You want to stand out by writing something that is unique to you, experiences, interests, methodologies, etc.
Publications
Someone mentioned his publications If you have any publications, do mention its title, conference name, publication date, who you worked with. But there is no need to emphasize that you are the “1st author”, there is no such saying. The word “第一作者” is only used in Chinese semantics. If you do want to mention your contribution, explain that project in details.
I believe those are the most notable problems that I want to mention. If you have any more comments or problems that you want to share, feel free to send an Issue or Pull Request to me on my Github page. This page is located in life-post-dev, content/post/essay-summary.md. I WILL reply and merge the ones I missed.
Reference
Applying for the PhD
PhD/MS applications writing SOP/research statements…
A Five-Minute Guide to Ph.D. Program Applications
HOWTO: Get into grad school for science, engineering…
The Benefits of Working on Research As An Undergraduate Student