Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
Personal background
List personal reasons for your interest in the area, for example, difficulties overcome, great extracurricular
achievements, etc.
Have your parents or unusual life situations influenced your aspirations?
Professional objectives
Why do you want to be a physicist/mathematician/historian/...?
When did you know you wanted to be a physicist/mathematician/historian/...? What life experiences
contributed to this?
What do your plan to do with your degree in physics/math/history/...? (Discuss your future educational and
professional goals)
What area of physics/math/history/... do you want to get into?
Why do you want to attend X University? (You can discuss academic environment, geographic location, etc.)
Why will you make a good candidate for X University? (You might want to discuss your past triumphs, your
commitment to academics)
Educational background
(summarize what you did as an undergraduate and in rare cases as a high school student)
List important classes you took or specific projects for a class which enhanced your interest in the field and
stimulated your desire for graduate study.
List specific skills you have acquired and projects you have worked on, stress the ones which might be useful
in your graduate work.
Outstanding achievements
Have you been a winner of regional, state, international, undergraduate Olympiads?
Have you received any special fellowships such as Soros, Eximer, etc.?
Have you got any special awards or nominations?
Start your essay with an attention-grabbing lead -- an anecdote, quote, question, or engaging description of a
scene. End your essay with a conclusion that refers back to the lead and restates your thesis.
Put the most important sentences at the beginning and end of the paragraph. When people skim passages,
they look at the first and then the last sentence. Make a good first and last impression with substantive
statements. Don't begin or end on fluff.
Put the most important paragraph first. Don't "save the best for last"; you don't know how long the attention
span of your reader will be.
Have an outline. There should be a reason that paragraph 1 comes first and paragraph 2 follows. Have a
clear outline of the main points and how those main points fit together. Use that outline to check whether the
most important point is first, whether all points are equally important, and which points you might sacrifice in
the interests of space.
Use transitions between paragraphs. Have meaningful transitions based on your organization, e.g., time-
based, academic then applied work, etc. Don't rely on phrases such as "In addition" to carry the reader to the
next paragraph, but do use this and other words (like later, furthermore, additionally, or moreover) for
transitions within the paragraphs.
Put your draft from Step 4 away for a day or two, then reread it, make changes, proofread. Now it's time to
send or give your statement to all your friends whose knowledge of English is adequate, once again do (!!!)
send your statement to your friends, acquaintances or just anybody you know in US, the more people read
your statement the more comments and ideas you will receive from them, so don't be shy - act! After you
receive all the feedback accumulate it, use what you feel is suitable and write your final version of the
statement. Proofread it, give it to friends again, continue in this manner until it seems good enough or the
deadline has approached. The time and energy that you put into this activity should result in a personal
statement that can be used, with minor modifications, for each university and/or scholarship to which you
apply.
Please explore the links on the left. I hope you will find the information I presented there useful. I am always
happy to receive your comments, suggestions or questions.