文书｜（4）个人陈述：show，don't tell！
In Your Personal Statement,
Show, Don’t Tell
Dan
Personal statements are all about you. That’s probably not surprising, but how you should approach writing about yourself might be. The key is to show more than you tell about who you are.
What do we mean by that? Let’s pick a character trait that you’d like to demonstrate with your personal statement. For this example, let’s use “perseverance”. So, the goal of your essay is really to tell your dream school that you are someone who never gives up, who doesn’t allow setbacks to knock you off course. That’s a great quality to have, but ask yourself how you became that way. What events or influences in your life made you that way?
That’s a deep question. And you may not even have the answer at first. Maybe you’ll have to speculate somewhat. Did you get it from your uncle who helped raise you and from whom you observed a steely resolve despite repeated setbacks, and who taught you how to succeed in spite of those setbacks? Or was it the stories of your grandmother, who overcame unspeakable hardship as a young mother to ensure her family’s survival?
Now, maybe you’re starting to see what I mean by showing and not telling me about your perseverance. “But Dan,” you may say, “this is not me, it’s my grandmother. This is a personal statement, is it not? Shouldn’t I be talking about my own life?” To that I would answer, “Yes.” And, as much as we’d like to sometimes believe, none of us are entirely self-made. We are products of our own conscience will, effort, and direction, yes, but also of our environment. The English poet John Donne wrote that “No man is an island”. It’s true, if you think about it. “Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.”
The personal statement is a double-edged sword for introducing yourself to universities. If you spend 650 words directly bragging about yourself and your accomplishments, you’ll come off as self-absorbed and short-sighted. On the other hand, if you tell us about yourself by putting your attention on the people and circumstances of your life—the environment in which you were and are constantly being created, you’ve not just told us that you persevere, but that you’re introspective, wise, and gracious, too. Not only that, you’ve also given us a good story to remember you by.
This is not to say your essay should be entirely about someone or something other than you. Include relevant information and anecdotes of yourself. But do so in an implicit, rather than an explicit way. Have confidence in your reader to be able to read between the lines and see the you that powerfully exists in your telling of the factors out of your control that tested, tumbled, and polished you into the you that exists today.
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文书｜（2）美本申请兵行险招：选择有争议的话题时要做到“犀利”而“不冒犯”
文书｜（3）“优秀”有限，“显眼”来垫，真正理解了Standing Out的含义，才能避免内卷，实现文书逆袭！
本期外教 Dan Jones
Course West 外教留学创始人、高级文书教练。2012年曾被美国政府遴选为富布莱特学者，赴马来西亚从事民间交流与微外交活动。热爱写作与思辨，深谙文理教育，常为多家美国媒体撰写时事政论。酷爱中国历史与饮食文化，常年往返于中美两国间，最善于从文化视角，挖掘出常被学生忽略的文书故事和角度。辅导出的文书总是华丽而不做作，风趣而不失稳重，文笔精湛却又能留住中国学生自己的味道。Dan指导的多名学生都曾获得美国、欧洲、加拿大等国家和地区的全奖或高额奖学金资助。
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