Rant on Personal Statements

Ok, so here is something I doubt many people say: I hate personal statements, I think that they should take a back seat to numbers (even though I do not currently know mine) and I honestly believe they should be eliminated and replaced with either 1. a formal writing sample or 2. a broader scope of what constitutes an acceptable addendum.

This isn't just blind complaining because my personal statement isn't any good (though I am not looking forward to writing one) it is something I have thought about and honestly believe.

First, personal statements do NOT show how well you write. They show how good you are at having people edit and how well you can assume a narrative voice (which is used exactly never in business or legal writing) and how well you can fit an interesting story into a limited amount of space. If a school claims they want to see how well you write, they should give you a stock topic and stock sources and ask you to construct an essay from them. To make this easier on the student, schools should agree to use the same topic and sources for a given year. Of course this will never happen, but then, schools don't REALLY use the personal statement to see how well you write.

Next, it could be that they want additional information to consider with your application. This could be true, but in that case why not ask for addendums for a variety of reasons instead of an open Personal Statement in addition to a more limited amount of addendums. Instead, they ask students to pretend that vacations and small experiences shaped their life. In addition, a diversity statement that is optional would cover a lot of what they seek to gain from the personal statement.

Lastly, as any good debater knows, there is no problem without harms in the current system. First, the current system forces students to make two page productions out of things that really are not that important to them. Next, the current system essentially says "we are going to make a judgement about your application, if you are average, by how well you pretend to have some worthwhile story, or how important we preceive your random experience to be.

Thats my rant on personal statements.