So you’ve sat down and brainstormed, and you’re now ready to hit the ground running with your essays. Great! You might be wondering how to best convey your reasons for pursuing graduate school to the admissions committees. What kind of tone or approach should you use? A good rule of thumb is to project three key qualities: confidence, professionalism, and positivity. But how? Let’s drill down on each of these and think through how best to approach them.
Confidence
Confidence is not the same thing as conceitedness or arrogance. You’ll need to practice self-awareness as you think through your abilities and how to communicate them effectively. What are some ways you admire how others express genuine confidence? If someone has to yell from the rooftops how wonderful they are, that should give you pause. Only world-class athletes can get away with saying, “I am the greatest!,” and even then, it’s only for a moment in time. Real confidence is projected through accomplishments and authenticity, not braggadocio.
Confidence lies in your ability to show what you did and how you contributed to your organization, team, or project. You can sound self-assured without diminishing your contributions. Write in clear, direct language that includes colorful and relevant details but avoids exaggeration or superlatives that could make you seem as though you are patting yourself on the back.
Avoid making vague and unsupported boasts, such as “I have strong communication skills.” Instead, show those skills in action: “As a research assistant, I met regularly with all five members of the research team and made formal presentations of my findings each week.” Whenever possible, quantify your achievements, and provide relevant, impressive specifics.
To sound confident in your writing, do not use words or qualifiers that weaken your message, such as “seems,” “appears,” and “maybe.” Use strong adjectives, such as “compelling,” “notable,” “dramatic,” and “inspiring,” but only if the situations or people deserve such descriptors. (If you’re talking about provisional research findings, provisional-sounding words are okay!)
Crossing the line from confidence to arrogance is an application killer, so make sure to root out any whiff of the latter in your essays. Because so many grad programs rely on teamwork, adcoms look for candidates who will be good colleagues. Include anecdotes that show that you are someone who works well with others. Even if you aren’t going into a team-oriented program, nobody wants a haughty or arrogant person as a classmate.
Avoid arrogance
When describing your achievements and contributions, don’t minimize the contributions of anyone else on your team or in your group or make their work sound less important than your own. Don’t exaggerate or inflate your contributions, and do not explicitly state (or even imply) that you are smarter or better than your colleagues. If you think this sounds obvious, we can assure you that we have seen plenty of essays in which applicants wrote some variation of “I left this job because I was so much more advanced than my colleagues there.” Even if it’s true (and it might not be as true as you think), don’t write that or anything close to it.
When writing about having left a position, express the decision in a positive way. It’s far smarter to write that you moved to a different position to gain new skills, increase your level of responsibility, and/or broaden your knowledge of the industry than to bad-mouth your former colleagues or companies. Don’t focus on what you left behind; focus on what you were working toward.
You’re not the only candidate qualified for a seat in the class and are unlikely to be the very best of the bunch, so don’t say things like “I am the only one who has done X.” Avoid any words that could connote arrogance, especially if you use them primarily in reference to yourself and your accomplishments. If you are truly “superior,” “exceptional,” “creative,” “industrious,” and so on, it will naturally come through in the way you describe your experiences, without your needing to hammer the point home.
This should go without saying, but never belittle other people, whether in life or in your grad school application! Don’t even hint that other people from your school or company were not as successful, ambitious, emotionally balanced, or prepared as you were. In other words, do not write something like this: “Coming to college was a revelation, because I had been surrounded by unmotivated and underperforming students all my life.” Instead, write this: “In college, I realized I was in my element, surrounded by other motivated students.” Remember, you never need to put others down to raise yourself up.
Confidence will allow you to convey genuine enthusiasm about the program that you know is the right place for you. Arrogance will tempt you to write as though the program should be lucky to have you.
Last but not least, there is no need to boast about test scores, grades, or other achievements that probably shouldn’t be in your essay because they are already conveyed clearly on your resume/CV and application form.
Let’s recap the main points in this section:
- Write about your achievements with clear details but without puffery or exaggeration.
- Avoid words that weaken your writing and make you sound uncertain.
- Find the source of your confidence: the reasons you’re applying to the program in the first place.
- Never belittle other people or the environments where you worked before.
Professionalism
Consider that you are writing for an educated, professional class of individuals: they could be admissions officers, professors, students, alumni, or a mix. While you do not need to sound stilted or overly formal, you’re also not writing an email or text message to a friend. Take a respectful tone, and remember that grammar, spelling, capitalization, and punctuation all count.
Burnish your professionalism by following all the adcom’s directions. This means answering the questions as they are asked, keeping your essays and short answers to the stipulated length, and not submitting additional materials that haven’t been requested. Schools tell you what they want, so follow their lead.
Show mature engagement with your field by describing your experiences, interests, and goals thoughtfully. For example, there is a difference in both content and tone between saying you want to study a particular language because it will give you the skills to work in international development in country X, and saying you want to study that language because you’ve always liked the way it sounds.
Professionalism also involves showing your positive, collaborative outlook. When you describe work you did with a team, write in a way that reflects that cooperation (“we”), show what you gained/learned from the collaboration, and discuss how it prepared you for graduate school. Acknowledge mentors, supervisors, teachers, and colleagues you have admired and from whom you have learned valuable lessons.
We also cannot stress this highly enough: your professional tone should extend to every interaction you have with the school, whether written or spoken. Each email, phone call, visit, interview – every engagement with every person you encounter who is affiliated with your target school must affirm their overall impression of you as a courteous, professional, positive candidate.
Let’s recap the main points in this section:
- Without being stuffy, write in a respectful tone to your audience of educated professionals.
- Write about fruitful collaborations by using “we,” and clearly explain what you have learned from your experiences.
- Maintain a high level of professionalism and courtesy in every interaction you have with the school, whether via email, over the phone, or in person.
Positivity
If you have followed our advice so far, your confidence and professionalism will shine through. Now let’s add the icing on the cake by making sure you are also conveying the image of a positive candidate, someone the program would love to accept!
Compelling and successful personal statements present a positive perspective on your experiences, even those with a lot of rough spots. For example, you might have left a job because of a very negative work environment. However, you should never trash-talk your former boss or company. Instead, explain that you felt it was time to move on and develop yourself personally or professionally. You can hint at difficulties, and the adcom will understand without your risking coming across as complaining about something (or someone).
In the earlier section of this article about writing with confidence, we cautioned against using mealymouthed words and phrases that weaken your prose, such as “seems,” “appears,” and “maybe.” But many other qualifying words often end up as useless padding, too, especially adverbs (those “-ly” words).
Deployed carefully, adverbs can be effective, but too often, they can drag a sentence down and create the opposite effect of what was intended. For example, compare “In the end, I found the experience genuinely enjoyable” with “I actually enjoyed it.” To say you “actually” enjoyed something makes it sound as though you hadn’t expected to. A more positive phrasing would simply be “I greatly enjoyed the experience.”
If you need to address a weakness in your profile, such as a low GPA or test score, employ the same direct language that you have used in all other areas of your application. A positive attitude won’t let you play the blame game or make excuses. Take responsibility, and tell the adcom how you have worked to strengthen whatever weaknesses you’ve had, and detail the steps you have taken to avoid similar outcomes in the future.
Finally, think and write in a positive tone about your reasons for attending graduate school, your goals, and what excites you about your program of choice. Adcoms are keen to see that applicants are genuinely interested in what their program offers as well as how a candidate will benefit from their program. Be sure to show genuine enthusiasm when communicating your “why” to the readers.
Let’s recap the main points in this section:
- Don’t trash-talk a former employer or write negatively, even about negative experiences. Focus on lessons learned and how you have moved forward.
- Avoid qualifying words that make you sound halfhearted or grudging.
- When writing about a profile weakness, explain what you’ve done to grow and improve. Show a consistent growth mind-set.
- Use a positive tone when explaining your reasons for attending graduate school and why you are excited to apply to and enroll at a given program.
Read aloud as a final check
When you’ve finished your drafts, read your essays aloud. Hearing the words is a different experience than reading them. As you listen to your words, ask yourself: Do I sound confident? Are my descriptions of my experiences clear, distinct, and compelling? Am I being self-referential, using “I” too much when discussing a team project? Do I give credit where credit is due and refrain from ever casting blame?
After you run this quality check for yourself, ask a trusted reader to also look at your personal statements. Ask them to pay special attention to your tone and mark any places that sound negative or uncollegial.
Keep this article handy, and use it as a checklist for when you’re drafting and polishing your statements. Follow our advice, and you will ramp up your chances of acceptance!
There’s nothing like personalized guidance when crafting your essays and statements of purpose. The expert advisors at Accepted can help ensure that you are projecting a voice of confidence, professionalism, and positivity in all your application essays. Schedule a free consultation with an Accepted admissions expert today.
Kara Keenan Sweeney has more than 15 years of experience in MBA admissions, having worked for some of the world’s top business school programs, including Columbia Business School, INSEAD, and The Lauder Institute’s joint degree MA/MBA program with The Wharton School and the MA/JD program with Penn Law at the University of Pennsylvania. Kara has guided, coached, and counseled thousands of MBA and EMBA applicants, reviewed innumerable applications, sat on admissions committees, and interviewed countless applicants, including while running Wharton’s Team Based Discussions both virtually and in person. Want Kara to help you get Accepted? Click here to get in touch!
Related Resources: