Tips for Writing Graduate School Essays
• Write like a scholar. Graduate
programs are looking for real thinkers—
people who get very excited about
sometimes extremely esoteric little things.
Write about what interests you and don’t
be afraid to be sophisticated, detailed, and
enthusiastic about it.
• Don’t take “personal” too personally.
Don’t be fooled by request for a “Personal
Essay.” Grad school is serious business.
Don’t think of the essay as about you “as a
person.” Think of it as your history as an
intellectual. This is not your biography; it
is the story of your career as a scholar in
your field. Choose for your personal essay
those events which lead (apparently
naturally) to your choice of graduate school
and research plan.
• What do they get out of it?
Remember, no matter how important this
step is for you, for the people reading this
essay, it’s really not about you. They are
about to drop a bunch of time, effort, and
(hopefully) money on you, so they need to
be convinced that you’re a good investment.
The main thing you want to do with this
essay is get them to picture you not only in
their graduate program, but out in the
world afterwards contributing to their
reputation as an institution.
• Write a research proposal. This is the
best way to demonstrate your potential as
a real scholar/researcher beyond the
graduate level. Come up with
the project you are burning to do during
your time in graduate school. Convince
them that it is exciting and important.
Talk about how you will accomplish it. Lay
it out in steps. Do not worry about
whether this is an accurate picture of the
future; no one has actually figured out how
to predict the future anyway. But a good
research proposal shows the kind of
interest, savvy, and independent thinking
that grad schools look for.
• Do not let them picture you as a child.
Graduate schools and medical schools get a
million essays about how “ever since I was a
child, I have wanted...” laced with
sentimental details about walking along
sandy beaches arm in arm with
grandparents, etc. This just gets them
picturing you as a 3-year-old, which doesn’t
help your case. In fact, inasmuch as you
can help it, you don’t even want them
picturing you as a Muhlenberg
undergraduate. You should even talk about
your research here as
your
research—
either in collaboration with or under the
supervision of your advisor. Emphasize
your
ideas,
your
contributions,
your
independent efforts.
• Brag. All this—
your
ideas,
your
contributions,
your
independent efforts—
may feel a bit like bragging to you. So
brag. We’ll make sure you don’t overdo it.
Go on about all the exciting, scholarly work
you
have done. It will feel much more like
bragging to you than it will to your reader.
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• Details! Details! Details! Generalizations
are boring and all look the same. If you
want your essay to stand out, provide lots
of interesting details. If you don’t know if
the details are interesting, ask yourself
whether they are interesting to you. Show
in your writing why/that they are
interesting to you. Then, check whether
they are interesting to your test readers.
Ask test readers what they’d like to know
more about.
• Be a nerd. The culture at Muhlenberg
is often to be self-deprecating about one’s
academic accomplishments and to hide what
one finds interesting in academic life—
often for fear of being tagged a “nerd.”
Grad schools love nerds; those are the
folks that really have something
interesting going on upstairs. Be excited.
Talk about what you’ve accomplished and
how interesting and smart it is.
• Don’t worry about being a nice person.
Chances are, you are more than nice enough
already. Don’t waste your time
demonstrating it. Grad schools aren’t that
worried about how nice you are anyway, and
it will probably come through even if you
don’t try.
• Be interesting. Remember, the person
reading the essay has to read hundreds.
What makes yours stand out? Do you have
interesting stories to tell, laced with vivid
details? Do you have a hook at the
beginning to draw your reader in? Are you
interested in what you have to say?
• Pick and choose. You will never get your
whole life into 500 or even 1000 words. On
the other hand, you want to write in real
detail. So clearly, you will have to be
selective.
• Go through a lot of drafts. Writers
know that writing is rewriting. Even if you
follow all of these tips, it will take you
several rounds to separate the wheat from
the chaff. Start by writing out a long
letter (or email) to a smart friend which
includes all of the possibly relevant stories
about how you came to pursue this career
and what you want to do with it. Then, cut
it down to your best examples.
• Get others to read for you. Others
will help you sort out what’s interesting,
what’s too general, what’s too personal,
what to expand on in more detail, etc. Ask
them. When you ask friends or parents or
other folks who may not be in the grad
school loop, give them an idea of what you
are trying to accomplish. You could even
give them this tip sheet.
• Proofread. Leave this until later, but
don’t skip it. What may seem like stupid
little things—poor spelling or run-on
sentences—can really turn off a reader
looking for ways to make his/her pile of
work smaller.
Written by Dr. Barri Gold, Assistant Professor, English,
August 2002.
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