GKS Personal Statement.

This article is about writing personal statement which is also called self-introduction or motivation letter. If you do what I say this article, your personal statement will be perfect. 

1. First sentence impression.

Or first two sentences impression. What does this mean? Professors reading your personal statement read dozens of other personal statements in one day. So, you want to be remembered. You don’t want to be like others. You want to attract their attention from the very first seconds. So how to do this?

Focus on two things: the major you apply for, your key strength or motivation.

Start your personal statement with a sentence that will show the reader why is it exactly you who should be chosen for this opportunity.

Sometimes, professors either read letters superficially or they don’t even read them till the very end. You don’t want this, right? So, catch their attention with your first sentence in a way that you become an interesting candidate. This will contribute a lot to your success.

2. Don’t write unnecessary sentences such Hello. My name is bla bla. I’m from blab la and I want to apply for blab la university. No. They already know this. You mentioned it all in your application form. It’s unnecessary information because you have a limited space and you don’t want to fill it with something that does not make an impression.

3. Be super specific and concrete.

What I mean by this is that if you want your letter to look authentic and truthful, you should be specific about your achievements and background. I don’t say you should write long and detailed information, no. For example, don’t say I speak English fluently, say my IELTS is 7.5 and I had an experience of working with foreigners. Or, don’t say I’m interested in business, say, I plan to start X business by learning Y skills and achieve Z outcomes. These are just examples.

4. Mention your greatest achievements in life.

It is important to show that you are not just a random person wanting to study in Korea for free. They should know that you are a talented candidate, who has already achieved a lot in life and this means, that you will be doing great job when you come to Korea too. For example, you published any book? Mention it. You have a popular YouTube channel? Mention it. You won a cup, or an important award, first place in any competition? Mention it.

5. Don’t make your letter very long.

If you are given a maximum of 2 pages, do not fill those pages entirely. At the same time, I do not recommend writing too short. Ideally, I would recommend you to write a little more than the half of maximum. Basically, if you are given 2 pages, write a little more than 1 page. Let me explain you why. First of all, no one likes reading lengthy texts. Secondly, when you try to fill in the whole space, unconsciously you will write unnecessary information.

One very good person, who was helping me with my personal statement told me one interesting thing. I would send him my paper and he would criticize it. I would work on it and he would criticize it again. So I kept changing my letter multiple times based on his criticism, during this time, I learned so many things about writing a letter and in the end I compared my first version and the last version of my paper, and I was shocked by the extent it improved.

So, he told me “once a person in the war sent a very long letter to someone and he started his letter with this sentence “I am sorry for this long letter, I did not have enough time”.  This means that a person should dedicate time to write only meaningful information. Perfect is not when there is nothing more to add, perfect is when there is nothing more to extract. So, keep that in your mind.

6. Be simple, yet professional.

What I mean by being professional is that you should write your sentences in a formal and official way using high-level English. The words should be chosen and sentences should be constructed professionally so that the reader feels your seriousness and quality. What I mean by being simple is don’t use too difficult and rare words and don’t make your sentences too long, because it will confuse the reader and make it difficult for him to understand. Words and sentences should be professional but not difficult to understand.

7. Proofread your letter.

Making mistakes in your letter will ruin everything. Even if your content is perfect, even if your background is sparkling, it will all fade behind the mistakes you make. If your English is not grammatically perfect, I would recommend you to do like this: 1) Write your letter and check it yourself. 2) Use AI to proofread your letter and fix all grammatical and mechanical mistakes. 3) Ask any English teacher to check your final letter and make corrections if needed. This is so important I can’t explain. So please make sure that your letter is flawless.

So, these are all the steps I wanted to share with you. I promise that if you follow them all, you will have the best version of your personal statement.