Begin Your Essays with Your Strongest Accomplishments
When preparing personal statements that require significant information about career progress, many applicants choose to discuss their accomplishments in chronological order. Although the simplicity of this approach makes it an attractive one, we encourage you to consider an alternative to showcase your more recent and thus potentially stronger accomplishments first. By choosing this alternate approach, you may capture your reader’s imagination more quickly and reduce the risk of being lost amid similar candidates.
Consider the examples of a software analyst who is now a project manager managing a budget and leading a team of 20 programmers, and of an investment banking analyst who is now in his/her third year with a company and has been sent abroad to work directly with a CFO:
The Project Manager:
Chronological: “Joining ABC Technology as a software programmer, I…”
Reverse: “Scrutinizing my plan one last time, I waited to present my team’s $3.7M proposal to our client…”
The Investment Banker:
Chronological: “As an investment banking analyst at Deutsche Bank, I started…”
Reverse: “Arriving in Taipei, I was admittedly nervous to finally meet the CFO of XYZ Co. and lead my firm’s due diligence process…”
In these examples, the candidates immediately present their standout accomplishments and thrust the reader into the excitement of their stories. Although this kind of reverse introduction is not “all purpose,” it can be a feasible option in many circumstances. Still, in choosing this approach, the candidate must also be able to fluidly return to earlier moments in his/her career later in the essay—a task that requires creativity and skill.
Another task that requires skill is determining when to use the active voice. Many writers use the passive voice in their essays, but the best writers know it should be used only rarely, if ever.
The passive voice puts the verb in the “wrong” place in the sentence, thereby removing the “action.” Subjects become acted upon rather than performing actions. Sentences with the passive voice typically include verb phrases such as “was” or “has been” (e.g., “it was determined,” “the project has been completed”).
Consider this example of the passive voice:
“The marathon was run despite my injury.”
In this sentence, the verb (or action) is diminished because the writer says the marathon “was run.” A better way of describing the same activity is to use the active voice, as illustrated in this example:
“I ran the marathon despite my injury.”
Here are two more examples:
Passive: “The contract was awarded to us.”
Active: “We won the contract.”
Passive: “It was decided that I would be in charge of the project.”
Active: “My boss selected me to be in charge of the project.”
Remember—you are the center and subject of your essays. The best way to tell your stories and explain your accomplishments is to make sure that you are the catalyst of the stories you tell. Using the active voice ensures that the admissions committee(s) will see you as an active person who makes things happen. 📝
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