Affirmative Action Impact - The Personal Statement

Level 5 - Ivy League

Welcome back! Today we are going to speak to the personal statement and how that will change in light of the affirmative action ruling.

If you missed our preliminary viewpoint on this, you can read it here:

If you are a parent with a child that is applying to college soon, you want to read this.

Let’s get right into it.

Part 1: What is the purpose of a personal statement?

Before we get into the detail, let’s make sure everyone is clear on the traditional purpose of a personal statement/essay.

Most colleges (both for undergraduate and graduate admissions) require a personal statement or essay of some sort. The essays have usually been used to glean some information from the applicant:

1. The writing ability of the applicant

2. The personal life of an applicant that cannot come through otherwise in the application

3. The opportunity to get to know the applicant based on what they value or to understand their passions and hobbies

The personal statement usually gets overlooked by applicants. At best, its viewed as one aspect of the application that will not really hurt you if everything else is strong, and at worst, its usually disregarded.

Historically, the answer to how useful a personal statement is depends heavily on the college or university - not all of them rate it the same way. But in general, the personal statement was a factor that was considered, similar to whether an individual was a first generation student or from a particular geographic location.

That means it matters, but a great personal statement is not enough to overcome an otherwise poor application.

The more competitive the admissions process, the more important the personal statement tended to be - when the difference between applicants in the significantly important areas are nearly non-existent, smaller factors tend to make the difference.

Part 2: What’s changed?

A lot.