How Important Are Personal Statements: The Complicated Truth

So your GPA and SAT scores are set in stone and the deadline to complete the personal statement looms near; you may have had this thought in your head: how important are personal statements? The old, outdated advice would say something like, “the GPA is more important than the SAT and the SAT is more important than the Personal Statement”. The advice of 4-5 years ago would be, “the GPA, SAT, and Personal Statement are all equally important.” Now, things are different.

For the past two years, the trend of importance goes as follows: GPAs and SATs are important, but Personal Statements are more important (Specifically in how useful they are.)

This is not to say that a good personal statement will always save a bad GPA or SAT. A bad GPA or SAT is usually what admissions officers look at first before checking the personal statement, so if your personal statement is not good enough then it can make your GPA or SAT a deal breaker. Now, here’s the thing: GPAs and SATs are NOT ALWAYS deal breakers.

Yes, we know. It’s a shock but stick with us here.

Here’s what makes the personal statement more important than the GPA or SAT scores: there are plenty of students with good GPAs and SATs who apply to schools and get rejected, but there are plenty of students who get accepted with average to slightly below average GPAs and SATs due to the strength of their personal statements.

Example: a student with a 4.0 GPA and great SAT/ ACT scores is sure to get rejected from any school if he were to submit a terrible personal statement. A student with a moderately decent to average GPA and SAT/ACT score can get accepted into plenty of schools if they wrote the personal statement effectively to beat the rest of the competition.

Just good grades and test scores? Good luck competing against the rest of he hundreds of thousands of similar applicants.

Moderate grades and test scores but well-edited and revised personal statement? You’re unique; even with less competitive scores you stand out among the rest and have a higher chance of success that the average Joe (who usually already has high scores)

Low grades and test scores but have a fantastic personal statement? Usually there’s no saving you but get this, the personal statement still can get you accepted despite low scores.

That’s the ridiculous thing about the admissions process: numerically, only some applicants who were rejected earned bad grades and SAT or ACT scores;

Numerically, we know that a good personal statement gets more students accepted than a good GPA or SAT/ ACT.

Now here’s the question: isn’t the GPA more important than the personal statement? Isn’t that what everyone says? Isn’t that the general consensus? Well, not really. The reason why the personal statement is more important than the GPA Is because it provides admissions officers with more utility to assess you as an applicant. It also provides you with more opportunities to persuade the admissions officers of your worthiness to attend their school.

 

The Importance of Personal Statements

Below we’ve compiled all the ways college app Personal statements are important. For the most part, their reasons for importance in the admissions process lies in their helpfulness in boosting application success rates, thus we will be covering just that.

The Personal Statement Commands An Audience.

Your college admissions officers are obligated to read just about every part of your application before they decide. There are, of course, moments where they may skim over parts of the application, but there is no question that admissions officers are required to look at everything. This means that all the written prose you’ve penned into your college application needs to be checked before any decision is made about your admissions decision, it is literally the opportunity to command the attention of your admissions officers for far longer than the GPA and test scores.

The admissions officers could only look at the GPA and SAT/ACT for so long before being bored. They know the drill but commanding their attention with the essay gives them much more time to reconsider admitting you to the school.

The Personal Statement Is The Only Written Medium.

Save for writing down your name and date of birth, the personal statement (and additional comments) is the only place in the admissions process you could literally communicate your life achievements and success through your written prose.

This is important because written prose in your personal statement will differentiate you from the rest of the competition; no longer will you be a mere statistic.

In fact, college admissions officers actually enjoy having well-written prompts not only because it demonstrates a good applicant. It also keeps colleges from looking “vain” or “shallow”. If college admissions had wholeheartedly accepted only the applicants with the highest scores, they could get into trouble for having superficial preferences for statistics and not for their applicants’ individual character.

This is where your advantage is: you can become more than just a statistic and can write your way to university if you’re good enough, which is where we get to our next point.

 

Personal Statements Opens Opportunities to Sway Admissions Officers.

Another advantage of a well-written personal statement is the ability to persuade admissions officers with the array of skills you can utilize in your writing abilities. For instance, you can use subtle hints of a hard life with soft implications to give the admissions officers more sympathy for your application. You can also use intense and strong imagery to describe the obstacles that you’ve gone through to give your achievements in your college application more weight.

Remember: The advantages of the written form in the personal statement to sway admissions officers is not only something that gives you a unique edge compared to the other applicants, it keeps you competitive and can even help you beat out other applicants with higher scores.

Yes, we know. That is rather scary because the inverse is also true. A competing applicant with a more well-written personal statement than you may be more likely to get accepted to the university of your dreams than you. (even if you have a higher GPA or SAT than they do.)

It is also the ONLY factor that, save for the additional comments section, that admissions officers have available to determine if they are going to accept you if they are stuck between choosing you or another applicant.

 

Working On Personal Statements Instead Of Last-Minute Grades Is More Effective.

Think of the entire process it takes to complete your college application. No, we don’t mean just the application on paper. How long does it take to finally finish the last of your AP classes and honors classes?

Yeah, very long. It takes about 4 years to finish high school and have the GPA ready for submission to the admissions office. The SAT/ ACT takes about 1-2 years of practice, fewer if you’re sharp and fast at learning.

But for the personal statement, it takes only a few months to get it done. Now here’s the kicker, it takes a few months to construct a tool in the college admission process that will prevent you from being a statistic, can make up for low grades and SAT/ACT scores, can make you more competitive than even the smartest applicants, and can give you the flexibility of language to express your creative characteristics.

In short, those few months of work for the personal statement are more valuable than even the GPA that takes about 4 years to perfect and more than the SAT/ACT that takes about 1-2 years to get high enough.

 

Conclusion

When you think, “How important are personal statements to the college admissions process?” you should refer to our points here. The personal statement is at times, more so now than ever before, more important than the GPA.

We know this since having a low GPA and SAT/ACT score is not a guaranteed nail to the coffin, but a poorly written personal statement might as well be the closest thing to one.

In short, the personal Statement is a very useful too in making your college application stand out among the rest of the college application pool. You can become far more competitive than even the smartest students with a well-written personal statement because it can help you command the attention of your admissions officers and sway their opinions of you in your favor. It is also the only college application factor that will let you persuade admissions officers without becoming a statistic, you will can be judged by your life story and struggles rather than just the numbers of your GPA and test scores.

The best part of this, which may be a curse to some applicants who cannot write, is that this highly vital part of your college application only takes about a few months to perfect compared to the GPA and SAT/ACT. One of the biggest deciding factors of your college admission lies in only a few months compared to the 4 years of work it takes to get good grades, but this can be scary for people who do not know how to write.

That’s okay, though. That’s what we’re here for. If you are not comfortable with a majority of the weight of your college application being on a writing-based factor, you should speak to one of our expert consultants to discuss where to take things from there.