Contents
Cal Poly Pomona

Students: The Personal Statement

Preparing the Personal Statement: Personal Inventory Questions

Note: These questions are designed to help you think of things you want to say about yourself in the personal statement that is normally part of the application process for schools, internships, scholarships, and sometimes jobs. (Also see: AThe Personal Statement,@ another UWC handout.)

  1. What makes you unique, or at least different, from any other applicant?




  2. What attracts you to your chosen career? What do you expect to get out of it?




  3. When did you initially become interested in this career? How has this interest developed? When did you become certain that this is what you wanted to do? What solidified your decision?




  4. What are your intellectual influences? What writers, books, professors, concepts in college have shaped you?




  5. How has your undergraduate academic experience prepared you for graduate/professional school?




  6. What are two or three of the academic accomplishments which have most prepared you for this program or opportunity?




  7. What research have you conducted? What did you learn from it?




  8. What non-academic experiences contributed to your choice of school and/or career? (work, volunteer, family)




  9. Do you have specific career plans? How does graduate or professional school pertain to them?




  10. How much more education are you interested in?




  11. What is the most important thing the admissions committee should know about you?




  12. Think of a professor in your field that you like and respect. If this person were reading your application essay, what would most impress him or her?




Adapted from: Writer's Workshop. AWriting Personal Statements.@ Sept. 28, 2001. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Nov. 2, 2001 http://www.english.uiuc.edu/cws/.