Tips For Students to Proofread Their Personal Statements

Are you planning to apply to a college or university? If yes, you might know that most institutions demand students submit a personal statement to secure admission. It is also known as a college essay. It is an essential document that is required to assess your personality, previous academic success, and future goals.

Remember, only those candidates succeed in securing admission with authentic and accurate personal statements. Any minor or major error can ruin your dreams of starting your academic journey with your favorite institute.

That’s why, along with articulating your ideas, opinions, and claims, you should also be capable of making your college essay error-free. In this article, we will provide you with some effective proofreading tips that will help you make your personal statement accurate in every aspect. So, let’s get started.

Ensure Lingual Accuracy

One of the key areas you should focus on while proofreading your personal statement is the accuracy of the language. A misspelled word, misplaced comma, apostrophe errors, and other such inaccuracies can ruin your image in front of the admissions officer.

That’s why you should make sure everything you write is free from any type of grammatical error. Spend sufficient time going through the entire document to catch all errors. However, remember that your written information may contain some hidden grammar errors despite your proofreading efforts.

To have 100% confirmation that it is free from errors, you can get assistance from a grammar checker. A proficient grammar checker online tool will detect and remove the advanced errors that you were unable to spot, helping you make your document completely accurate.

Analyze Sentence Structure

Instead of just checking for grammatical inaccuracies, also find and fix structural issues in the sentences. Remember, sentence fragments, run-on sentences, unclear pronouns, and other sentence issues can make your personal statement less effective. This can reduce the chances of your selection.

That’s why you should review each sentence carefully to ensure that the information is easily accessible. In case you find any sentence-related issues, eliminate them immediately by performing appropriate corrections.

However, if you struggle with rectifying structural errors, you can correct sentences with the help of a grammar checker. It precisely pinpoints every mistake in a sentence and provides a suitable correction for each error, making your college essay flawless.

Verify Supporting Evidence

Another important thing you should take into account while revisiting your personal statement is verifying your supportive evidence. Whether you include your previous achievements, awards, grades, or any other data, cross-check it to ensure it is mentioned accurately.

While verifying the supportive evidence, make sure that the dates, numbers, or previous research findings match with the original document. While reviewing the academic data included in your college essay, verify one piece of evidence at a time.

Be mindful that if you leave any incorrect information in your document, it can lead to lowering your credibility. As a result, you will not be selected by the institute. That’s why you must not compromise on cross-checking the supportive details.

Identify Unnecessary Repetitions

Sometimes, you might unintentionally repeat the same word and idea in several sections of your personal statement. This repetition creates a redundancy in the document that irritates the reader when he/she goes through it.

Even if it doesn’t directly affect your chances of selection, it creates a bad impression. Therefore, you must spot redundancy issues and fix them to make your college essay engaging and persuasive.

For this purpose, look for excessively used words and replace them with the most relevant synonyms. However, make sure that the word you substitute fits the context and adds to the overall quality of your personal statement.

Eliminate Unnecessary details

While writing a personal statement, you might sometimes fall victim to including details that are not needed. Unnecessary details can deviate the focus of the person reading your document. Also, excessive information can make your college essay less valuable than other applicants. 

Therefore, proofread your entire content for the needless details that lower your impact instead of impressing the reader. For this purpose, try to find vague statements in the content, as they often lead a student to over-explain things.

Also, locate the unnecessarily extended ideas that can be stated in a couple of sentences.  Remember, the more concise and to the point your statements are, the easier it will be for the reader to grasp the meanings. Consequently, the chances of your selection will increase significantly.

To Sum Up

To put it in a nutshell, a personal statement can open the gate to your dream college or university. However, the condition is that it should be free from any type of lingual, structural, informational, and logical error.

And the creation of an error-free college essay is only possible if it is reviewed and edited carefully. Above, we have mentioned some of the most efficient proofreading practices that will enable you to craft a flawless personal statement. We hope that you will implement them and succeed in securing admission wherever you want.