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David Hughes

Whether it was at your part-time job or in your role as the officer of a club you’re involved with at school, there has been a time in your life when you’ve had to step up to the plate and act as a leader. This is the time to toot your own horn and include this information in your personal statement. Describe specific situations where you had to take on certain responsibilities and what you learned from them.

For example, after being at your customer service job for a few weeks, you noticed that customers were sending in questions faster than the employees could respond, so requests were piling up in the inbox of the company’s email. You suggested and implemented a Frequently Asked Questions Page for the company website where the common questions received from customers were posted along with the answers. This immediately seemed to help in reducing the number of email questions because the information was available to customers upfront. You learned to be proactive to responding to customer needs and to be a problem-solver.

It may also be that you’re the editor of the yearbook, which means you’re responsible for the overall production of the yearbook. From your responsibilities and experiences, you learned how to manage others and motivate the people on the yearbook committee to meet their deadlines. Ultimately, you learned how to take a project (putting together the yearbook) from start to finish.

No matter what type of job you have, volunteer opportunity you’ve been involved with or club you belong to, you have responsibilities associated with it. Use these responsibilities to point out how you shined and what you learned from your experiences. This information shows your motivation and drive. It illustrates that instead of going through the motions of life, you’re actively engaged in the experiences you’re involved in on a daily basis.

Related posts:

1. Make Your Personal Statement Shine Part #9
2. Make Your Personal Statement Shine Part #6
3. Make Your Personal Statement Shine Part #1
4. Make Your Personal Statement Shine Part #4
5. Make Your Personal Statement Shine Part #7

Tags: college personal statement, how to write a personal statement, personal essay, personal statement, what to include in a personal statement

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009 at 2:22 am and is filed under College Admissions, Personal Statement. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.