“ - Do assure your audience that you understand and look forward to the challenges
of the program and the field, not just the benefits.
- Do assure your audience that you understand exactly the nature of the work in the field and that you are prepared for
it, psychologically and morally as well as educationally.
- Do assure your audience that you care about them and their
time by writing a clear, organized, and concise essay.
- Do address any information about yourself and your application that needs to be explained (for example,
weak grades or unusual coursework for your program). Include that information in your essay, and be straightforward about
it. Your audience will be more impressed with your having learned from setbacks or having a unique approach than your failure
to address those issues.
- Don’t waste space with information you have provided in the rest of the
application. Every sentence should be effective and directly related to the rest of the essay.
Don’t ramble or use fifteen words to express something
you could say in eight.
- Don’t overstate your case for what you want to do, being so specific
about your future goals that you come off as presumptuous or naïve ("I want to become a dentist so that I can train in wisdom tooth extraction, because I intend to focus my life’s work on taking 13 rather than 15 minutes per tooth.").
Your goals may change-show that such a change won’t
devastate you.
- And, one more time, don’t write in cliches and platitudes.
Every doctor wants to help save lives, every lawyer wants to work for
justice-your reader has read these general cliches a million times. ”