Customer Reviews

How to Write the Perfect Personal Statement: Write powerful essays for law, business, medical, or graduate school application (Peterson's Perfect Personal Statements)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The first 2 chapters were probably the most helpful; that is, if you didn't already know the basics about personal statement writing.

My real gripe with the book are the examples; if these are some of the very best that applicants have had to offer, then perhaps anyone could get in. However, I really don't think they are. The examples are simple and not at all profound, as I would expect a stellar personal statement to be. I think I wrote better samples of things while I was in middle school. I had bought this book with the intention of getting good ideas on how to write my own personal statement but I'm not in any better position than I was before I read the book.

Pros: I think they used recycled paper to print this book. That deserves at least 2 stars!

The book is ok but nothing earth shattering. IMO, a lot of it is stuff you should already know if you are applying graduate school. There is, however, some decent advice that you probably only need to see one time to understand. I think most people would do better reading a book targeted to their specific graduate school goal: law school, mba....etc.

This book gets a grade of 'just OK'. My feeling is if you *need* the advice passed on by this book, you're probably not a good candidate for grad school to begin with. I had more than a few *facepalm* moments while reading, asking myself if anyone needs advice that is so obvious. Another thing I didn't like about the text was that it tries its hardest to steer you toward writing a conservative, middle of the road statement. It takes every opportunity to remind you that creativity and boldness will not be rewarded by your evaluators.

There are probably better books (I hope) out there to help you through the process of writing up your personal statement for graduate school.

As a college student soon applying to professional schools, I found this book to be totally useless. Although cheap, it is not worth the buy. It gives some general advice that is already well-known but is also given in better and more detailed books. In addition, their examples hardly impressed me and were definitely not top-tier school material. If I turned in one of those statements, I would be rejected everywhere. Look elsewhere when looking for how to write your statement!!!

This is a good book to get your juices flowing, and also to establish your ground rules for writing the SOP. It is a bit thin in terms of materials, but the quality of the book makes up a bit for it. Maybe priced a tad too high. Look for a used copy, considering you are going to be going to graduate school and likely going to have a lot of expenses.

This book is quite helpful for my essay writing

The advice is useful, the sample essays impressive.

My gripe is that the sample essays are excerpts instead of whole pieces and I was not able to get a real sense of those successful writings in terms of organization and structure.

I found this book incredibly helpful when I was working on my personal statement. If nothing else the writer(s) seemed sympathetic to the agonies that go along with writing one and it served as a good support group.