文书写作教程：动手写之前的准备工作

文书写作教程：动手写之前的准备工作
http://www.gter.net 2002-10-31 12:11:17 作者:www.51edit.com

Graduate School Statements 101 连载。中文版正在制作中。

Lesson One: Preparation

How would you feel if getting into the graduate school of your choice had
nothing to do with your work experience, grades and test scores? Imagine
for a moment that the only thing an admissions committee would ever see is
your essay. The committee would have to make a decision that will change
the rest of your life based on only a few pages of essays.
Since applicants with similar research experiences, undergraduate GPAs, and
test scores are often compared to each other, the essay is often the
crucial factor in graduate school admissions decisions. Simply put, you
must have an excellent essay. Without the essay, a selection committee
would have to arbitrarily choose between two (or even two hundred)
candidates with almost identical profiles.
Understanding the importance of the essays is a necessary first step toward
perfecting your graduate school application. We are here to help you get
through the rest of the process. Please choose a link in the left hand menu.
1. The Audience
Have you ever tried to imagine what happens to your essay after you submit
your application? For many applicants, this part of the process is a
mystery, but it does not have to be.
First, your file (application, transcripts, test scores, recommendations,
and essays) will be read in its entirety by at least one, and usually by
two or three, members of the admissions committee. This means that your
application will never be summarily dismissed based on any one factor such
as your GPA. or GRE. scores. It also means that no matter how you scored --
no matter how well or how badly -- your essays will still receive some
attention.
Admissions officers spend anywhere from ten to forty minutes looking at a
given set of essays. One officer explained,
Essays are a huge part of the business school application. They are VERY
important, so most counselors spend a lot of time reading and evaluating
them. We might read twenty sets in a day, including what we take home at
night.
Twenty sets translates into over 100 individual essays per day. This is
why, when asked for their number one pet peeve, admissions officers
answer, "Boring essays!" and "Essays that all sound the same!" When asked
what their number one piece of advice for applicants is, they answer, "Put
yourself into your essays, and make them interesting!"
Once an application has been given a first, quick read, it will go into one
of three basic piles: accept, reject, and unsure. A committee member stated,
Usually, two kinds of files go through easily and aren't read by more than
two people: the truly outstanding because the file is so brilliant and the
truly outstanding because the file is so poor.
If your application is in either the accept or reject categories, it will
generally be read by one additional person for confirmation. If the
application is rated acceptable, the second reader is usually the dean. If
the second reader agrees with the first, the process is complete. All other
applications-and this is usually upwards of 75 percent-fall into the unsure
pile. That pile then gets subdivided into probably accept, probably reject,
and unsure-and so on and so forth.
The longer your application remains in the unsure pile, the more similar
your numbers and background will be to the others in the pile. When
competition gets tough, your essays become virtually the only tool you have
to make your background and experience come alive, distinguishing you from
the rest of the homogenous crowd.
2. What "They" Look For
Admissions officers comments in italics.
When members of an admissions committee look at your file as a whole
(transcripts, GRE scores, application, recommendations, and personal
statement), what they seek is essentially the same. Can this person succeed
academically at this school and will this person contribute to his field
upon graduating?
But when the committee members hone in on your essay, the focus shifts from
the quantifiable and objective to the nebulous and subjective. The
admissions officers we spoke with, for example, said that they looked to
the essays to feel that they have gotten to know the personality and
character of a real, live human being. As one officer put it: "I'm going to
spend the next three years with this person. I'm going to choose someone I
feel I know, and someone I feel I could like."
A. Motivation
The admissions committee will expect your essay to have answered the
obvious, but not so simple, question "why?" They look to your essay to
understand your motivation and assess your commitment to studying your
field.
Every essay should focus on answering the question, Why? In other words:
Why law? Why now? Why here? Why us? And, of course, Why you?
While you will be offered a lot of advice in this help course, do not lose
sight of the ultimate goal of the essay: You must convince the admissions
committee members that you belong at their school. Everything we tell you
should be used as a means to this end, so step back from the details of
this process regularly and remind yourself of the big picture.
B. Writing/Communication Skills
Another obvious function of the essay is to showcase your language
abilities and writing skills.
The ability to communicate ideas and to present them skillfully is
essential to success in academic fields, and good writing stems from these
good communication skills.
At this level, good writing skills are not sought, they are expected. So,
while a beautifully written essay isn't going to get you into graduate
school, a poorly written one could keep you out.
Does the candidate have a strong command of the English language? A solid
writing style and an ability to organize his or her thoughts? These are
factors that are important to your success as a student, so why wouldn't
they be important in an essay?
C. A Real Person
As we mentioned earlier, what our admissions panel said it seeks more than
anything else in the personal statement is a real, live human being:
Please, show us your face! Don't do it for us-do it for yourselves. After
all, a person is a lot easier to accept than a bunch of impersonal numbers
and a list of accomplishments.
In light of this, then, it might not surprise you that when we asked
admissions officers and graduate students for their number one piece of
advice regarding the essay, we received the same response almost every
time. Although it was expressed in many different ways (be honest, be
sincere, be unique, be personal, and so on), it always came down to the
same point: Be Yourself!
Admissions officers have to read tons of essays, and like anyone would, we
get bored. The essays that interest us and that do the job right are the
ones that show us who this person is.
Unfortunately, achieving this level of communication in writing does not
come naturally to everyone. But that does not mean it cannot be learned.
Four tips for achieving the kind of sincerity that the committees seek are
listed below.

Remember, though, that even with the help of the tips and advice, the
impression that your composition makes can be very hard to gauge in your
own writing. It is a good idea to have objective people- preferably people
who do not already know you well-read it over when you have finished. Ask
them to describe the kind of person they pictured as they were reading. How
accurate is their description relative to the one you were trying to
present? If their description sounds ambiguous or if they are struggling
for words, take it as a tip that you may not be presenting a clear and
focused portrait.

D. Get Personal

The best way to write yourself into your statement is to make it personal.
When you do this, your essay will automatically be more interesting and
engaging, helping it stand out from the hundreds of others the committee
will be reviewing that week.
Personalize your essay as much as possible; generic essays are not only
boring to read, they're a waste of time because they don't tell you
anything about the applicant that helps you get to know them better.
What does it mean to make your essay personal? It means that you drop the
formalities and write about something that is truly meaningful to you. It
means that you include a story or anecdote taken from your life, using
ample detail and colorful imagery to give it life.
Express thoughts and emotions, not just facts and ideas. Communicate real
experiences. We want to know what has touched you in your life.
Do keep in mind, however, that a story does not need to be poignant or
emotional to be personal.
A personal epiphany, tragedy, life change, or earth-shattering event is not
essential to a strong essay.
It is a small minority of students who will truly have had a life-changing
event to write about. In fact, students who rely too heavily on these
weighty experiences often do themselves an injustice. They often don't
think about what has really touched them or interests them because they are
preoccupied with the topic that they think will impress the committee. They
write overemotionally about death or another life drama because they think
this is all that is significant enough to make them seem introspective and
mature. What often happens, however, is that they rely on the experience
itself to speak for them and never specifically explain how it changed them
or give a solid example of how the emotional response makes meaningful
their desire to attend law school. In other words, they don't make it
personal.
E. Details, Details, Details
To make your essay personal, use details.
Generality is the death of good writing. Focus on the little things, the
details that make your story special and unique.
Using detail means getting specific. Show, don't tell, who you are by
backing up each and every claim you make with real experiences. It is these
details that make your story unique and interesting.
Look at the detail used by *this applicant, for example. He opens his essay
with:
One evening, during Christmas vacation of my freshman year in college, when
a formidable storm outside called for an evening of hot tea and heavy
reading, I picked up a book that had been sitting on my desk for several
weeks.
Notice that he didn't just sit down and pick up a book. He sat down during
Christmas vacation, and not just any year, but his freshman year in
college, and it wasn't just any night, it was a stormy night that called
for an evening of hot tea and heavy reading and the book wasn't just
anywhere, it was on his desk and it had been there for several weeks.
Notice too in the rest of his essay that he backs up each point he makes
with specific examples. For example, he learned to value work and education
from his father-a common claim-but he goes on to tell us exactly how his
father taught him this by naming specific jobs and promotions he had.
Details bring the experience to life.
F. Tell a Story
Incorporating a story into your essay can be a great way to make it
interesting and enjoyable. The safest and most common method of integrating
a story into an essay is to tell the story first, then step back into the
role of narrator and explain why it was presented and what lessons were
learned. The reason this method works is that it forces you to begin with
the action, which is a sure way to get the readers' attention and keep them
reading.
Give your essay momentum-make sure the parts work together and move to a
point, carrying the reader along.
Many of the essay examples in this course make effective use of
storytelling. They integrate the story into the essay to varying degrees.
*This applicant takes one extreme by actually separating the narrative from
the rest of her essay. She begins with two different stories told one after
the other in one paragraph each, then skips a few lines on the paper and
begins the "real" essay. We strongly caution against this type of structure
which could be perceived as gimmicky. In contrast, *this applicant
integrates the story of his efforts to ban the Confederate flag from the
Boy Scouts, but steps out of the narrative at various points to discuss his
more recent activities and his motivation to attend law school.
*this applicant’s sample essay (This essay appears unedited for
instructional purposes. Essays edited by 51edit.com are substantially
improved.)
At the age of eighteen, I never expected to receive so much attention.
After two years of trying to persuade the local Scout council to abandon
its widespread use of the Confederate battle flag, my letter to the
National Office paid off. Newspapers nationwide reported that my letter
spurred the Boy Scouts of America to issue a policy restricting use of the
flag. As a conservative white Southerner whose family moved here in 1635, I
had to explain that this policy was not just politically correct, but that
it made sense.
Nine years ago, I was inducted into the Order of the Arrow (OA), a
selective Scout organization designed to encourage leadership and community
service. My seventy-member induction class included twenty black Scouts,
but I never saw more than one or two of them at OA events. I became
concerned that the OA was not developing leaders from one-third of our
state's population, and wondered why blacks returned so rarely. I
remembered the pervasiveness of the Confederate flag on induction weekend-
decorating mugs and T-shirts, hanging from flagpoles and in the dining
hall. While I knew the flag was not the root cause of the problem, I
decided that its removal would help keep black Scouts in the OA.
Therefore, as editor of the regional OA newsletter, I published an article
critical of the flag. Several black Scouts quietly confirmed my suspicions.
One Scout recalled that his mother, seeing the flags in the camp dining
hall, pulled him aside and whispered, "I don't think we're welcome here."
More typical was the response of a prominent Scout leader, who angrily
demanded to know why any debate was even necessary since "we only have two
blacks in the lodge anyway." I could not believe how thoroughly he had
missed my point.
Though my local efforts were thwarted, I still believed that Scouting
should abandon the flag. One year later, my letter to the National Office
prompted the new policy and ignited a storm of public debate. Critics
blasted my disrespect for Southern tradition, misinterpreting my desire to
help the South as an apology for the Civil War. I am proud of my relatives
who fought and died for the Confederacy, but it is not their image that the
flag represents when it is used at twentieth century Scout meetings,
football games, and NASCAR races. Scouts began using the flag in the 1950s,
about the time Georgia and South Carolina raised it over their State
Houses. The flag is a response to unpopular Supreme Court justices, not
invading armies.
Ironically, [school's] student newspaper has charged that I lack compassion
and only represent white male fraternity members on a fraternity-dominated
campus. The newspaper did not endorse me for student body president because
I refused to give unconditional support to every cause, including de-
emphasis of Western curricula and mandatory hiring quotas for black
faculty. The editors downplayed my leading role in establishing the first
main campus housing for a black fraternity, a woman's selective group, and
a multicultural organization, because they believed that the fraternities
should have been kicked off campus instead. Nonetheless, I was the first
person to be elected without their endorsement in twenty years because
students recognized my commitment to the entire community.
The battle flag has slowly disappeared from Scouting, and [school's] campus
better reflects the school's diversity. While integration is still a
distant goal, these changes are small steps in the right direction. I
sought practical improvements through independent thinking, perseverance,
and tenacity in the face of fierce criticism. A legal education would give
me tools to better use these abilities. I am not headed to law school on a
mission, but I see law as an opportunity to contribute as we build our
future. *

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