berkeley的ps写作指导站点

berkeley的ps写作指导站点
http://www.gter.net 2002-10-8 22:46:45 日月光华站作者:sir ( 郎 )

发信人: sir ( 郎 ), 信区: GoAbroad
标题: berkeley的ps写作指导站点
发信站: 日月光华站 (Fri Aug 24 14:27:30 2001) , 站内信件

Note: The information and advice in this flyer is offered by the
Berkeley campus and addresses what we look for in a personal
statement. Other UC campuses to which you send your application may
review your personal statement differently.

for important: it seems that it is desired for undergraduate student.
url:http://uga.berkeley.edu/apa/personalstatement/

I chose some insteresting pages from it:

Here are some sample introductory paragraphs. You're the judge--which
one is strongest?

1. On September 16, 1990 I experienced the worst feeling of my life
the feeling of incompetence. It was a feeling of indescribable
disbelief. My mother, my only parent, fell down the stairs of our
home. It was then that I knew that I had to become a doctor to help
people who were suffering like my mother. By attending your college, I
will be able to fulfill my dream and to give back to my community
through medicine

comments:
Although this writer attempts to be specific in his introduction
through the use of the date ("September 16, 1990"), overall this
introduction is vague and bloated with words that don't convey an
image. The writer says that he felt "indescribable disbelief" when his
mother fell down the sense, but we don't know what "indescribable
disbelief" actually means: was he stunned into inaction? did he
scream? Without the details, the writer's attempt to hook the reader
fails. The opener also contains errors in punctuation ("On September
16, 1990 I experienced the worst feeling of my life the feeling of
incompetence.") and uses the same word ("feeling") too many times.

2.My father divorced us when I was in seventh grade. At that time, I was
going through what my mother called my "difficult stage" because my

world revolved around school, friends and boys, and "family" was often
put on the back burner. I was unprepared for the resulting family
crisis; my father, the man who nurtured my passion for art, literature
and my love of languages, would no longer be a part of my life. At the
time, I thought that I could not go on. Now I realize that my father's
rejection, while extremely painful, gave me a resiliency and strength
of character that I did not previously know I possessed.

comments:
This opener is quite strong. The writer's description of her father's
action as a "divorce" is very vivid, and much more descriptive than if
she had written that he "left" her. The writer also exudes a quiet
confidence; she shows us she is smart by describing how her father
helped instill her passion for "art, literature and...languages." We
also know that she is by no means a perfect person; her honesty in
describing her own failure to give her family a priority in her life
is poignant, and the reader wants to learn more about her, how she
resolved her crisis, and what she has learned from it.

3.It was once said that "We have nothing to fear but fear itself," and
that is a motto that I have lived by for all of my seventeen years on
this earth. It is a motto that I have based all of my academic

endeavors on. It literally came into effect one Wednesday morning
earlier this year. I got called into the House One Principal's office
at our school. I walked towards the office a little pondered. I had
never been called into that office before, because that principal only
handled the math and science departments of the entire school. I
doubted that the principal even knew me. When I entered the office I
was greeted by a group of familiar faces that I knew from my physics
class. Our principal told us to have a seat and relax. The reason that
we were called in was that there was going to be a Science Competition
happening that Saturday and the school really wanted us to enter into
it. The principal said that she knew it was short notice, but based on
our performances in all our science classes she knew that we could
pull it off. She stated that we were some of the only high school
juniors and seniors who had completed and gone beyond the required
science courses. (I personally had already taken a semester of both
Physics and Physiology that year, and two of the other girls that were
in there with me had already completed AP Biology.)

comments:
This writer is going to describe her greatest accomplishment, but she
takes much too long to make her point. The opening sentence relies on
a clich?nbsp;("We have nothing to fear but fear itself") to make its

addition, some of the writer's word choices are inappropriate ("I
walked towards the office a little pondered"--"confused" or "worried"
would have been more appropriate) and indicate a tendency to rely on
big words when simpler ones will do. The writer is also a bit wordy
("all of my seventeen years on this earth;" "It literally came into
effect"). The introduction also contains irrelevant information ("that
principal only handled the math and science departments of the entire
school.") and does not provide the reader with a sense that the writer
has reflected on her experience and extracted its larger meaning. We
are not quite sure, for example, how the statement about fear connects
to the rest of the paragraph or what the main idea or thesis is.

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