Personal History Statement... help!

[lissiehoya]

I am really struggling with this personal history statement, which I think is common to all the UC's based on discussions I've had with others in this community. The prompt is:

In an essay, discuss how your personal background informs your decision to pursue a graduate degree. Please include any educational, familial, cultural, economic, or

Comments

[blueskysrain]

I'm sorry, but coming from someone whose parents discouraged college altogether and neither have Bachelors degrees, the first paragraph immediately turns me off. Watch the audience and don't go for diversity there. Find something different and special. If you don't have anything special in here, what makes you stand out?

[roseofjuly]

Gotta agree -- although I can get with the idea of highlighting the fact that your parents may have been weirded out by your choice of major, I don't think you should take the angle that you took here. I think it's a good topic but a bad way to approach it, because it makes it look like you're making something out of nothing.

[saralinds]

Agreed. You'll also find out that it's nothing new in the academia. There are a number of professors and grad students who came from that kind of background- everyone's got only a BA or a MA/JD/MD/MBA but not a PhD. And they're the only ones (or at least very few of 'em in their families) who actually hold a doctorate

[slowbro]

"What's your internal driving force that can control you... to be part of all this?"

Could you explain what this sentence is supposed to mean? I still can't parse it, even after several readings.

[roseofjuly]

I think what she/he's trying to say is what was that "spark of life" that led you to lead your life the way that you do? To be interested in the things in which you're interested? To tackle the research questions/have the interests that you do? And in addition to adding that spark, it needs to be at least slightly different from what or how everyone else was led to a 'part of all this' ("all this," I understand to mean as being research or whatever it is in your life you're writing about).

[saralinds]

That's right, the spark! Everyone has their own spark moment and these adcoms want to know it and why that's going to be pushing you along the way in your research. Thanks amaterasu for clearing up :)