Helping Your Students Write Personal Statements: Framing the Narrative for Fellowships and Other Opportunities

This practical book is a timely and comprehensive guide designed for college advisors and instructors who are supporting and coaching students into successful internships, fellowships, graduate programs, and professional schools. This book emphasizes the most important part of any application, the personal statement: how to prepare to write it, how to draft it, how to revise it―and why to invest time in the process of developing it. Helping Your Students Write Personal Statements analyzes the components of the effective personal statement and provides examples from many successful essays by actual college students, as well as exercises for students. It also gives advisors the tools to help engage students who might not ordinarily consider themselves credible candidates for nationally competitive fellowships. This book uniquely takes a developmental approach, offering college advisors and teachers a concrete, step-by-step plan to help any student craft the best, most persuasive personal statement they can write, helping transform their students into compelling, competitive candidates.

Stephen Lassonde is Director of the Newman Office of Prestigious Scholarships & Fellowships at Hunter College, City University of New York. He was formerly Dean of Student Life at Harvard College, Deputy Dean of the College at Brown University, and an Assistant Dean at Yale College. Lassonde has previously published on the history of childhood and education in the United States.