Crafting a Personal Statement

August 26, 2020
by Savi

Admissions

During my application process, I wanted to make sure that I would stand out. I spent weeks worrying about what I could do to make the admissions team stop and say “WOW” when reading through the hundreds of applications they received that year. This was stressful, to say the least. I felt as though everyone else applying also had good grades and GRE scores. I volunteered in a variety of clinics, held leadership positions in multiple organizations, and participated in an OT research lab throughout my undergraduate career but I knew that most applicants were also very involved. Despite all these achievements I continued to worry about how I could stand out! What would grab the admission counselor’s attention? I soon realized it would have to be my Personal Statement.

The USC Chan Personal Statement was my time to shine. I spent weeks drafting different ideas about what I thought the admissions team wanted to hear. I spoke about my leadership, my academic success, etc. Each time I would read over the new version I didn’t think it was good enough. After speaking to my sister about my dilemma and having her read over my outline she turned to me and said, “Savi we all know you are successful. Now tell them who you are beneath all the success. Who is Savi and why are you built to be an OT?” This quickly made me realize that I had been spending my time writing a personal statement with the sole purpose of impressing the admissions team. Instead, I needed to focus my energy on finding one story that exemplifies who I am and how I fit into the Chan community.

I deleted my list of achievements and started fresh. I brainstormed ideas of when I had implemented techniques similar to OT intervention in a non-traditional setting. I did this because I wanted to demonstrate that my imagination would benefit me as both an OT student at USC and as a future OT practitioner. I landed on my experience as a Human Resources intern at a start-up tech company after my freshman year of college. During my time at this company, I noticed that employees led a primarily sedentary and ergonomically insufficient work lifestyle. I, therefore, focused my time as an intern on developing an innovative approach to educate and enable the employees on adopting a healthy and ergonomically sustainable lifestyle in the office. I used the company’s core values, personalities, and goals to develop the perfect “interventions” based on their needs, including a wellness competition, games to engage in physical activity, and workshops on how to set up their workspace to promote sustained engagement and success.

Looking back on this internship I realized how aligned my innovation skills were with OT techniques. Naturally, I found myself understanding the importance of exploring clients’ situational context, personality, and environment in order to develop innovative treatment plans that promote engagement in meaningful occupations. This story exemplified that even before I decided to pursue a career in OT I utilized the leadership and career opportunities I had to use my creativity to help others . . . sounds kind of like an OT right!? Was this internship the biggest success I have ever achieved? No. Does everyone else applying also have work or internship experience? Yes. Although the experience of being an intern may seem common and unoriginal, I was able to dive deeper into how I utilized one of USC Chan’s core values to demonstrate who I am and what kind of OT I want to be. So dive deeper into those “regular or unoriginal” experiences in order to demonstrate how you made it extraordinary just by being yourself!

You can find more application advice from our Director of Admissions, Dr. Arameh Anvarizadeh in this video!

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