Brief Personal Statement - In 250-300 words, tell us more about you and why you are considering VCU.

Exploration, innovation, and modernization are the words that define and delineate the mind of an engineer. As engineers, we seek to make the impossible possible. It was this sense of exploration that initially drove my desire to understand the mysterious forces of electricity as a young boy.

While nearing the end of high school, my dream of becoming an electrical engineer took a detour and I found myself working as an aircraft technician instead. Aircraft maintenance is a great career and an interesting field, but I felt something lacking. I finally decided to begin the pursuit of my dream by enrolling in a community college for electrical engineering.

My time at Union County College was outstanding and my grades reflect the commitment and passion I feel toward learning. While maintaining grades was a very important aspect of school, I feel the most important part was being able to apply what I had learned. UCC gave me the foundation, but now it is time I begin building higher.

As I near graduation, I am looking forward to continuing my education and the choice to transfer to a new school is the next logical step on my path to becoming an electrical engineer. In this process I have come to realize that I want to be in an environment that embodies community spirit and teamwork; an environment in which many of the students share common goals and work collectively to achieve these goals. This will require a school that can provide the proper technical support network, staff, and equipment.

I feel that VCU's renowned program would provide me with the best opportunity to learn in a state of the art facility that has a comfortable social atmosphere. I hope to bear VCU's name as a badge of honor this coming fall.

Jared, you have given very impressive information about yourself and the educational progression that you seek in the first half of the essay. I don't think that you need to mention the educational detour that you took int he second paragraph. It is not as important as the fact that you decided to enroll in college as an Electrical Engineering major instead. Stick to the shortest and quickest, but still most informative way of introducing yourself to the reviewer. Save the word count for the other important part, which is why you decided to enroll in VCU.

Your reasons for opting for VCU are very general. The description you gave for your choice could have described any number of universities that you have considered. There is a clear lack of personal consideration and reflection in the way that you discussed your decision to attend VCU. I suggest that you try to create an image in the mind of the reviewer about the personal reasons you chose the university. Discuss specific academic accomplishments you know the university can help you achieve. Portray the kind of student life that you hope to participate in at VCU. Explain how you can develop your professional and character traits while attending the university. Those are some of the more considerable reasons that you can present to justify your choice of university.

Thank you so much vangiespen. I appreciate your help.

I agree that the second paragraph was simply a word filler and doesn't really fit. Though, even with the second paragraph gone, it doesn't really leave much room to summarize my reasons for wanting to attend VCU.

I was planning to leave the first, third, fourth and fifth paragraphs untouched, but to use the fifth as my conclusion. I was going to outline my reason for wanting VCU between the fourth and fifth paragraphs. The only problem is that it doesn't leave much room before I hit 300 words.

Would you suggest editing or deleting the first, third, fourth and fifth paragraphs to make more room?

Thanks,
Jared

Jared, when you find yourself staring at a brick wall in terms of the word limitation, you don't try to work around it, you just barrel through and write everything that you need to write. Forget the word count. the only way you can develop the correct content for your essay, is by defying the word count during the draft writing stages. Write everything that you feel will be a part of the best kind of essay that you can develop. Then review the essay a number of times until you finally have it edited down to the maximum word count.

You can't really expect to indicate the important reasons within your first version. Just write down all of the reasons that you chose VCU and then post the extra long essay here. I'll review the essay and then make recommendations about which parts you can cut and combine in order to better meet the word count.

Don't expect to meet the word count immediately. You will find that it is much easier to meet the word count when you don't meet the maximum count in the first place :-)