Truman Personal Statement Tips

Crafting Your Personal Statement

No matter how strong your record of activities and achievements (Items 2–6 of the Application) and your grades, nor how well-prepared your Policy Proposal may be, together they are not sufficient to get you invited to an interview. Through your responses to Items 7–13, you must convince the Truman Scholarship Finalists Selection Committee that you are a potential Truman Scholar deserving of an interview. The Truman personal statement — collectively, the contents of Items 7–9 and 11–13 of the Application — is a critical factor in determining your advancement in the Truman competition.

A compelling personal statement will enable you to stand out in a field with other high-achieving applicants. It will help you overcome any gaps or inadequacies in your record. It can predispose the interview panel to want to give you a Truman Scholarship rather than to merely hear your case and then decide.

The passions, accomplishments, ambition, and creativity that you present in a carefully prepared personal statement will go a long way toward success in the Truman competition. Your ability to well portray these characteristics should be of enormous value in competitions next year for graduate fellowships and admissions to highly selective graduate schools.

Writing an effective personal statement is difficult. Points in this section should help you — but count on a lot of thought, effort, feedback from the Truman Faculty Representative, rewriting, and editing to produce an outstanding personal statement. The skills that you develop in writing an excellent personal statement for the Truman competition will likely be skills that you will employ throughout your professional career.

Recognize that the people who read your Truman application, and decide whether you advance in the Truman competition, are pros. Veteran members of the Truman Scholarship Finalists Selection Committee have read hundreds of Truman applications. They distinguish easily between the sincere and the insincere, the truth and the puffery, the carefully prepared and the hastily prepared, the substantive and the superficial. Don’t try to guess what they want to read. Just write honestly, simply, and clearly about yourself and your aspirations.

Understand your motivations for a career in public service. Think about why you want to be in the public sector as opposed to the potentially more lucrative and less emotionally challenging private sector.

Get a mentor/critic to help you with your personal statement. Generally, this will be the Truman campus representative. If you are unable to work closely with your campus representative, find a professor to assist and encourage you when you’re bogged down in telling your story.

Before answering any of the application items, think strategically about yourself and your candidacy. Ask yourself: “What are the most important characteristics and values, goals and ambitions, life experiences and service activities that define who I am?” Then decide which of these you wish to emphasize in your Truman personal statement. Don’t try to cover every aspect.

Everybody has a special story; some people just tell their story better. Share those stories that have been formative in your development as a potential change agent. These stories are often interesting and compelling.

In telling your story, you’ll want to use your responses to Items 7–9 and 14 to bring out some dimensions that are not obvious from reading your list of activities (responses to Items 2–4). Reveal why you are committed to public service.

Read some good personal statements to see how effective and revealing they can be. The Truman Foundation’s Advice & Guidance web page contains links to excellent examples from nominees’ responses to Items 7, 8, 9, 11, and 14. To the extent possible, develop a unified, integrated set of responses. The Policy Proposal should be related to the areas identified in Items 9, 11, 12, and 13.

General Guidelines

In completing items 7–9 and 11–13 of the Truman application, you should strive to:

Be absolutely honest. Don’t overstate accomplishments, claim credit for what should be shared, imply something other than the truth, nor propose a graduate study plan or ambitions only for the Truman competition.
Be yourself. In a “blind reading” (e.g., your name removed) of your application with other good applications, your family and your teachers would identify you. The set of responses to these items ought to be one that only you can write.
Make it interesting. Consider having an approach that introduces some pertinent and unusual features of you or your experiences to reveal your unique individuality and to help distinguish you from the other candidates.
Avoid undue repetition. Don’t make the personal statement a narrative description of all of your activities previously identified in Items 2–4. Highlight the most important.
Answer the questions concretely and specifically. You should have precise, well-focused answers responsive to the Item. Depth is better than breadth.
Engage the reader quickly. Have intriguing or compelling opening and closing sentences in your narrative responses to Items 7, 8, and 14.
Be current. If you cite statistics, political developments, or provocative writings, they should be up to date. Be careful about examples from high school days or early childhood.
Understand the goal of the personal statement. The main goal of the written material is to get an invitation to the interview and to present some lines of questioning. An outstanding personal statement won’t win a Truman Scholarship for you, but a poorly prepared one will deny you the chance to interview for the scholarship.
Maintain a sharp focus. Have precise responses to each item. Don’t try to share every interest, every societal concern, every accomplishment, every ambition, or every passion.
Maintain a degree of modesty, especially in Item 14. Minimize the use of “I”. If you have had a rare accomplishment (e.g., member of a national team, winner or high finisher in a national competition, board for an international organization), do share it. Be careful in trumpeting high school accomplishments — many Truman Scholar candidates have been high school class presidents, varsity athletes, debate champions, and the like.
Be realistic in Items 12 and 13.
Be bold but not unrealistically ambitious.
Reveal your motivations for a career in public service.
Avoid repeating experiences. Use different examples for your responses to Items 7, 8, 9, and 14, if possible. Let the Finalists Selection Committee members see your various dimensions.
Be thoughtful in discussing major challenges. If discrimination, poverty, family breakdown, severe illness, or another problem beyond your control has been a major factor in your development and the establishment of your ambitions, write about it. Avoid playing for sympathy. Truman Scholars are selected on the basis of accomplishment, not endurance.
Explain “understandable” gaps or weaknesses. If you had a serious illness or unusually heavy family obligations that temporarily affected your grades or limited your participation in public service, please share it (or have your Faculty Representative bring it out).

Do’s and Don’ts for the Truman Personal Statement
(… and for other personal statements you will write someday)

Do …

Have a consistent storyline that focuses on your special aspects and interests.
Be positive. Be upbeat.
Be honest about your ambitions, accomplishments, and plans.
Say what you mean to say.
Write simply. Rely on nouns and active verbs, not adjectives and adverbs, to carry the story.
Make it interesting and easy to read — both in terms of writing style and appearance.
Have lightness, color, and possibly something amusing or humorous.
Make the opening of each response engaging.
Take risks.
Have perfect spelling, punctuation, and grammar.
Get others to review your statement.

Don’t …

Leave blank more than one-third of the response space for items 7, 8, 9, 11, and 14.
Use qualifiers or imprecise words such as: very, quite, rather, little, many, great, somewhat, far, some, often, deep, broad.
Try to impress readers by using words which are not a part of your normal writing vocabulary.
Repeat the question in the opening sentence of your response.
Overstate accomplishments.
Make a plea for financial assistance.
Use statistics without giving the primary source.
Use famous quotations — it’s like name-dropping.
Be cute, flippant, profane, or glib.
Employ jargon, slang, or unusual abbreviations.
Use flowery language or cluttered imagery.
If you must write about them, approach the following topics cautiously: How much your family means to you; how difficult or unjust your life has been; how smart, capable, or compassionate you are; how much you got out of a short trip abroad; how much you learned about government from an internship.