How personal is too personal?

[tablecoffeebook]

I'm putting together my personal statement and I'm trying to decide if I want to put down certain things down about my past or leave them out altogether. Without going into details, let's just say I've had a rough upbringing that has affected my school performance all the way through university. I feel like that needs to be explained, but I'm wondering who will be reading this?

 

If the professors reading it will be the ones teaching courses the following semester, then I'm not sure I feel comfortable with them knowing that about me. If it's a small handful of professors, maybe it's ok...but are they required to keep its contents private at least?

 

Now, forgetting about my apprehensions, could disclosing certain things about my past hurt me more than they would help ? For example, say I was a rape victim, and I want to mention it (without getting into details) to explain why I missed lots of classes and my GPA suffered...would they just see it as a bad excuse? My logic is that if I was on an acceptable committee, I might very well assume that among the candidates with better GPA's, there are victims of similar or worse things who have moved on better than I have.

 

I'm just trying to find out what's acceptable and what isn't. Ideally, I would be much more comfortable without revealing anything too personal but when I think hard enough about why I dropped out of college the first time, it all points to those things.

[Anne00]

If something led to you dropping out of college, I would name it (with as a little detail as possible) and then follow up with how you overcame that something. I can't imagine, if the "excuse" is something as horrible as rape, anyone would not understand the associated hardship. Maybe something like:

 

"Although I was the victim of sexual assault, which resulted in the temporary cessation^* of my undergaduate studies, my strength of character ultimately led to the successful attainment of my B.A./B.S. degree in ...... from ...... University."

 

Then move on to all your successes. I think ultimately the point is to show that while something bad interupted your life, it was a very understandable, but temporary interuption.

 

* I phrased it this way to take the blame off from you as it wasn't your failing that led to you leaving college.

[Lisa44201]

If you use your personal statement to explain why your grades are not stellar, what information does a POI have to determine whether or not you'd fit into his/her lab? 

 

You will not be the only applicant who has dropped out / failed out of college the first time around for valid reasons beyond their personal control. I'm not trying to de-legitimize your situation; however, other applicants will use that same space in their personal statements to explain why they are a good fit for a particular lab. Any space you use to explain your past takes space away from describing what you will do in the future.

[Maleficent999]

Are you required to have a personal history statement AND a statement of purpose? If so, I am using the SOP to focus solely on my academic accomplishments and goals. I am using the personal history statement to explain where I'm coming from and that's where I would include things like a sexual assault.

[TakeruK]

In my opinion, you should not have to give many details because the admissions committee's role is not to decide whether or not your past will affect your future career as a graduate student. Let me try to explain with an example.

 

Example: "Bob". During Bob's junior year, Bob had depression and as a result, his academic performance severely suffered. Ultimately, through help, Bob mostly recovered and put his studies back on track. Although Bob may have occasional periods of time where depression still affects his work, he is now able to manage it so there are no serious affects on his academic and personal life. However, due to failing courses in junior year, Bob had to repeat most of his junior year classes and subsequently took an extra year to finish his undergraduate studies. (In this example, the "issue" began after starting college but this could also apply to anything that happened before college too).

 

In this case, I don't think Bob needs to give any more details in his SOP than the fact that in his junior year, he suffered from a health issue that prevented him from performing at his best and as a result, his grades in that year are not on par with his ability and that's why he needed the extra year. He could also say that the issues are now resolved that he is confident in his ability to perform his work as a graduate student.

 

I think that's all that needs to be said. One or two sentences in the SOP. Unless he chooses to, Bob should not have to disclose what his illness is, nor should he have to describe his treatment, nor should he have to "prove" that he is actually healthy and ready for graduate school. This is private personal information that the admissions committee does not require in order to make their decision. Even if Bob did disclose his entire history with depression, the admissions committee are not medical doctors -- they have no expertise in order to decide whether or not Bob is "healthy" enough to undertake a graduate program at their school. All the admissions committee needs to know is that Bob's junior year grades are not reflective of his ability but that is now resolved and Bob is ready for graduate study. The only "proof" they need of Bob's readiness for graduate school is the fact that Bob says he is ready.

 

I think this very low level of detail is appropriate because it is not like the admissions committee has a chart of things like "okay, let's add 0.8 points to the GPA if they had depression, 0.5 points if they had a death in the family, etc. etc.". In every case where a person needs to provide a reason for something like academic performance (or test performance), the only thing that person can do is to declare the fact that the GPA/score/etc. does not reflect their ability. The admissions committee and the applicant have no way to quantifying how much the GRE/score/etc is affected by the thing that happened, or what might happen in the future because of this. I know there are professors that have posted agreeing with this sentiment.

 

I think one common argument for describing more details is that something vague like "health issue" or "personal reasons" sound like it could be made up, or that providing details will make the admissions committee more aware of how serious the affect on your GPA/score/etc. was. My counter-argument for the first reason is that giving more details doesn't make it any less of a lie, and as I said above, it's not the admissions committee's place to decide whether or not you had health issues/personal problems etc. My counter-argument for the second reason is also the same as above -- there's no way for them to quantify the effect it might have on you anyways -- you can only identify that there was something.

 

In summary, I do not think the OP needs to name what happened to them nor should the OP need to justify how they got over it. The OP could disclose it if they want, but if doing so will make them uncomfortable, then don't do it. The OP just needs to state that their performance in school was affected due to "personal reasons" (or whatever phrase you want to use).

[TakeruK]

I want to put this in a different post since I am making two fairly different points!
 

I'm putting together my personal statement and I'm trying to decide if I want to put down certain things down about my past or leave them out altogether. Without going into details, let's just say I've had a rough upbringing that has affected my school performance all the way through university. I feel like that needs to be explained, but I'm wondering who will be reading this?
 
If the professors reading it will be the ones teaching courses the following semester, then I'm not sure I feel comfortable with them knowing that about me. If it's a small handful of professors, maybe it's ok...but are they required to keep its contents private at least?

 
Your application is confidential, in the sense that only the people who need to see it for admissions purposes are allowed to see it. So, for example, it would be unethical for a prof at School A to send your application to their friend at School B (or a different department etc.) without your permission. (I'm not commenting on whether or not profs between schools actually communicate information about the applicants, but it is definitely unethical if they do). 

 

However, "need to see it" can include a lot of people. In one of my past schools, the committee would forward all applications to any profs named in the SOP as potential supervisors. At another school, the committee simply vets applications for completeness and some minimum quality and then all of the applications are forwarded to the entire department, because admission is based on one of the profs saying "yes, I will fund this student". And at yet another school, the department is small enough that the admissions committee is the entire faculty.

 

I think the answer to your question is that you won't have control over who sees your application. You might not even know the admissions committee members, so there is a good chance that your future instructors and it will probably be certain that your future supervisor will see it.

[tablecoffeebook]

This is giving me a lot to think about, specifically whether or not I have anything on record to show that I am ready for the next step.

 

My school GPA goes something like 3.5 -> 1.0 -> 1.5 year break -> 3.1. I think my GRE scores will be great (waiting on subject bio) but I don't know if my GPA counts as having recovered unfortunately. Coming back from hiatus was a roller coaster and I bombed a few course and did great on others.

 

Anyways, we'll see what happens. I realize there is definitely a line that should not be crossed, but you would think not to hold anything back when writing to a committee that is about to decide the next 5 years of your life...on the other hand, a job can have a similar impact, yet I wouldn't think to get so personal on a resume...so there's that.

[TakeruK]

This is giving me a lot to think about, specifically whether or not I have anything on record to show that I am ready for the next step.

 

My school GPA goes something like 3.5 -> 1.0 -> 1.5 year break -> 3.1. I think my GRE scores will be great (waiting on subject bio) but I don't know if my GPA counts as having recovered unfortunately. Coming back from hiatus was a roller coaster and I bombed a few course and did great on others.

 

Anyways, we'll see what happens. I realize there is definitely a line that should not be crossed, but you would think not to hold anything back when writing to a committee that is about to decide the next 5 years of your life...on the other hand, a job can have a similar impact, yet I wouldn't think to get so personal on a resume...so there's that.

 

My point was that you should not have to "prove" that you are ready for the next step -- the admissions committee cannot evaluate this. If you say you are ready then you are!

[Usmivka]

 

However, "need to see it" can include a lot of people. In one of my past schools, the committee would forward all applications to any profs named in the SOP as potential supervisors. At another school, the committee simply vets applications for completeness and some minimum quality and then all of the applications are forwarded to the entire department, because admission is based on one of the profs saying "yes, I will fund this student". And at yet another school, the department is small enough that the admissions committee is the entire faculty.

 

I'm in a pretty large department, and any faculty that wants to can review and weigh in on applicant profiles. So I agree that anything you write in an application can become more widely spread than you may wish.

[TexasGuy]

my mouth dropped when I read "rape victim"

 

be very VERY vague about what happened but still let them realize that it was something really serious that affected your grades. 

[Usmivka]

my mouth dropped when I read "rape victim"

 

be very VERY vague about what happened but still let them realize that it was something really serious that affected your grades. 

On the other hand if people were more outspoken about experiences like this maybe we wouldn't live in a society where a quarter of female college students and one in thirty male college students are victims of rape or attempted rape. Not that the onus should be on any one person to take that on as a personal outreach mission because of past experiences. But advising someone to be purposefully vague or secretive about such an experience doesn't exactly convey the message that s/he isn't at fault. Hiding victimization can contribute to undeserved stigma and obscure just how widespread this problem is. I think this really comes down to personal comfort level. Yes, what you say to an adcom can get out, but with potentially bad and good consequences.