如何让个人陈述更出彩？
Evan出生于纽约，他以优异的成绩从芝加哥大学毕业，并获哲学学士学位；同时，他也正在权衡手中两封分别来自英国牛津大学和剑桥大学的研究生录取信函。Evan是一个极富激情的公共演说家，曾获纽约州冠军辩手称号，且在芝加哥大学2012年毕业典礼上作为学生代表发表演讲。在不久的将来，他将继续为获得政治学博士而做出不懈奋斗。
正文：Describing the Details of Your Experiences in a Personal Statement，这是在PS写作时需要时刻注意的要点。Strictly speaking, an experience is an event that you participate in or share that changes you. It’s important to pay attention to the details here: an experience is严格意义上来讲，这里的“经历”指的是你过往参与或承担的一次具有改变人生作用的大事件。
注意，这份经历应当是——1) an event1）一次事件；2) participatory2）你有参与其中；3) leads to change3）最终导致你的改变。In short, the experience part of your personal statement should be a narrative that tells a compelling story. Here’s an example of how not to describe an experience:总之，要想漂亮地完成个人陈述的经历感悟部分，你应该做好的就是讲一个鼓舞人心的励志故事。
不过，下面我将要举的则是一个经典错误案例：‘In the first semester of my second year of college, I took an introductory course in Biology. The teacher, Professor Smith, was really great, and I decided to take more biology courses.’“大二的第一学期，我上了生物学导论课。
授课老师——史密斯教授——非常棒，所以最后我决定多上一些生物相关的课程。”An introductory course is, by definition, a course open to everyone. It’s going to be hard to tell something specific about yourself when the event (#1) is so general. Make sure that the event you are describing is interesting and unique. A better example would be: was there one particular session of the course where some question or issue was raised? Was there a time you spoke to the professor in office hours or in lab?导论课是什么？看定义就知道，导论课对全校学生开放。
所以，当你选择了这样一个普通的事件（#1），深挖事件背后的意义再联系自身就会变得异常困难。一定要确保自己选择的事件是有趣并且独特的。这方面好一些的例子诸如：有没有哪一次上课时出现了问题？你有没有在办公室或实验室与教授当面交流？Second, there’s nothing participatory about this (#2). There is no involvement on your part: you’re just describing what happened to you instead of describing what you did. “I asked Professor Smith for more readings and he directed me to the book Advanced Biology by Carpenter, which I read with enthusiasm.” That’s what you did, not just what happened to you.其次，这个例子本身就没有什么参与性（#2）。
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