Your graduate admissions essay has the power to shape your entire life, so why go into it guessing? This workbook guides you through the entire process of writing your personal statement or statement of purpose so the end result is an essay you feel confident submitting.

Advice from a Professional Editor

Author Robin Schroffel is an experienced professional editor who has worked one-on-one with hundreds of students on their graduate admissions materials, helping them produce outstanding essays that attract offers from top schools worldwide.

In this workbook, she lays out the same advice she gives her coaching and editing clients in an easy-to-use, self-guided format that will help you produce the kind of personal statement or statement of purpose that admissions committees are looking for.

Easy-to-Use, Step-by-Step Process

This 26,000-word guide is packed with information that will give you a competitive advantage when writing your admissions essay. You’ll learn about the different types of essays, what sets them apart, and what every good essay includes. A provided outline offers structural guidance that will fit almost every essay.

After completing dozens of brainstorming questions to spark your ideas, follow the detailed structural framework that guides you, sentence by sentence, through writing your essay. You’ll then polish your rough draft using the self-editing checklist provided. The end result? The best version of your essay—one you'll feel proud to submit.

Plus, you’ll learn a method for adapting your essay to multiple schools and get helpful tools such as a table for tracking program requirements, extra brainstorming pages for additional schools, and more.

12 Real Example Essays

To give you extra inspiration and understanding, the workbook includes 12 real example essays that have received offers from competitive master’s and Ph.D. programs in disciplines including data science, finance, business analytics, software engineering, architecture, real estate, education, and more. These essays have been rewritten, with identifying information redacted, but will help you understand exactly how successful essays are written and structured.

Proven Approach That Gets Offers from Top Schools

Schroffel's approach has been proven many times over: essays she's edited have attracted offers from competitive arts and STEM programs at schools worldwide, including Brown, CMU, Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, NEU, NWU, NYU, UPenn, UW, and Yale in the US, and AFTRS, ETH Zurich, HKU, ICL, NTU, UBC, UCL, and York University internationally.

So, what are you waiting for? Let's write an essay that gets you into your dream school!