<p>How did you format your personal statement? The application doesn't let you use tab to indent. I've added five spaces instead, but the spaces in the beginning of the first paragraph always get deleted? Should we format it like a regular essay, or like a business letter, with spaces in between each paragraph and no indentation?</p>
<p>Have you tried typing it up in something like Word, copying it, then pasting it into the box on the application? I don’t think it’s a good idea to type it straight into that box.</p>
<p>I did copy and paste but the indentations of the paragraph didn’t show.</p>
<p>I just have spaces within the paragraphs, because that’s all they really need to see to know it’s a new paragraph. A indentation isn’t really necessary, especially if the system doesn’t even allow it. Isn’t that a sign in itself? :/</p>
<p>No indentations needed. They don’t care about format. They care about what you write. The content. The purpose of the personal statement is not to see how good you write, but to see what kind of person you are. Good luck.</p>
<p>@Stressy Well, the system will allow you to indent by adding spaces at the start of the paragraph; that’s what I did last year. This year, it won’t let me put 5 spaces at the start of the first paragraph whereas it did last year. I was just curious if there’s a correct/preferred format of the personal statement.</p>
<p>@ChenJiaXing I think you meant “not to see how good you format your writing,” since your writing does reflect the kind of person you are. Good writing = good student; bad writing = bad student.</p>
<p>“Good writing = good student; bad writing = bad student.” - ayymeer
That’s not always true, but whatever. Just use business letter formatting. Divide your paragraphs with spaces when needed. </p>
<p>If you want, you could always try talking or calling directly to the Universities of your top choices. That’s what I did. UCB and UCLA are one of the few UCs that actually look at personal statements during the application process. Maybe you can get help from them on formatting.</p>
<p>If you write your statements in word and then convert the file to plain text, you can copy/paste that into the application without worrying about the formatting. (If you read the first page in the personal statement section of the application, it explains this.)</p>
<p>I had the same problem with indenting my first paragraph, but I don’t think it matters all that much.</p>
<p>Actually, it really isn’t about how well you write. It’s about what you write about. I spoke with admissions officers at Berkeley and they said they get a lot of well written personal statements, but if they don’t get a good sense of who you are and why you want to go to their university, your writing skills won’t matter. Conversely, it doesn’t matter if you aren’t all that good at writing as long as the content of your paper effectively shows admissions who you are.</p>
<p>@CalGal36 Listen to her. That is exactly what I wanted to say, but she explained it better. And yes there is a section in the application that explains the formatting. I totally forgot about that.</p>