<p>Hey everyone. I've been working on my personal statement for a while, and I recently finished some time ago. I had my sister (UC Berkeley alum) go over my statement for me and sniff out some spelling/grammar errors...</p>
<p>And she notes that I used a lot of contractions (don't, wasn't, isn't, That's, it's, etc.), and she forced me to split all of them. Now, I know that contractions are bad in formal essays, like for tests or analysis papers or anything like that. But I thought this was a personal statement... isn't this supposed to show what kind of person YOU are? Wouldn't that make this rather informal?</p>
<p>My essay initially sounded like I was speaking directly to the reader. Some nice chatting about who I am, what kind of person I was, ETC.
NOW... it sounds like it came from a robot. Everything is choppy-sounding... For example "Isn't that the point of a college education?" now is "Is that not the point of a college education?"</p>
<h2>Can you maybe give me your opinion on this situation? Should I make it sound informal, conversational, or should I make it sound professional? (and flat out boring!!!)</h2>
<p>Edit:</p>
<p>And its not only the contractions that were edited. She took a lot of my colloquial language and replaced it with bigger words.. The kind of words that don't exactly sound pulled from the thesaurus, but kind of.. exaggerated. The kind of language that maybe a professional or a doctor would start using, but no way a high school student would EVER speak.</p>
<p>It also makes my essay sound buggy...</p>