Guide to Write a Personal Statement in Malaysia

Welcome to Word Philocaly’s blog. Today’s article is all about writing a personal statement. In this article, we’d like to offer some tips on how to write a compelling personal statement in Malaysia for university, scholarship, college, etc.

What is a personal statement?

A personal statement is an essay or document that supports your application to be accepted in a university, a college, or for a scholarship or a job.

What personal statement should include?

A personal statement to apply for most universities in Malaysia and other countries is 4,000 characters long, with approximately 47 lines. Can a personal statement exceed 4,000 characters? The answer is often NO.

Why is a personal statement important?

A personal statement is crucial for the success of your applications. For most universities, a personal statement is the only piece of writing that you’ll be able to give them. It is also the only piece of you to base their decisions.

Tips for Writing a Personal Statement in Malaysia

1. Open with a BAM!

Tip number one with a personal statement is to open with a BAM. A great way to start writing a personal statement is through a question that you have. This question can be based on an experience or through thought. As soon as your admissions officer reads your personal statement, you want to catch on to them immediately.

You may ask, “what do I write in a personal statement then?” Or how do you begin a personal statement? You want to open with something personal to you and something intriguing. One of our clients who applied for economic and development started her personal statement with a question based on Typhoon Haiyan’s experience. She was in Antequera, the Philippines, and offering aid to over 100 families.

Therefore, she was questioning the sustainability of what we were doing. She started with this question, “To overcome reliance, how can the people in this community develop a way to support themselves sustainably?” She had the question in speech marks and carried on from there.

2. Focus on Your Course when Writing a Personal Statement

Our second tip is to focus significantly on your course while writing a personal statement. You want to talk about why you are a great student for that course, and not really why you’re a great student in general. The universities will expect that you are a great student already. But through these 4,000 characters, you want to show precisely what makes you passionate about that course without even using the word “passion”.

In Malaysia, thousands of other students are applying for the same course as you are. This situation should not scare you from applying, but it should highlight that you want to make yourself stand out from the rest. You can do this by showing love for your course in your personal statement.

3. Take Initiative Beyond School Work

Tip number three: how do you show interest in your course? One of the most remarkable ways to demonstrate interest is to show that you’ve taken the initiative beyond your academic achievements. You can show this through the books you have read, your activities, or other experiences such as volunteer work. They can even be personal anecdotes.

In one of our client’s statements, we helped him touch on his mother’s background as she did on poverty. We helped him explore how it has changed him as a person; how it’s affected his visions and ambition. His personal statement also talked about a book that he had read called “What Money Can’t Buy, The Moral Limits of the Markets” by Michael J. Sandel.

It is a philosophical approach to economics. So it just comes to show that there’s so much more to economics than what this client has read in his school textbook. It’s great to approach your subject area through a different lens, for instance, philosophy into economics, philosophy into medicine, or something similar.

It shows that you’re well-rounded, and you’re willing to view your subject not through one lens but multiple lenses. We even helped the client write about positions that he held in school. The positions that helped him develop specific characteristics to flourish even more in his fields, including some leadership positions and sports positions. Highlighting positions that you’ve held that connect to the characteristics that you should have in your course is a fantastic approach.

So these are generally the ways that you can show love for your course: your past positions, books and content that you’ve read outside your school, your personal anecdotes, and your personal experiences.

4. Expand on Experiences

Tip number four is that if you do write about a personal experience, ensure that you will write about what you learned from that experience. Also, from that same experience, what you still have to learn and explore. You do want to go to university to explore even more questions and seek more answers.

So if you can extract questions that you want to explore through your experiences, it will show initiative on your behalf.

When should a personal statement be submitted — Personal statement for university application

5. Don’t Brag Too Much About Your Achievements

Tip number five is not to talk too much about your personal achievements. Applications of Malaysian universities tend to be a lot more academic-focused rather than extracurricular-focused. The universities that you intend to apply to know your grades and results already.

You don’t have much space in your personal statement. Remember you only have 47 lines, so you don’t want to expend too much on your personal achievements. Instead, use that and focus on why you love that subject area. What you can do is that you can pick the most critical positions and achievements that relate to characteristics you should have to excel in your discipline. Then, incorporate them. Flip them into sentences where you’re

demonstrating your enjoyment and your interest in that particular discipline.

Here is one of the example we used in our client’s personal statement:

“Translating words into actions as the environmental perfect, I promote sustainable practices within my school – such as the greater use of biodegradable materials – and educate fellow students on how some of our current practices threaten the environment, thereby nurturing awareness.”

So through that sentence, not only did our client mentioned that he was an environmental prefect, but he also talked about his participation in a lot of sustainable efforts. This mention thereby shows his interest in the environment, which belongs in the realm of development.

You may be interested in these relevant articles:

How to Write a Business Description

Content Marketing in Malaysia: Why Is It Important?

6. Don’t Waste Words when Writing Your Personal Statement

Our tip number six is not to waste words. You have 4,000 characters, and it seems so little when you start writing it. Can a personal statement be too long? Yes, it can when it exceeds 4,000 words. So keep it concise and genuine. Remember to be honest with everything that you write. You don’t want to get admitted with false information.

Keeping your personal statement brief itself is sophisticated. Do slip in a few academic words here and there. Don’t over-decorate it.

7. Trust Yourself!

The seventh tip is to trust yourself throughout writing a personal statement. We know you’re probably nervous and doubting yourself throughout this application process. Everyone is going to go through the same thing. I promise you that this is a crucial piece of writing, no doubt. However, at the same time, you have to ensure that you do trust yourself. You must have your confidence and do the best that you can. We mean, that’s all you can do.

8. Ask for Advice

Tip number eight is to ask for advice from other people regarding your personal statements. You can even seek professional help from Word Philocaly as we can write a personal statement for you. Don’t be shy to ask other people. Most of the time they’ll be more than happy to be reading your personal statement. It’s great to send it to people who the same university you attend has accepted them.

Sometimes, other people’s advice will inspire you. Give your personal statement for university to someone who’s had the experience of writing a personal statement. Or even someone who hasn’t had any experience at all. Because sometimes they may give you even more genuine answers.

Personal statement to study abroad — Seek expert’s advice to write a personal statement in Malaysia

9. You Know What’s Best!

Our ninth suggestion may sound contradicting to tip number eight. But let us explain. If you’re receiving advice from someone that you don’t feel is right, you don’t have to take it aboard. Do ask for advice, but if it just doesn’t feel right to you, you’re not obliged to use it. And this goes for people who even got into the university that you want to enter. This is your personal statement, after all, and you should have the last say.

10. Don’t be Too Clingy

The tenth tip is essential, and it is to start writing a personal statement a little earlier. Then, come back to it periodically. Before seeking our professional help to write a personal statement to apply for university, our clients often read the personal statement every hour of every day. They got pretty sick of it eventually.

They were approaching the personal statement with the same mindset every single time – to the point at which they were making very few changes. However, once they finally asked for Word Philocaly’s assistance and took in our advice, things changed. When reviewing their personal statements, they noticed that they came back to it with fresh eyes and a new mind. Since Word Philocaly has laid the foundation for them, they could make many good and better changes. They could switch things around and trying new things. They even suggested us to add new paragraphs for them that they never thought about.

Less Clinginess = More Happiness

As a result, the personal statement started to work. They also felt a lot happier. So don’t be so clingy with your personal statement; ask for expert help when necessary. We know it’s so hard to set your personal statement aside, not look at it, not touch it, and let people do the writing for you because it’s so important. However, getting advice from a personal statement specialist does more good than harm.

Even these tips are pretty common-sense, but most people easily overlook them. If you intend to write a personal statement yourself, remember to make several drafts. But more importantly, save your drafts as you go along. We recommend that you write a personal statement on a Word document that you can save.

We usually make seven drafts of our client’s personal statement. We keep every single one of them. Sometimes, we are not satisfied with the changes that we made, and we would return to the previous drafts. Besides, keeping several drafts is an excellent way to compare and track our development when writing a personal statement – since each personal statement is unique to each of our clients.

Experts’ help to guide you on how to write a compelling personal statement.

Expert Personal Statement Malaysia Writing Service

Word Philocaly is a Malaysia writing service company offering personal statement composing and editing. We assist all individuals applying for Ph.D., Master’s undergraduate, and other post-graduate studies for all universities with expertly designed personal statements.

Our expert team will create a concise and compelling personal statement that is unique and entirely plagiarism-free. We help you craft a personal statement that will showcase your most valuable achievements and attributes – enabling you to be one of the prime candidates for the major or course that you apply for.

Whether you require a full piece of personal statement writing from scratch or editing, our experienced team of professional writers will deliver the result you wish for. We work closely with you to compile every piece of information vital to represent your exclusive skillsets and personality. With Word Philocaly’s unparalleled writing skill, you will be able to submit a powerful personal statement that can perfectly encapsulate your experience, background, and aspirations.

Our Malaysia Personal Statement Writing Services:

Personal statement for college in Malaysia /overseas
Personal statement for scholarship Malaysia/overseas
Personal statement for university in Malaysia/overseas
Personal statement for masters
Personal statement to study abroad
Personal statement without work experience
Personal statement with no experience
UCAS personal statement
UCAS digital personal statement
Law school personal statement
Statement of purpose for grad school
Personal statement for medical school

Thank you so much for reading. We hope you have got something out of this article. We are having a lot of fun creating useful content to help you guys out.