Arthur was admitted to a doctoral program. They offered him a teaching and research assistantship. The assistantship covered his tuition for three years and a nice cash payment each year. He still wanted to earn additional money to cover the additional costs for his family of five. He struggled preparing Part C of his master application. We helped him correct the challenges by using categories to structure his themes and value statements.
Outline General Themes in Your Life
Themes describe general facets of your life. You may discern true themes by their long-term impact or drive in your life. They manifest at a young age and present themselves throughout life.
For example, entrepreneurship manifested early in my life beginning:
- Age 3: Sold illustrations drawn by my father (a world class illustrator) to my friends
- Age 5: Influenced 5 friends to combine their individual lemonade stands into one grocery store and pay me 10% of everything they sold
- Age 6: Convinced a man who sold ice cream from a truck in front of the local junior high school to let me pick up the trash the students left and pay me with a 10 cent item each day
- Age 14-17: Sold light bulbs doo-to-door to earn money to attend the Boy Scout National Jamboree in Idaho and 4 cities in Canada; and to attend the World Jamboree and tour 6 weeks in Japan
- 7 businesses from age 34 to present
Typical Themes
Avoid defining them too specifically. For example, typical themes include:
- Service
- Leadership
- Academics
- Creative Talent
- Athletics
- Entrepreneurship
- Civic Activism
- Ethnic Background
- Survival
Structure Themes into Specific Categories
Categorizing your themes structures your master application. They show breadth rather than narrowness to your themes. Categories for themes could be:
- Service in your Church, community, school, or work
- Academics with best subjects like math, science, English, languages, or history
- Athletic categories would be your best sports baseball, basketball, golf, soccer, and . . .
Saturday we share a warning about changes reducing the amount of financial aid available
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