 Hello my people, welcome to the internet's welcome to the score channel on the internet's isn't that fun? This is us right now. I hope you guys are having a good day and Welcome back. We're gonna be doing another live stream tonight Just like we have less several months in a row on Monday And we're gonna be doing something similar to what we did a couple of weeks ago a couple weeks ago I did a video on how to write a College supplemental essay the why this university essay and so today We're also gonna be doing the same kind of thing But today we're gonna be focused on the why this major essay Okay, a lot of universities are gonna ask you to write this kind of essay this essay that explains why you have chosen Your particular major or why you have chosen a particular program and also sometimes they call this the statement of purpose So essentially, that's what we're writing here. It goes by different names, but it's all the same kind of content Okay, so what we're gonna be working on is this essay and I want to explain to you guys how we're gonna do it Just like we did a couple weeks ago So I think before we start it's important to understand a couple things about this essay and what it's for So again the typical prompt and I'm gonna show you the prompt that actually inspired me to do this again I've been helping people left and right this week as we got a big deadline coming up and The one that stood out to me was this one from the University of Cincinnati So let me zoom in on that a little bit for you and get it where you can see it So this says here that students must also submit personal statement in response to the following prompt at approximately 500 words Why did you apply to each of the academic programs listed on your application? Should have provided additional information not already referenced in your application. So this is an important detail We are trying to provide additional information another perspective on ourselves We're not just trying to like Restate what we've already said in our personal statements or our other essays We want to make sure that we really explain why we've chosen these programs in particular Again, you can see this presented in a number of different ways. Sometimes it's why did you choose this major? give us a statement of purpose explaining why you chose this but If they're asking you why you've chosen that particular program or why you want to study what you want to study Then this is the essay you have to write So let's write an essay Again, I'm gonna be doing this sort of for myself right as if I were doing that We're gonna assume that my major is education and so what I want to do with this I mean I'm big in that a little bit for you So what I want to do again as always before we write anything We should always outline our work and get a good idea of what we want to say So I kind of think that this is a good place to do maybe three or four paragraphs I'm gonna work up to about that five hundred word count approximately today. That's the typical number that I see So we're gonna target that And what I want to start with is How did I come to decide that I wanted to study this like what's the origin story, right? Why? Or maybe how did I? That's that's sort of where we want to start the origin story is how did I discover that I wanted to study this? How did I when did I first have that realization that like this is what I want to do? This is what I want to learn about I Think that's a complex question that everybody has to think about and and if you've already covered a lot of this in your personal statement, okay, then We can also focus more on other areas, so I'm gonna give you some of those other areas that I think are important so I think another thing that we can do is To describe a little bit of what we hope to achieve, right hopes and dreams and goals and stuff so The hopes and dreams and goals are sort of thinking future forward. What do we want to accomplish after we graduate? What else do we think we can do with this degree? Okay, so that's gonna be another thing because obviously if you choose to study a particular subject You're doing it in hopes of eventually working or exercising that profession So you should talk about that you should explain what you hope to accomplish down the road with this studying that you're doing So we got our kind of origin story and and again, there's different ways I can present this origin story Maybe I can go for a personal experience. Maybe I can look at a problem In society that caught your attention and that made you more aware that we need support in this area You know, I don't know there can be different ways that you can approach this But I mentioned this so that you can think about other ways to differentiate it from your personal statement If your personal statement already covers your personal experiences Well, then maybe you shift to a problem in society and vice versa If you focused on a problem in society for your personal statement talk about your own personal experiences change it up That's important So with my hopes and dreams and goals. I want to think about like future career possibilities You know, maybe community engagement. We talk about that a lot here That's really important community engagement being like, you know, are you gonna do something good for the community? How are you gonna give back? I think that's something that we should all genuinely care about and not just put in here because it looks good I know that's tempting sometimes So that's gonna be kind of part two is is the hopes and dreams and goals and then specifically why this major at this University and this is where we're gonna go back to what I said two weeks ago We want to talk about courses professors or any any clubs Groups that enrich this area of study. Okay, so that's our outline This is essentially what we want to try to accomplish So I want to just review this one more time. We've got our origin story or how we figured out that we want to study this major I think this is really important because we have to show them that we seriously mean it that I Didn't just pick business because I didn't know what else to study I didn't just pick a you know becoming a lawyer because I want to make money like what Inspired you to choose this you're about to dedicate four or five years of your life to it So you better have a good reason and then what do you hope to accomplish down the road? What do you think you will do with this when you are done? And this is where you can transition into the university a little bit too by talking about maybe How they have the environment that you need to do that. Okay, think about that as well And then the specific stuff about that university So again, this is where we want to show off our research because again these essays Usually are specific to each university. So even if you have four or five Essays that ask you the same question four or five essays that ask you about your major You can't just copy paste them all You need to differentiate them a little bit. I know it's work. I know you got deadlines coming up I know the last thing that you want to do is write five of these but look you can reuse this part Recycle this that's going to be the same for everybody. That's you that doesn't change but This major at this university That's where you really want to make sure that the university knows that you want to be there and that you are Ready to do it and commit it. So that's what we're gonna work on today all right, so I'm gonna stick to my education major and I'm gonna try to come up with my origin story a little bit here to get started All right, and I'm gonna shrink this down a little bit just because now it's kind of big and I don't like writing that big I'm gonna drop these down a couple lines, too. So you guys can keep it up here. All right, so For me, I want to go back to like the first time that I ever thought about being a teacher, right? All right, so I'm just starting out here with like a little intro paragraph And I think I'm gonna break up this first part into a couple paragraphs here Don't worry too much about paragraph structure in this kind of an essay even though I have three items here I wouldn't suggest three paragraphs and the reason why is because It's probably gonna be more than let's say 400 500 words if this was a 250 word essay Then yeah, maybe three paragraphs is fine like this would be a full third of that right now at 85 But if I am doing a longer one and I am aiming right now for that 500 word count I'm probably gonna break some of these sections into multiple paragraphs because in this day and age If you have a paragraph that's longer than a hundred words It's kind of a lot like you gotta understand that we're living in 2021 and these days the internet uses very small Paragraphs very small pieces and that's what these people are used to reading. They're not used to reading a wall of text So don't give them one. So even though this is still my introduction and I still want to keep going I'm gonna break it up into another paragraph. Oh And this is a true story by the way, this is a hundred percent true story my Grandpa and my dad were on the phone for like an hour him just trying to explain this basic task My grandpa was like 80 and my dad is like, you know, 40 something at the time And he just couldn't get him to do it. He was just screaming into the phone He's like Because he was trying to tell me to click the browse button to find the file. It was pretty funny All right, so I think I've spent enough time on my intro here I'm already at about to let's see here about probably about 200 ish close 185, okay, so yeah, it's time to start transitioning into This kind of futuristic stuff what I hope to do with this stuff. So right here again I've just sort of established that I had this natural inclination towards education And and that I was good at it, but I didn't really know what I was doing I was just I was good at teaching stuff, but I had no idea why about 290 320, okay, we're going a little farther. All right, so again, I'm trying to get into this idea of What I think is important about education or what I hope to do with it in the future And I'm alluding to that by explaining here that, you know, I see this problem in in education about teachers that are Lacking in patients lacking in self-awareness lacking, you know confidence and security and how that affects us and That the system is kind of broken and I want to I want to change that That's that's the sort of big picture statement here This is why I want to study this because I want to be that teacher that doesn't make you feel anxious and insecure But rather makes you feel empowered and makes you feel strong And I think that's the sort of reason for being that I have had an education in my life And obviously I'm saying this after having taught for many years, but this is the same concept This is what I want you to think about like why are you doing this? What for? You should have a good reason and sometimes you got to stop and think about that reason sometimes it's not Right there in your head writing it down is one of the best ways So I think I have covered this stuff to a degree I'm not going into deep specifics here because the length of this I wanted to focus a little bit more on my big goal Which is I want to change this system that has a lot of teachers that I think do more harm than good so Now we get into this stuff And this is going to be similar to what I told you about a couple of weeks ago But the first thing I need to do is take a look at some courses Okay, I need to find like I'm going to use this University of Cincinnati one Let's see if we can find some courses campus majors and programs All right, let's take a look we're going to do a little bit of research All right, I think it's just search. I haven't searched it yet. So it shouldn't be research research would suggest that I've Done it again. Um Let's just search education and see what we get Apparently everything is education at the university. All right educational studies. That's that's probably what we're looking for That's a master's. Do we have a bachelor's? No, that's a doctorate. Okay. Um, so Again, this is why it's also important for you to check this stuff because you need to make sure that you are Taken like that your course exists and everything. All right. So those are the Let's see Gifted education Certificate. All right of education Education leadership. That's a graduate certificate. Let's get a fine one in here. I could also go with psychology That's a good basis for education So pre-secondary education Let's go back to Let's go to bachelor. Yeah, let's filter those a little bit. All right So we have early childhood education that could be a good one Yeah, if I wanted to go with like younger I don't like working with younger kids, but I mean I could use that for the sake of this example Um Let's see. Oh, okay. Here we go. We're starting to get into some of the more secondary. Okay, so they have specialized ones. Nice Okay, so I think I would have to be very specific here. This is good This is another thing to remember is this is another reason why you cannot copy paste these things if you Oh, hey, what's up? What's up, dude? Good to see you. Welcome to the party. Thanks for saying hi Um, yeah, you cannot copy paste these things because imagine that you copy pasted this from another university And like they don't have the exact program that you were talking about over there or that There's is much more specific in this case. I if I had to choose any of these I'm going to choose the english language arts secondary education program. So This is the thing like each university presents stuff differently You got to make sure that your information is specific. So let's let's take a look at this one. We're doing the graduation requirements all coursework and program requirements. Let's see what those are. Can we find that stuff? Yeah, okay. Yeah, we know what those are going to be Curriculum, there we go. That's what we're looking for. All right. See that didn't take me too long. Did it now? All right, so Again, I want to drop some course names if I can find any information about these that'd be even better But let's just start with like, you know, some of these basic things Let's take a look at what introduction to education educational technology Individuals with exceptionalities. That's an interesting one. All right pre-adolescent throughout adolescent development All right, that could be a good one for me to mention Um, I'm going to start grabbing some things here Like I want to get the title of this and get that into my document And then this guy, let's see. We got Free electives reading literature Diverse classrooms. I think I could mention some of this stuff. That would be good Um American journalism All right, adolescent stuff. I like that. There's adolescent literature and like adolescent. I'm going to maybe take some of those Um There was the other one here about adolescent development, which I think is also important for me So again, I just want to drop a few course names that I can talk about to kind of make my You know my my essay really show that I understand and really want to talk about this university or this program at this university So now that I got those details down there Uh, let's get to it. So So Let's let me see where my word counts at. I feel like I'm getting close 416. Okay. All right, and then All right, so what I've done here is again just given a ton of specific information about The specific major at the university of Cincinnati And I did that by just again looking up their programs choosing the one that I want Finding three courses from their curriculum and then, you know, leveraging that into why I think those would be useful for me Why I think those would be important That is essentially what I want to do when I want to get to this part of Like why this major at this university is not just why this major. It's why this major because Every university's major is different. That's something you have to understand. They're not the same Two universities can have the same major with the same title and have two very different curricula So When they ask why this major they're asking why our major Why our program That's what they're asking you for So I think I've covered a pretty good amount of that and I think that I can kind of, you know proceed forward now Again, if we're thinking of this as a why this major why studying this or a statement of purpose I always want to be thinking forward. I want to be thinking into the future You know, I want to explain where my interest came from with those first two paragraphs But then I want to look at the future. What else can I do? You know, so I like to finish off with a little bit of like an optimistic forward thinking idea Where can I conclude this with something that, you know, speaks to what I think I can do in the future I work 505 I gotta cut five words. Let's cut five words. Okay, so Something you can always look for is this There is supposed to just became a should that killed two words I could do this many many teachers who I think that was enough 499 you love to see it Okay, my people that is all there is to it. Look, let's just go over what I've done again here for a moment So I am starting out with my origin story how I discovered that I wanted to study this and I went with a personal experience I chose that Because I may be in my personal statement. I talked more about a problem. I want to make sure I don't repeat myself They're gonna see more than one essay. So it's important for you to You know, make sure you diversify your essays Um, I talk a little bit about what I would like to see here. What problems I want to solve I started out with this intro story I then went to like how it affected me and how I would later Experiment with teaching and then here I get into some of the problems that I see in education that I want to solve And so I think by doing that I have made it clear how I got this idea in the first place I've made it clear what I want to do with it And then I need to go into the major and how the major is going to help me do that So I did this whole paragraph about specific courses available at this university with this program It's extremely important that you have the full name of the program and the university And names of specific courses. You've got to get specific here. Just like I talked about two weeks ago I finished it up with just a little positive feeling conclusion. I think in a 500 word essay I have the space to do that now if I only had You know 250 words I would probably synthesize this down to even less than 85 I would keep a lot of this stuff if I could Definitely this has to stay and I could probably finish it here So if I just take these two paragraphs, I'm sitting at about 200 words I could trim this down and get 50 out of that and be done So you can see here some of the extra content that I have added I have a little bit more reflection a little bit more, you know forward thinking aspirations But if I were to do this in 250, I would just get my cool intro that explains where this idea came from I would focus on the problems I want to solve and then I would focus on the major You know all these questions come together to really form a coherent essay that I think will leave them thinking Okay, this person really does want to study this and that is Ultimately the goal of this essay my people I think if there's one thing I can leave you with it's this to understand Admissions officers want to make sure that you are sure about what you want to do The last thing they want is to admit somebody into this faculty Only for them to six months into it change their mind and go, you know what I've made the wrong choice I don't want to be here anymore. I I quit or I want to switch majors or I want to And it's not that you can't do those things But if it looks like you're going to do those things, it's a bad look Okay, especially as an international student. They are taking a bit of risk on you, you know So they're for them. There's already an element of risk. You're an international student What if you don't adapt to the culture? What if you're not academically ready? You know, they try to filter those things through tests and other means but You have to understand that from their perspective They are looking for people who know what they want People who are sure of what they want to do So you have to transmit that confidence to them and the way you transmit that confidence Is showing them first of all that you have a good reason to study the thing that you're studying and then also By, you know, showing them that you care about this major enough to take a few minutes out of your day Do some research on the curriculum and and really like You know show them that this is what you want to study That you want to go here and you want to study this and you're confident if you do that I'm sure that they're going to read this and be much more inclined to admit you So with that my people that is all I'm going to be doing for today because I got things to do and people to see All right, it's been a pleasure. I'll see you next week. Don't forget to check out the channel on thursday I got a cool video coming out that took me like a freaking 20 hours of work and I want you to watch it All right, so, uh, please do. Thank you very much for watching. Have a good