(continuation) Developing a high level of confidence and comfort in promoting yourself is essential. There is far more to you than what is written on an application. The person or persons doing the interview cannot possibly know why they should choose you if you do not know and cannot precisely tell them why with confidence! Also, it is not just about your past or the present, it is what you are capable and willing to offer, sacrifice, and volunteer to the university and the university community. If possible, try to increase your level of passion about your masters degree and about the experience of university life. People are people, and we should not be treated as items or things. However, to a certain degree we have become the product. Look at yourself as the brand, develop the ability to advertise and promote yourself with ease in such a way as you become indispensable. Often when people want something, a certain university, a certain job, a certain relationship: we have to create interest and desire for those people to want us. I hope that you have found my comments to be of benefit and that you will be able to develop more comfort and skill in promoting yourself.

Hi Laura, I just today noticed and decided to correct and offer comments to your "Graduate school interview" post. I realized that the post was from eighteen days ago, perhaps your interview has not yet occurred. But if your interview has already occurred, maybe you will find my comments still beneficial for possible future use. Laura, recognize that there is nobody that has your same background. To clarify, the definition of the word background as it applies here is: a person's education, experience, and social circumstances. Now there may be others that possess similar educational accomplishments as you, but there are none that possess your unique mixture of experiences and social circumstances. I would recommend doing an honest and detailed self evaluation in order to clearly recognize all of your positive traits, characteristics, abilities, and accomplishments. Ask family and friends to describe to you those positive things that they notice and feel about you (hopefully they will keep any possible negative opinions to themselves). Sometimes it is hard to notice or appreciate all of our strengths, feedback from others can sometimes help us to realize that we have more to offer than we might think. The more strengths and positive things about you that you are able to identify about yourself, the less need to repeat any of those. Also, each strength can be worded a little differently in a statement as to it's nature and how it can apply to the universities benefit. Learn to describe each one of your strengths in many different ways and try to identify how each one of your strengths can benefit and apply to many different circumstances and challenges. (to be continued)

You should tell them your strengths. If you don't, what would you tell them?