How To Approach Writing Your Personal Statement for Social Work Graduate School

by Jesus Reyes

This post is an excerpt from The Social Work Graduate School Applicant's Handbook, by Jesus Reyes.

I recommend that you perform a thorough self-assessment before writing your statement. Make a list of all jobs, volunteer positions, and internships you have ever held. In short, take an inventory of any experiences that somehow contributed to your interest in social work. Don’t neglect to also list classes that you may have taken that contributed to the development of your interests. For some people, even an individual field trip taken as part of a class may have been significant.

Chances are you’ve had some experiences in settings that you may not have previously considered related to social work. I’ve often met with students who tell me of jobs in research, legal offices, and other settings and then proceed to state they have no social work experience. They are surprised when I mention that certain types of research are very beneficial to aspiring social workers.

Even if the research was not directly related to social welfare issues, the exposure to the act of research is very useful. The aim of social research courses in MSW programs is to make students aware of the essentials of good research and the benefits of good research to an informed professional practice. Applicants seem equally surprised that an experience in a legal aid agency can serve as valuable exposure to clients who are at a crisis point in their lives and very much in need of assistance coping with many social systems around them.

Once you’ve made as comprehensive a list as possible, identify the skills you developed as a result of each particular experience. Keep in mind that the most important aspect in the experience is not necessarily the setting itself.

The most important elements are the skills you develop that are transferable to other settings. For example, the skills developed in interviewing clients are transferable to many other settings. People who seek services at a legal aid agency typically are experiencing financial difficulties, either of a temporary or chronic nature. They are also at a point in their lives when they are experiencing a life event of considerable stress, such as a divorce, eviction, or other event. They require an interviewer who can ease their anxiety and be empathic enough to allow them to express their needs at their own pace. Those skills are transferable to virtually any crisis setting.

 A review of your experiences will be helpful not only in making an inventory of the skills you may have begun to develop, but also in identifying the areas of social work where you may want to go in the future. That awareness can help you immensely in determining which of the programs you are considering can best train you to achieve your goals.

 By this point, you should be in an excellent position to make a strong case in your statement about why your experiences and goals are a good fit with the particular school’s programs. For example, if your experiences have been in a pediatric hospital setting, you have probably begun to develop skills in the areas of assessing the impact of the onset of childhood illness on the family system. A careful evaluation of those skills can serve as a good foundation for assessing a school’s maternal and child health program. In turn, the process can move to making a solid case for the suitability of the program to your educational and professional objectives.

 It is difficult to overstate the importance of presenting a thoughtful and deliberate case of your reasons for wanting to be a social worker and for wanting to attend the particular program in your biographical statement. All other aspects of two applicants competing for a place in the class being equal, the person with the better biographical statement will win out. In the schools with more competitive admissions, most applicants have excellent undergraduate records and stellar references. What often separates them is the biographical statement. It often weighs as much or more than the undergraduate record and the references combined.



This article is an excerpt from The Social Work Graduate School Applicant's Handbook, by Jesus Reyes. The book includes two chapters on writing your personal statement, as well as worksheets to help with the process. The book is available at Amazon.com in print and Kindle formats.

Models of Macro Social Work Education

by Jesús Reyes (excerpt from The Social Work Graduate School Applicant's Handbook)

    The approaches to macro social work education vary a great deal. They are often as unique as are the faculties of the various institutions. There are those programs that view social policy strictly from the perspective of social workers. In those programs, faculty are, for the most part, trained in social work. Other schools, however, have multiple disciplinary perspectives present on their faculties. Such schools are just as likely to have faculty trained in economics, public policy, public health, and law as they are to have faculty trained in social work.

    The policy course offerings will be a good reflection of the faculty’s training and interests. If you have particular interests in specific policy areas such as international social work policy, healthcare policy, immigration policy, or Latin American affairs, to name a few, a thorough review of the course offerings and faculty publications would serve you well.

    Another important area of exploration is, interestingly enough, the offerings of other graduate and professional schools that are also part of the host university of the social work program. If the university has programs in public policy, law, international studies, business, or other areas of your interest, there may be the opportunity to round out your education outside of the social work program. Of course, you need to find out how available classes outside of the school in other areas of the university will be to you and whether they will count as credits toward your degree. If the given university does not have programs in the particular areas of your interest, find out if cooperative arrangements exist with neighboring institutions. If this is the case, you definitely want to explore implications to cost, financial aid, and the total number of courses required for graduation.

    Examples of macro concentrations you are likely to come across in your search for a program are:

    •    Social and Economic Development
    •    Community Organization
    •    Management and Planning
    •    Fund Raising
    •    Research and Evaluation
    •    Social Welfare Administration
    •    Social Policy and Planning

Order THE SOCIAL WORK GRADUATE SCHOOL APPLICANT'S HANDBOOK here.

Social Work Graduate School: Selecting Your Area of Concentration

by Jesús Reyes (excerpt from The Social Work Graduate School Applicant's Handbook)

An important question to ask of schools is at what point in the program will you be required to declare your selection of area of concentration (i.e., clinical with an emphasis on children and family treatment, or administrative with an emphasis on community organization).

    The selection of an area of concentration is important because it will determine the emphasis of your graduate education. It should be noted, however, that it will not necessarily limit your job opportunities beyond graduation. As mentioned earlier in this book, all schools have a common core of foundation courses as required by the Council on Social Work Education or CASSW-ACESS. Therefore, all MSW holders, regardless of their school of graduation, have a core set of social work skills. The concentration adds a specialty to that core. For example, I was a clinical concentration student, yet I have held policy and administration positions, as well as clinical ones.

    Some schools do not expect students to declare a concentration until shortly before completing the program’s general requirements. The strength of that approach is that students are better prepared at that point than at the start of the program to make an informed selection. By that point, the general requirements will have given students a good background and foundation in both the clinical and administrative/policy aspects of social welfare.

    Other schools, on the other hand, require students to declare their concentration as early as the time of making application for admission. Inquire of those schools if it would be difficult for you to alter your selection if you should change your mind as a result of what you learn from the general requirement courses.

    Whether a school asks you to declare your concentration in the application for admission or not, it should not be difficult to change your selection if you do it before your concentration phase begins or even soon after beginning work on your concentration. Most schools either ask explicitly in the application what your intended area of concentration will be or infer it from your biographical statement. The reason the information is important to the school during the application phase is that it allows the school to balance the numbers of students who expect to be in the various concentrations the school offers.

Order THE SOCIAL WORK GRADUATE SCHOOL APPLICANT'S HANDBOOK here. 

Joint Degree Programs--Getting an MSW and Another Degree At the Same Time

by Jesús Reyes (excerpt from The Social Work Graduate School Applicant's Handbook)

A good number of accredited graduate programs of social work offer joint degree opportunities. Most common offerings include joint programs with schools of law, schools of divinity, schools of business, schools of public or health policy, schools of gerontology, schools of urban and regional planning, and schools of education. There are also a few programs available in less traditional areas, such as dual degrees in social work and dance therapy, for instance. If you are interested in these possibilities, you have your job cut out for you. You should undertake a thorough investigation of the other program in whichever discipline you choose as carefully as you are exploring the social work program. Appendix B, In Their Own Words, contains information on joint degree programs from participating schools.

Applicants for admission to joint degree programs are normally required to apply to each school independently. A crucial factor in the admissions decision will be the extent to which the applicant makes a case for seeking the two degrees. How have the applicant’s background and experiences in both fields tested and shaped her interests? How will the applicant’s future professional plans benefit from dual training? Normally, an applicant must meet the individual entrance requirements of both programs.

MSW Program Rankings

by Jesús Reyes (excerpt from The Social Work Graduate School Applicant's Handbook)

There are a number of rankings of graduate programs in social work and social welfare. I advise caution in letting your choice of school be driven by them. They tend to have the same band-wagon effect on some applicants that the old advertising phrase “seven out of ten doctors recommend...” has on purchasers of aspirin. Keep in mind that rankings are the end result of someone’s idea of what constitutes a good program. That “someone’s” ideas may be based on needs and priorities very different from your own. Beyond that, that someone’s methodology for evaluating or ranking the programs may be less than perfect. Whose point of view they represent is also important.

Having made the above disclaimer, I will add that, when placed in their proper perspective, rankings can be useful. They give applicants a feel for how the school and, by extension, its graduates, are seen, at least within academe.

Rankings generally tend to be done by educators for educators and students. Just how many practicing social service professionals know the rankings or are aware that they even exist is questionable. Those practicing professionals who are graduates of the highly ranked schools know of the rankings, because their schools tend to feature the rankings in alumni publications. On the other hand, practicing professionals outside of academe who are graduates of lower-ranked or not-at-all-ranked schools probably never hear about rankings, because their schools are unlikely to feature a story on rankings in alumni publications. The mainstream press and other media, with the notable exception of U.S. News & World Report (more on this later), are also unlikely to feature stories on rankings of academic programs.

If you plan to remain in academe, whether by teaching and doing research in an academic setting once you have your master’s or by pursuing a doctorate, the ranking of the school you attend may be more relevant. Within academia, the rankings are analogous to the price of stocks in business. The higher the ranking, the higher the “stock.” There are also, from time to time, studies on the amount of research and writings produced at various schools. Within the academic world, those reports are significant. That is the stuff that tenure is made of. Overall, the academic ranking of the program you attend may or may not assist you in securing employment.

Two well-known rankings on social work programs are worth mentioning. They are very different from one another in the methodologies they employ.

The more empirically sound of the two is The Gourman Report: A Rating of Graduate and Professional Programs in American and International Universities (Gourman, J., Sixth edition, Revised. Los Angeles: National Education Standards, 1997). Gourman offers rankings based on specific criteria including, among many others, the age and experience of the institution, qualifications of the faculty, curricular content, and support services and physical facilities. It offers a good starting point for those interested in programs of national prominence.

The second ranking is that of U.S. News & World Report. The inclusion of schools of social work in the magazine’s annual education issue began in 1993. A partial listing of U.S. News & World Report’s current rankings of schools of social work (ranked in 2004) may be found on the Internet at http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/grad/rankings/hea/brief/sow_brief.php.

The methodology employed in determining rankings consisted of a survey of opinions of senior faculty and deans of schools of social work. To what extent the respondents’ loyalty to the schools they attended or where they are employed played a part in their responses is anyone’s guess. Given that the magazine is so widely distributed and known, the results of the survey may become widely accepted by the general public, despite the weak methodology.

Order THE SOCIAL WORK GRADUATE SCHOOL APPLICANT'S HANDBOOK here.

Choosing a Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) Accredited School of Social Work

by Jesús Reyes (excerpt from The Social Work Graduate School Applicant's Handbook)

As you consider schools, it is most important that you make sure they are accredited or in candidacy by CSWE (in the United States) or CASSW-ACESS (in Canada). Schools that are accredited by CSWE or by CASSW-ACESS have gone through a rigorous process to ensure that they meet the minimum standards for social work education and that their graduates are prepared to practice social work at a professional level.

Some schools may state that they are “in candidacy” for CSWE or CASSW-ACESS accreditation. Candidacy is a precursor to full accreditation, and schools must have met certain requirements to be admitted into candidacy. Schools that are in candidacy by CSWE are working toward accreditation and have shown that they have the potential to achieve that status. Assuming that the school completes candidacy and receives full accreditation, students who attend the school while it is in candidacy will receive accreditation of their degrees once the school is accredited, if the degree is earned under the same curriculum that receives accreditation. If you are considering a school that is in candidacy, ask when the school expects to receive accreditation and whether the curriculum you will receive your degree under is the curriculum under which the school expects to receive accreditation.

For CSWE, the movement from candidacy status to accreditation status varies. Ten of the 15 programs listed as “in candidacy” in this Handbook’s June 1996 edition were accredited by the next edition in June 1997. The other five were still in candidacy as of June 1997. Of those five, only one remained in candidacy as of February 2002. Of the 20 programs listed in candidacy status in this Handbook’s 1999 edition, 14 had achieved accreditation, five continued in candidacy, and one was no longer in candidacy by the February 2002 edition. Of the 25 programs in candidacy as of the 2002 edition, 22 have achieved accreditation, while three continue in candidacy as of February 2005. Data are not available to provide similar information for movement from candidacy to accreditation for CASSW-ACESS.

If you are considering attending a program that is in candidacy status, it is important to learn as much as possible about when the program expects accreditation and to evaluate as much as possible its prospects for achieving it. Programs in candidacy status that participated in this edition’s “In Their Own Words” survey (Appendix B) were asked to report the date when accreditation is expected. The program’s failure to achieve accreditation could have serious implications for the marketability of your diploma. There was recently the case of a program that did not achieve accreditation as expected. Its graduates found themselves unable to sit for the state licensing exam and to qualify for many jobs that require it. Grants that fund many programs have as a requirement that staff in those programs be licensed.

Having an accredited degree is important for a number of reasons. Besides ensuring that your education meets minimum professional standards, you need an accredited degree in order to be eligible for most social work licenses. Check with your state or province licensing board to find out which accreditation(s) it accepts. An accredited degree will also enhance your employment opportunities, and some professional associations (such as the National Association of Social Workers) require it in order to join or receive full membership privileges.

For more information on CSWE accreditation, see http://www.cswe.org.

Order THE SOCIAL WORK GRADUATE SCHOOL APPLICANT'S HANDBOOK here.