Personal statement

A short narrative section in a researcher's CV, biosketch, or grant application in which the researcher articulates in their own voice why they are qualified to undertake the proposed work, their career trajectory, and any contextual factors relevant to the assessment.

ByCASRAI Editorial Board

· Last updated 9 Aug 2026

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Answers are drawn from this dictionary entry and the rest of the CASRAI corpus, with a link to every source.

Answers are AI-generated from CASRAI’s own published pages and can be wrong, so check the linked sources before relying on one; your question is logged without personal data — never sold, never used to train a third-party model — to show us what CASRAI is missing, so please do not type personal or confidential details. How we use this

Section A of the NIH Biosketch is the canonical example; analogous sections appear in fellowship applications and faculty appointments; the Fulbright statement of grant purpose is the closest analogue on the fellowship side. Personal statements are first-person, narrative, and intentionally space-limited; they are evaluative material, not autobiographical sprawl.

References

NIH Biosketch Instructions (2021 revision)
Royal Society R4RI Resume for Researchers (2020 v1)

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JATS XML <role> element

xml

<role vocab="credit"
      vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
      vocab-term="Personal statement"
      vocab-term-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/personal-statement" />

Schema.org DefinedTerm (JSON-LD)

json

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "DefinedTerm",
  "@id": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/personal-statement",
  "name": "Personal statement",
  "identifier": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/personal-statement",
  "description": "A short narrative section in a researcher's CV, biosketch, or grant application in which the researcher articulates in their own voice why they are qualified to undertake the proposed work, their career trajectory, and any contextual factors relevant to the assessment.",
  "inDefinedTermSet": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/domain/mentorship-career-stages#set",
  "url": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/personal-statement",
  "sameAs": [
    "Personal narrative",
    "Bio personal statement"
  ],
  "license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "publisher": {
    "@id": "https://casrai.org/#organization"
  },
  "dateModified": "2026-08-09T02:27:33",
  "inLanguage": "en"
}

Personal statement

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Worked examples

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References

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