What's Your Biggest Weakness?

How to answer “what’s your biggest weakness” on study abroad applications?

Be it in the essay questions, LOR, or interviews, schools want to know how self aware you are!

1. Avoid the clichés: “I work too hard” or “I’m a perfectionist” can make everything else on your application sound dishonest too. Be genuine about your weaknesses!

2. Be honest about your weakness but you can exaggerate a bit on how you have been working on them: Prepare a list of 2-3 weaknesses and think about how you may work on them! Examples are: I have stage fear. However, I took a public speaking class last month which has made me feel much more confident about my opinions and my public speaking skills.

3. People appreciate real stories: Adcom wants to know the real you! They don’t want you to be perfect, but instead they just want you to be a person who is self aware of his/her negatives. If you’ve had a negative experience while interacting with your boss or if you’ve failed at some assignment, you can always be honest about it! What matters is the way you reflect on that experience. They just want to see what you’ve learnt out of it and how you plan on avoiding such negatives in the future.

4. Remain professional: Be focused on work related weaknesses. This is not the time to mention any personal weaknesses such as not living an active lifestyle or being addicted to video games.

At the end of the day, just remember that you must show how you’ve overcome your weakness and how you plan to keep beating it in the future.