Start on your personal statement early! Creating a personal statement is kind of like creating a work of art, it requires a lot of thought and needs to be very well curated. To an extent parts of your personal statement are going to be very similar to others but there are many areas where you can add creativity as far as the writing style goes and also include your unique experiences that will surely make you stand out. I would recommend working with the tutors in the Writing Center to help you with your personal statement, whether it is to come up with creative ideas or if you just need help with proof reading and cutting down characters. Start writing it a couple months in advance, jot down ideas and experiences that you think you want to include and slowly it will all come together. As far as the application goes, familiarize yourself beforehand with some of the information that you need to include in the application because it is more writing than I had anticipated. When I applied, we had to write a 250-character long summary of each significant extra-curricular activity that we participated in and it was more time consuming than I had expected to write all the paragraphs and make sure they were within the character limit while still conveying all the important information I wanted to include. Make sure to have at least a couple different people review your application materials for content and for grammar. Be sure to have at least two people read your application: one person you don’t know and one person who knows you very well so that you can get a good idea of how your application reads and make edits as necessary.