Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities

Talking about how you feel about your accomplishments is personalizing and compelling— the details around how and why you are so experienced and what those accomplishments mean for your future are what speak to graduate schools and employers.

If this is difficult, know that having trouble identifying your knowledge, skills, and abilities is normal. Being a student is all about changing what we used to think to what we now think and confronting our blocks to growth, so it makes sense if you are more used to looking at where you have room to grow rather than what you have to offer! If you need some perspective on how to talk about your strengths, see an academic and career advisor or trusted individual in your life. They can help give you some space to voice your insecurities and reflect back to you how far you’ve come.

If you are applying to a job or graduate school, you’ll also have a cover letter and/or application that you can tailor to each, so you don’t have to fit every detail into your Final Academic Statement. Elaborating on how you grew and what you are able to do now because of your knowledge and skills will enrich your Final Academic Statement and will help you write stronger resumés.

ABILITY: Examples of past outcomes you have achieved

SKILLS: The things you do (verbs) to create effective work

KNOWLEDGE: What you have to know in order to produce informed and effective outcomes, possibly drawn from a body of work

For example, the ability to manage a farm comes from an integration of the knowledge of crops, soils, and irrigation with the skills of seeding plants, transplanting, weeding, and harvesting.

Because they’re intrinsically linked through your education, institutional or otherwise, it might be hard to think of your knowledge, skills, and abilities as separate components. When it comes to your Academic Statement, use these as a launching point to ensure that you are talking about specifics.

Here’s an example of someone discussing their knowledge, skills, and abilities in a Final Academic Statement:

“Through my time at The Evergreen State College I have learned far more than how to set up an interview to be pleasing to the lens and the eye; I have also learned how to dig for the story and reveal the details that make the narrative blossom. As a filmmaker, I know when I have asked the right question from the contemplative pause that must precede any answer of real importance.”

—Myron Avalos