How to….write your personal statement

September 28, 2014

• A Levels
• / University and Higher Education

The Personal Statement section of the UCAS application form is the only part which gives you a chance to say something about your self and make a positive impression. Although a daunting task, and one often put off to the last minute, it’s vital that you take some time to get it right.

Getting started is the hardest part, if you break the task down into a series of steps you will find it a lot easier.

1. List everything you might include under three main headings:
• Why do you want to study this subject? Include reasons related to your a-levels, topics that have interested you and future career plans.
• What makes you someone particularly suitable to study the subject? Relevant work experience and academic achievements, activities that demonstrate your academic interest in the subject, books that you have enjoyed, responsibilities and leadership positions you’ve held, relevant voluntary work, awards you’ve achieved.
• How will you contribute to the course and university community, what makes you a unique individual? For example; hobbies, travel and other activities you enjoy. If you are planning to take a gap year, what are you going to do?

2. Decide what to include:
As a guide, you should spend about 60% of the space talking about your course, why you want to do it and how you’re suited to it, 30% on activities relevant to your subject and 10% on other hobbies or gap year plans.
You don’t have unlimited space, only 4000 characters, so make sure everything you include is relevant and positive. There is no point wasting words talking about something that doesn’t support your application.
Try to avoid writing lists of achievements or activities, it is better to pick one or two and explain how they have helped you.

3. Sort out the order for your points:
Once you have decided what it is you want to include, try to connect them so that the ideas will flow without wasting space on long connecting sentences.
Decide how you will start off your statement, try to make the opening paragraph interesting, but not clichéd, to attract the interest of the admissions tutor.
Finally, think about your conclusion. Here you should try to sum up your personal statement in a few lines and reiterate why you think the University would want to make you an offer.

4. Write your first draft:
Now that you know what you want to say and how to order your material, it’s time to put it into prose.
You will have lots of time to go back and change things so don’t worry about making it perfect yet, once you have your rough draft ready future alterations and additions will be easy to implement.

5. Finishing touches
Once you’ve written the first draft of your personal statement it is a good idea to get some feedback. Talk to your tutor or UCAS advisor at school and ask your parents to have a read through, they should be able to give you some helpful pointers.
Remember that as UCAS uses software to check every personal statement for plagiarism, it is best that you don’t share your ideas with other students.

6. Final Do’s and Don’ts
Do
• Ensure that your spelling and grammar is correct, a simple error like this will give admissions staff a bad impression.
• Only include things that you would be able to talk about at interview.
• Make suret to back up any claims you make about yourself.
• Be enthusiastic, show the tutors that you are passionate about the subject, (don’t just tell them!).
• Include extra curricular activities if you can show how they have benefitted you and how this will help you to study the course. E.g. self-motivation and good communications skills for group work are vital for most courses.
Don’t
• Repeat yourself, try to use varied sentence structure and vocabulary.
• Mention anything, such as exam results, that will be included elsewhere on your UCAS form.
• Exaggerate or lie, saying things that aren’t true probably won’t help you and could jeopardise your application.
• Overdo any humour or use slang/abbreviations, you want to be taken seriously.
• Use clichés or famous quotes, admissions tutors get bored of reading the same thing over and over again.

7. Submit
Now that you’re ready, all there’s left to do is copy and paste your statement from its word document into the form on your UCAS application. Be prepared to have to adjust it slightly if it doesn’t fit, remember whichever you reach first of 4,000 characters or 47 lines of text is the limit.