It’s an essay about you, and how awesome you are. In theory, that should be easy, but a lot of people struggle with writing their personal statement.
I was lucky enough to be in a position where I had a lot to write about when it came to writing my personal statement. All those clubs and extra-curricular activities I’d been taking part of since I was twelve finally came in useful.
Over the summer holidays before my second year of A levels, I wrote a list of all the extracurricular activities I’d taken part of since I started secondary school. For me, that was a lot: school band, eco council, school librarian, drama club, science club, creative writing group, journalism project… Then it came to finding how each of these would come in useful when studying for my degree.
Finding a way to relate playing the steel pan in the school band to a geophysical sciences degree isn’t easy. But it isn’t just about your subject. It’s about being able to manage your time, work as part of a team, and motivate yourself to get things done.
Your personal statement is kind of like a springboard for your interviews. In my interview at Southampton, the interviewer found the fact that I was in the steel pan band fascinating and we spoke a lot about vibrations and earthquakes and music. It’s a way for interviewers to get to know about you.
Of course, your A levels will come into your personal statement too. You’ve already written about what courses you’re taking and how you’ve done in them in the other areas of your UCAS application, but unusual A levels, ones that may seem unrelated to your course, are another thing you can talk about in your personal statement. How exactly does an AS in politics relate to studying geophysical hazards?
Redrafting your personal statement is important. Believe me, you can never have too many redrafts. It’s important to get other people to go over your personal statement too: friends, family, tutor, and subject teachers. Sometimes they can give you conflicting opinions, and you have to decide what you want to do, but it really helps to get an outsider’s view of your statement and tell you what can be added.
Some people say that your personal statement doesn’t matter, but mine was pretty much essential in both my applications. In the first, it got me conditional offers at universities that shouldn’t have been giving me offers considering my grades, and in the second it got me offers for courses I had no relevant qualifications for.
A little bit of tender love and care in your personal statement will not go amiss.
Feature image created by UCAS, used under Creative Commons.
The Ghoul Student 