HOW TO ACE THE UCAS PROCESS#4: PERSONAL STATEMENT
Part 4 of my UCAS series! I’ve been through this process over the past 10 months or so an I’ve now got 5 offers so I thought I’d give some advice to make the UCAS process as easy as it can be. My last post was about filling in the UCAS form and I thought there needed to be a separate post just about the personal statement as it’s quite a task.
Writing a personal statement can seem very intimidating at first but once you have it started it’s not too difficult. It can be a maximum of 47 lines and 4000 characters - it’ll depend on your writing style as to which one you hit first, mine was the line limit. Here are some of my tips:
1. Don’t apply to courses with content that is too different.
The personal statement you write will be sent to every university you apply to. Don’t be that person who applies to English and French at different universities because when the English department reads a personal statement gushing about French it’s going straight in the bin regardless of how good it is. If it is absolutely impossible to choose the same course/very similar courses everywhere then you’ll have a hard choice to make as you don’t want to appear to be indecisive to the admissions tutors.
2. Write down everything you have done in the past 2/3 years that is relevant to the course you want to study.
This really helped me actually. My tutor told me to write a list of everything I’d done because at first I thought I had nothing to write. Think about any books you’ve read that relate to your subject. Have you researched anything you found particularly interesting? Did you go to a talk or on a trip somewhere relevant? Have you been on a summer school? Try to make at least 80% of it relevant to the subject you want to study.
3. Write down a list of qualities that make you suited for the course.
Are you dedicated and skilled at essay writing? Do you have a logical mind? Are you curious and eager to learn? Think about personal qualities and skills and don’t be too modest. You are selling yourself. Avoid words like ‘quite’ and ‘slightly’ as they waste space and imply you aren’t certain or could be better. If you really struggle, ask a family member or friend to describe your best qualities.
4. Don’t write the introduction first.
Start with a middle paragraph - maybe something about stuff you’ve done/read. This will ease you in to the writing style. Also, expect to make multiple revisions before you have a final draft - my introduction had many different forms before I decided on it and sent it in.
List of Things you should AVOID:
More than one quote - unless it is very important, don’t write more than one line of quote. It is your personal statement not Martin Luther King’s.
Spelling or grammatical errors. Get at least one person to fully proofread it for spelling and grammar mistakes as you can’t always rely on Microsoft Word. A subject teacher would be good as they can also make suggestions as they’ve probably read many personal statements for that subject.
“Passion”. It’s overused. Instead show the admissions team examples of your interest in the subject.
Humour is a bad idea as you can’t predict the sense of humour that it’ll be read by. If you get off on the wrong foot it can put the whole application in a bad light so it’s not worth the risk.
“I’ve been interested in … since I was born” or words to that effect. This is blatantly a lie. You weren’t interested in it since you were born unless the subject is eating, sleeping or crying. As I said previously, humour is not needed.
Lying. Don’t bullshit on a topic you haven’t really read about. You never know, the person reading it could be an expert. Also, if you get called to interview they may ask you on it and they’ll expect you to be able to answer about whatever you mentioned. Just don’t.
I really hope this helps! Don’t be too terrified as it’s not as bad as it all appears at first. So far in the series there has been:
There’ll be a post on Predicted Grades next, in the next few days or so. Good luck in your applications! Please share this to help others out too x
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