Top Tips for Great Personal Statement

I’ve been helping students with their Personal Statements for the last 15 years – firstly as a sixth form tutor, then a Head of Sixth Form and UCAS coordinator and now as a private tutor offering Personal Statement support in schools and to individuals. I am also an English teacher, so I can help students make their statements accurate, fluent and engaging.

The first advice I give all students is to start writing your personal statement early – this is not a last-minute job! You should expect to do several drafts before it’s ready to be sent off. Your tutor at school or college should be able to give you feedback on each draft but, if this isn’t the case, this is a service I offer.

Start by jotting down all of the content you would like to include under the question headings – just bullet points at this stage. Discuss this with your family; they know you well and may be able to help remind you of the amazing things you have achieved. I’ve listed below the sort of things you could include in each section:

1. Why do you want to study this course or subject?
   This is where you can show your passion for the subject as well as your existing knowledge. You could include:

• Your motivations
• What (or who) sparked your interest in the subject
• How this subject will facilitate your future plans
• Areas of the subject you have already researched and want to know more about.
• Discuss your supercurricular activities in detail, evaluating what you learnt from the experience. Supercurricular activities include wider reading; relevant documentaries; online courses; your EPQ; competitions you have taken part in; outreach events or public lectures at universities for your subject; relevant podcasts; summer schools; relevant work experience; mentoring schemes with existing students) The key word here is relevant – if it isn’t relevant to the course you’re applying for, leave it out.

2. How have your qualifications and studies helped you to prepare for this course?

Here you should focus on your academic skills, as well as transferable skills such as teamwork, communication and organisation. You could include:

• How your current or previous studies link to your chosen course (stick to the most recent)
• Subjects you have studied that have helped you develop key skills
• Educational achievements relevant to the course
• Education-related activities e.g. creating an academic podcast, writing for a publication
• How subjects have developed transferable skills like perseverance, problem solving, determination and motivation.

3. What else have you done to prepare outside of education, and why are these experiences helpful?
   
   Write about extracurricular activities to show your passion for learning and some of your qualities. Think about why you are including it and focus on the skills gained. You could include:

• Work experience, parttime job, voluntary work, community work
• Personal experiences and responsibilities
• Hobbies, sports clubs or further reading
• Summer school (not related to course)
• Qualifications in music, dance etc
• Competitions you have won
• Positions of responsibility you have held

Once you have completed this initial plan, look critically at what you have written. Is everything relevant? Will it help you stand out for the right reasons? You also need to note any gaps – is one section looking a bit sparse? This is why you need to start early; the summer holidays are a great time to develop your supercurriculars and extracurriculars.

When you are happy with your plan, start writing but, at this stage, don’t give the word limit a second thought. On a Word document, write down everything you want to say – worrying about the character count comes later. When you start to write, don’t just tell the reader what you have done, look at it in detail, focusing on the skills you have acquired or the knowledge you developed. So, rather than writing “I did my Year 12 work experience at a local law firm/primary school”, write “Work shadowing a solicitor enabled me to see first-hand the amount of time solicitors spend researching and drafting legal documents, ensuring attention to detail whilst balancing legal knowledge with strong communication to advise clients effectively…” or “Whilst helping in a primary school, I was able to plan and deliver some activities for a Maths class and learnt the importance of breaking instructions down into child friendly steps.”

As far as you feel comfortable, try to be honest; some of the most memorable personal statements I have read have been where students have been honest about the difficulties they have overcome and how these have motivated them. You also need to be honest about what you have done and read; don’t be tempted to say you have read the whole of ‘War and Peace’ if you only read the first half or, even worse, just watched the film. In an interview, admissions tutors are likely to ask you about things you have mentioned in your personal statement, so false information could lead to a disastrous interview. The same can be said if you read something that you didn’t understand. The rule to remember is ‘Don’t mention it if you can’t talk about it.’ It’s okay to be critical of something you have read or attended but only if you can do so in a constructive way (i.e. what did you not like about it and why) Having said this, do check that the book/lecture/ event was not created by a lecturer at the university you’re applying to!

Once you have included everything you want to, then you need to start thinking about the character count. The new Personal Statement format has the same limit as the previous one (4000 characters including spaces) but there is a minimum character count of 350 per answer. This ensures that you don’t miss out any questions but allows you to include more for some questions than others. If you’re applying for a competitive university or course (Oxbridge, medicine, veterinary science, for example), aim to only use the minimum character count for question 3 and say more for the first two questions.

You need to aim to write as concisely as you can. Concise communication is a useful skill in most careers and situations; it will make you sound professional and keep your reader engaged. There are some tips to help you write concisely below but, if you’re struggling with this, I offer a Personal Statement proofreading service where I can help you stick to the character limit.

How you can reduce your words:

• Don’t include references to things you don’t then develop (e.g. don’t say you participate in a Youth Jazz Orchestra if you don’t then go on to say what you get out of it)
• Don’t include information that is in another part of your application (e.g. the subjects you are studying; your predicted grades)
• Don’t start a list with collective nouns (e.g. “I have participated in a variety of…such as…”; it’s far more concise to write “I have participated in xxx from which I learnt…”
• When referencing something you have learnt in a lesson, don’t write “In my A Level Chemistry lesson” when you could just write “In Chemistry”
• You don’t have to tell them the name of any clubs you participate in or places you work in (e.g. the name of your football team or the café you work in)
• Omit unnecessary discourse markers such as “For example”, “Therefore” and “Furthermore”.
• Use pronouns where you can rather than repeating the name of a subject/book/documentary etc.
• If you have too much to include, you could ask your tutor (or whoever is writing your reference) to include parts of it in their reference instead,

Once you have written a Personal Statement that is the right length, you need to check it really carefully. You may have the most amazing supercurricular experiences and show incredible aptitude for the subject but if your Personal Statement is inaccurate, it will ultimately look as if you didn’t care enough to check it. Read it through several times; read it out loud to yourself (this is a better way to check for poor punctuation); get a relative to check it; get your tutor to check it or use my Proofreading service. I can check one draft for you or as many as you wish to send me.

Can I use AI for my Personal Statement?

A few students have asked me this question recently. There are some ways you can use AI to help; you could ask it to generate a list of ideas or skills that are relevant to your subject, or you could ask it to suggest ways of rephrasing a sentence. However, using it for more than this could be dangerous. The UCAS Verification Team run checks to detect fraudulent applications so, if your statement has been written by a computer (or copied from one of the thousands of example personal statements you can find online), you are likely to be found out and your application may be suspended or cancelled.