UCASpersonalstatementguide1.doc

UCAS personal statement guide 1

Writing a personal statement is probably one of the most difficult parts of the UCAS form. Many students won't have done much creative writing since GCSE and even if you have, it's still very hard to write about yourself
We've produced this short guide to try and help you write a personal statement. Just read through it, follow the steps, and you should be ok.
We suggest you have a pretty good idea of what course you want to study before continuing much further with your personal statement. Generally personal statements are quite specific so if you decide to change the course you are applying for you would need to rewrite your personal statement.
Before you start remember this is a "personal" statement - i.e. it's about you, and there is no real right or wrong way to do it. What we've written below is just a guide, and should not be stuck to rigidly. You may find by choosing your own structure, and writing what you want to write about, gives a better picture of yourself to the reader than anyone else can.

UCAS advice
In the advice for applicants book, UCAS give you a short overview of the personal statement. This doesn't really tell you much, but should tell you enough to get you started. You get a description of the personal statement, a list of bullet points of information you want to include and some information about printing it. You may also find you college or school gives you some additional information. If you think this information is enough to go on, and your statement is already forming in your mind then you can stop reading here and get on with your statement!
Aims of the Personal statement
Many universities don't interview applicants, so the only information they have about you is your UCAS form. Most of the UCAS form only contains your details, the bits the universities are interested in is your grades, your references and your personal statement. The personal statement is the only bit you really have control over, so this is your chance to present a good image to the admissions tutor, even if your grades don't really reflect that image.
If you are applying to an oversubscribed university course, and everyone applying is likely to have good grades, the personal statement is the only thing that tells you apart from other applicants, so you want to try and make yours as good as possible.
When the admissions and subject tutors look at your personal statement, they are likely to be asking two main questions:
1. Do we want this student on this course?
2. Do we want this student at this university?
These can be broken down into a number of easier to answer questions:
· Is the student suited to the course that they are applying for?
· Does the student have the necessary qualifications and qualities for the course?
· Is the student conscientious, hardworking and unlikely to drop out?
· Will the student do their best and cope with the demands of the course?
· Can the student work under pressure?
· Will the student be able to adjust to their new environment at university?
· What are their communication skills like?
· Are they dedicated to this course and have researched it well?
· Do they have a genuine interest in the subject and a desire to learn more about it?
These are the sort of questions you need to answer in your personal statement. Unfortunately you cannot answer them directly, you need to provide evidence and make it sound believable.
Ultimately, admissions tutors are human too, and may well have hundreds of personal statements to shift through, so even if you think you've answered all these questions really well you may still be unlucky. There are other techniques you can use to make your statement stand out and appeal to admissions tutors, but remember they are all different and may have different ideas about what they look for in a prospective student. Some of these techniques are discussed in the personal goals section.
Notes about yourself
Now you have some idea of why you're writing a personal statement you need to think about what you're going to write in it. You don't need to start thinking about the wording or structure yet, just get down some ideas of the things you think you could put down.
The best way to do this is to use a set of headings and write bullet points about how you relate to these headings. Here are some headings to think about.
What you want to study at university and why
· Specific aspects of the courses that interest you
· Examples of coursework you have completed
· Practical work you have enjoyed
· Things you have read related to the subject area
· Work experience or voluntary work in this area
· Conferences you have attended
· Personal experiences which lead to the decision to take this subject
· Where you hope a degree in this subject will lead
Experiences that show you are a reliable and responsible person
· Part-time job
· Business enterprise
· Community and charity work
· Sixth form committee
· Helping out at school events and open days
· Young Enterprise World Challenge, Duke of Edinburgh award, Asdan Award Debating societies and what you've gained from these experiences.
Your interests and skills
· What you like to do in your free time
· Sport and leisure activities
· Subjects you study which are not examined
· Musical instrument which you play
· Languages which you speak
· Prizes you have won or positions achieved in your interests
Gap year
· Why you're taking a Gap year (if you are)
· Why you want to take a gap year
· What you plan to do
· How this may relate to your course
If you're not taking a gap year avoid this section. If you are it could still be left out, but you may be asked why you're taking it at an interview.
You should now have lots of bullet points about yourself, all of which will be useful in preparing your personal statement. Don't worry too much if you don't seem to have done much off the list just think about things you've done which show all your good qualities, or could be written as to show your good qualities.
The important thing is that you have a good reason for why you want to study the course, it doesn't matter if the reason sounds stupid at the moment - you can work on the language later. All admissions tutors will be looking for people who are enthusiastic and passionate about the subjects they want to study, so make sure you really are. If you're choosing this course just because you can't think of anything better to do, that's not a good enough reason, and maybe you should consider looking for a course you enjoy more.
Now you've got some ideas together, it's time to think about turning them into a personal statement - almost.
You and your subject
Saying why you want to take your course is possibly the most important part of your personal statement. You can have perfect grades, great extra curricular activities and be a really great person, but if admissions tutors feel you aren't committed to your course, you won't get a place.
Hopefully the notes you have written for the section above have already given you a good idea of what to write about why you want to take your course. If not then you should at least be sure you want to take that subject - writing a personal statement is a lot of work, and you don't really want to get to the end of it and decide you want to study a different subject, so before you go much further be sure you have chosen the right subject for you. Remember you don't actually have to choose the course you want to take yet, just have a rough idea of the subject area or areas you might be interested in.
Now you need to think about exactly why you want to take this subject. Even if you are 100% sure that this is the course for you, you still need to get this idea across to the admissions tutors. If they accept you, you are going to be studying this course for at least the next three years, and you need to convince them that you are committed to it. Have a think about exactly why the subject appeals to you, and write down as much as you can about it. It doesn't matter if you only scribble a few notes, you can modify them before you write the statement, the important thing is you can be sure of the key reasons why you want to take the subject. Write down as many as you can, if you have too many you can always just pick the best. Other than that I can't give you much more advice - only you know exactly why you want to take your chosen course, but bear in mind, if you can't think of any good reasons - should you really be taking that subject?
What if I want to do a joint degree?
There are two options you can use to tailor your personal statement to joint degrees (ones where you take two subjects e.g. economics and politics). You can talk about just one subject which you feel is most important, and not mention the other. This has the advantage that you can apply for two different joint degrees and only talk about the common element e.g. for economics and politics and politics and law, you would only talk about law. If you decide to do this make sure you talk about the qualities you have which show you are suitable for the other part of your joint degree. Alternatively you can just talk a bit about why you want to do both subjects, although the approach you choose will probably depend on how closely related your subjects are.
What if I want to apply for different subjects?
There is no easy way to write personal statements for two unrelated subjects. If the subjects are similar such as maths and statistics or accounting and business studies you may find you can write a general personal statement which applies equally to both courses. If this is the case you many not want to mention either of the subjects by name, and instead talk about the related work that you've already done and how you've enjoyed it.
If your subjects are totally unrelated there is no way you wan write a personal statement which will cover all of them. Instead you need to come up with a statement that gives you the best chance of being accepted. For example if you are applying for one subject at four of your choices and another subject at the other two, you may just want to write a statement related to the subject you chose to study at four universities and either forget about, or change the course at your other two choices.
You also want to consider your predicted grades in relation to the universities you are applying to. Universities which normally make lower offers are less likely to be concerned about a badly targeted personal statement, whereas for universities which make high offers, the statement will be much more important. Try and alter your statement so it is more specific to the universities which ask for higher grades, as this will give you the best chance of being offered places at all your choices.
There will probably be some cases where there is nothing you can do, for example, if you are applying for three totally unrelated subjects each at two different universities. There is no advice which will help in a situation like this, except just to consider whether this is really what you want to do. Even if you do apply for three different courses, you will only be able to study one of them, so if you can try to limit your choices to similar subjects.
Read example statements
Some people may know exactly how they are going to lay out and write their personal statement, but for the rest of us it's a bit more difficult. Even though you now know what you're going to put in your statement, do you know how to make it read well?
The best way to get an idea of how to go about producing your personal statement is to look at some other people's statements. This gives you a chance to see the sort of structure and language other people use, how they explained why they wanted to study their chosen course and also their own interests and abilities.
When you read through statements have your own notes from the section above ready, if you find anything you've done but haven't already thought about note it down. Also after reading lots of personal statements you will be able to judge which ones you think are good or bad, and fine parts of statements you really like or dislike, this will come in useful in the next section.
Hopefully your school or college will give you some example personal statements, but if they don't, there are some personal statements on Studential, and also a list of links to personal statements on other sites. Also if should be easy to find personal statements by searching on Google.
Personal goals of your statement
Now you've looked at some personal statements, you may have an idea of how you think yours might go. Whether you do or you don't you should have seen lots of statements you do like, and also a few that you don't. Use this knowledge to decide how you are going to write yours. At this stage you don't need to think about structure very much just think about what your are, and what you are not going to do, to give yourself a set of guidelines to follow when writing your statement.
If you still have no idea what I'm talking about here are some example guidelines or goals for a personal statement:
Not sound arrogant and pretentious
I would try not to start any sentences with I
Try and have an interesting phrase to start and finish on
Try not to quote books, magazines or publications and make it sound like I had only read them so I could put them on the statement
Not lie outright and stay as close to the truth as possible
Goals like this give you an idea of things to focus on and think about when writing your own statement. They also stop your statement from looking too much like one of the examples which you might have copied bits from.
Some example goals you may or may not want to use:
Don't try to be funny or make jokes in your statement
Don't start every sentence with I
Don't include your hobbies and interests unless they are relevant
Don't use vocabulary you don't normally use and just looked up in a dictionary
Don't use famous quotes in your statement
Don't repeat things already on your UCAS form
Don't write a list of all your hobbies and interests without explaining them
Don't lie or embellish the truth
Don't say you are going to do something before you come to university
Don't include boring phrases or hobbies which everyone does
Don't take any political viewpoints
Remember you don't have to have any of these goals as your own. If you think you are really witty and some light humour will go down well in your statement then put it down. These goals are really just ideas you might want to use - remember a personal statement is supposed to be personal and you should write whatever you think will work for you.
Language of the statement
From looking at example personal statements you have probably found some language which you like or think works well. The