Whenever I think about writing personal statements I remember how hard it was to sit down and decide just what I needed to say about myself to get into university. I looked at a blank sheet of paper for a very long time, not knowing where to start or even why I had to write one! Surely these universities can just look at my grades? That’s the whole point of studying and taking exams!
Ofcourse, personal statements actually play a very big role in how universities select students. If you think about it, all the information that goes into your application is very black and white, date of birth, number of subjects, predicted grades, percentages etc etc. At school and at college, you also study lots of subjects, but for most people you are going to university to focus on one, or maybe just two subjects.
The personal statement becomes very important when a university needs to understand why you want to study a particular course. They will always try to give places to students who are interested in a course and can show that they are passionate and care about their choice. If they only had the statistics, it would be very hard to know why a person wanted to do a particular course.
Because of this, it’s also important that the personal statement talks about the course you want to study, this allows them to see you are prepared to commit and understand what the course will teach you.
For me, another big issue when it came to writing my personal statement was the fact that I had to write about myself. It is not easy to do. If you’re the same as me, the hardest part will be starting to write something, so I’ve listed below 5 tips which might help you.
1. Start with a list
Think about the things you want to say as a list, for example, you might have a list like:
• Mention english coursework
• Include Duke of Edinburgh
• My short story
You can have as many things as you like in the list, aim for about 10-15. If you start with a list, you can usually think of lots of things to talk about.
2. Put your list in an order and prioritise what you want to say
Once you have completed your list, you may find you have a lot of things and some of them are less important that others. Put the list in order with the most important topics at the top (the ones that will help you get accepted for your course) and other less relevant things at the bottom.
3. Write one of two sentences for each of the items in your list
Once you’ve done this you can start writing. Start with simple sentences for each item, saying what it is and why it is relevant or important. You may have more to say about some things than others, this helps to prioritise again as you might change your mind about what is important.
4. Put your sentences together and you have the first draft
Once you’ve written all your sentences, you have a first draft! You’ll be surprised how much you’ve written, so this is the part where you have to start thinking about the whole thing as one block. Remember you only have 47 lines or 4000 characters (which includes spaces!). To check this, you might want to start typing your sentences up (if you haven’t done so already), so you can use your computer to count the characters. Don’t worry if you have to much or too little, now you’ve started writing it will get easier to edit and improve on what you’ve already got.
5. Ask someone to read your first draft
It’s really important that someone else reads the first draft before you make too many changes. This will help you decide where you need to make changes and will stop you from focussing on the wrong things. I asked a teacher to help me, but you might want to ask a family member or friend who knows about personal statements.
After all the stress is over, you’ll find you’re really proud of what you have written, and so you should be! As well as being one of the most important things you write for university, it can also be the most rewarding so push through the barrier and make it happen.
You can get more advice on writing personal statements from the UCAS website.
