Guide to Personal Statements

1. Guide to Personal Statements James King

2. When Should I Write my Personal Statement? • “Early bird catches the worm” a statement that certainly resonates when writing your personal statement. The Guardian (2012) reported 540,073 student applications for the term beginning September 2012. Therefore your personal statement needs to set you apart from the crowd. • Of course these figures are representative of the UK as a whole, but individual courses may be more competitive than others. The key to writing a goo statement is to spend time on it! • Don’t leave it to the last minute, and bear in mind that they can take a couple of weeks to complete, so leave plenty of time.

3. How Long Should a Personal Statement be? • Technically, there is no actual world limit – instead this has been replaced with a maximum of 37 lines or 4000 characters. Therefore, your personal statement needs to make an impression.

4. How do I start Writing my Personal Statement? • Anything worth doing, is worth doing right – exactly the sentiment that you should adopt when writing your personal statement. Too often prospecting students don’t do the research or even any preparation prior to writing a statement. • The main things to think about are: • Why have you selected the chosen course? • How can you demonstrate that your skills, interests and experience prove that you are passionate and committed to your selected course?

5. Barrier to Entry • A major barrier that people come up against is writing positively about themselves; similarly a very common problem when writing a CV. • Be honest – honesty counts, but don’t be over ambitious in your writing; think critically about you as a person, and make a note of your strengths and weaknesses. • Forget modesty – when you have identified your strengths make sure that you don’t hold back. Demonstrate your passion, enthusiasm and charisma. • Third person perspective – writing in the third person allows you to think and communicate more objectively about yourself. • If you are finding this particularly difficult, I suggest reading a book on the subject of CV writing.

6. What are Admissions Tutors Looking for? • What admission tutors are looking for varies from course to course, but as mentioned above passion, enthusiasm and skills, are the minimum requirement. The tutors will be asking themselves questions such as: “do we want this particular student on our course?”, “will this student be able to cope with the pressure?” or “would this student be a good fit?” • The idea behind the personal statement is to demonstrate all of these qualities and to give the tutor a feel for your personality. • Research the culture of your chosen college or university, the departments and the staff. Look at their social media including - LinkedIn. If you can identify the particular tutors who will be making the deciding vote, connect to them, open the conversation identify yourself. This will make an impression and demonstrate that you are keen and committed.

7. What's the Most Important Part of the Personal Statement? • Well this is very subjective in nature and I would recommend that your entire personal statement should be a compelling read. • In reality this may not always be the easiest achievement. Arguably the trick is to open with a great statement and end with a summary of the key points. • A compelling first statement will ensure that the reader does not just skim the rest. Put yourself in their shoes, they have potentially hundreds of statements to review: mundane task to say the least. A good positive ending will ensure that the reader remembers you and this is your chance to reiterate and reinforce your message.

8. How do I Write a Statement for Two Different Courses? • Simply there is no easy way to do this, your motivations will be ultimately different, but there is one saving grace. If the courses are inherently similar you may be able to overlap and relate your skill in a general manner. • Although possible, I would recommend not doing this. Unique and relevant content is always the best way forward.

9. Should I talk About What I Want to do After University? • This is a possibility, although it does require a lot of thought and furthermore; research. If you are sure about what you want to do though, then yes go for it. If you are on the fence with no clear direction then I would leave it out for the time being.

10. How should I Structure my Personal Statement? • The most common format for a personal statement is essay format. Commonly starting with what course you have selected, why you have selected it and then relevant work and extra-curricular activities. • As a rough give try split the statement 50/50 between discussing the course and why your suited. The other 50% should be dedicated to any relevant work experience or activities that would highlight you as a suitable candidate.

11. Extra Curricular Activities • Is it worth doing loads of extra-curricular activities to improve my personal statement? • In a word - no. Bolstering your extra-curricular activities to make your personal statement more interesting may actually have the opposite effect. Often if people are taking on lots of activities then it appears as though they are spreading themselves too thin! • Again this comes back to honest, honest is always the best policy. Also you never know what question they may ask you at interview.

12. What Should I do Now I've Written it? • Show your friends, teachers, tutors, peers, parents, aunts, uncles and anyone that is willing to look at it for you. Preferably anyone with a decent knowledge of you and your skillset. • Opinions count and you should always try to get as many opinions as possible, but remember that this is “YOUR” statement and no-one else’s. If you don’t agree with the comments, then don’t include them. • The author of this article, James King is a writes for Apply to Uni and is an expert within the field of university admission strategy. For more in-depth information on writing a personal statement follow the link provided.