Description: Maths tutor Alex shares his tips on writing an excellent personal statement.
Your personal statement is your chance to show that you genuinely care about your subject and have taken concrete steps to pursue your interest in it.
Quality over quantity
Firstly, the more books you say you’ve read, the more books you could be grilled on at an interview. Instead of listing authors or books, critically and thoroughly read around 3 books, and write about what you thought. Anyone can list a series of books, but you can come up with original and critical thoughts on them.
The advice that I received from Durham and Cambridge admissions tutors, and an Oxford graduate, was to pick a topic within your subject and explore it; show your thought process, how what you read developed your thinking and how you further pursued the ideas by reading more.
Don’t talk about your grades
Your personal statement is a chance to sell yourself beyond your UCAS application- admission’s tutors know your grades, so don’t waste space on them. There may be thousands of people with your GCSEs, so use your personal statement to stand out!
Don’t waste too much space on extracurriculars
Conventional wisdom says that if you’re applying to a top university, your personal statement should be at least 80% academic, with a maximum of 20% on extracurriculars. Oxbridge admissions tutors explicitly state that they don’t care about extracurriculars, but they don’t mind you including them as you’re applying to other universities.
Try to relate everything back to your subject, or at least talk about what you gained from your experiences. A great way to do this is to say “through [list of extracurricular activities] I have gained leadership, time management and interpersonal skills.”
Your personal statement is an essay
Use your personal statement to show that you’ve really thought about your subject and to prove your ability to write clearly and critically, especially if you’re applying for a humanities subject. And it goes without saying that the punctuation and grammar should be perfect.
Show don’t tell
Stand out from the thousands of applicants who said that they are “passionate” about their subject, or that it’s “really interesting,” by evidencing your interest. Talk about a specific activity relevant to your subject and your thoughts on it, and why you enjoyed it.
Prove your enjoyment by talking about a follow-up activity. The activity can be reading a book or a paper, completing a course or an EPQ, attending lectures, watching YouTube videos, documentaries or listening to a podcast. It doesn’t matter what you do, as long as it’s relevant and you have something interesting to say about it.
Don’t agonise over the introduction
Intros tend to be generic and they don’t give you much of an opportunity to stand out. If you can’t come up with something original or interesting, don’t be afraid to jump right in.
My personal statement started with “In reading ‘The Unreality of Time,’ I realised that McTaggart’s argument against the B-series is fallacious as it equivocates on the definition of change.” I showed that I had read an obscure academic paper, and had read it closely enough to have critical and original thoughts on it- that’s how I evidenced my interest.
Be prepared to defend what you say at interview
When checking your personal statement put a question mark after each claim and ensure you can defend or expand on it. For example, I was asked what’s the point of my discussions on the philosophy of time.
Consider doing an EPQ
An Extended Project Qualification is a great way to show universities that you have the enthusiasm and independent research skills to succeed there. You’re going to have to do some reading to write your personal statement, so why not get a qualification, (and an AS worth of UCAS points) out of it?
Edit ruthlessly
You have 4,000 characters to show universities that you have the skills and drive to succeed there. If a sentence or a word doesn’t serve that purpose, get rid of it. .
Use a personal statement length checker
UCAS has a limit of 4,000 characters and 47 lines, which it counts differently from Word. You will end up editing your statement by the letter, so use a length checker to check if it’s finally short enough, as UCAS’s system is a pain to use.
By Maths Tutor Alex