A Beginner’s Guide to the UCAS Personal Statement

What Should I Include?

It’s called a personal statement but that doesn’t mean Admissions Tutors want a complete timeline of your life from childhood. They want to see the best side of your academic self, your passion for the course and subject you are applying to and an overview of your academic achievements that are relevant to your subject. Below, we outline the best things to consider including in each of the three sections of the Personal Statement:

Question 1: Why Do You Want to Study this Course or Subject?

UCAS Guidance: Focus on your motivation, knowledge, and future plans

Key Points to Address:

1. Identify Your Spark
   • Pinpoint a moment or experience that truly ignited your passion— something genuine and personal.
   • Instead of saying “I’ve always loved biology,” bring the reader into a specific memory (e.g., a vivid frog dissection or an intriguing documentary) to show your enthusiasm.
2. Demonstrate Depth of Interest
   • Discuss super-curricular activities (e.g., online courses, academic programs, subject-related clubs) that reflect your intellectual curiosity.
   • Show you’ve engaged with resources and can evaluate them rather than simply listing them.
3. Connect to Future Goals
   • If you have career aspirations, illustrate why this course prepares you for that path.
   • If you’re undecided, talk about how the skills or knowledge from this subject will help you discover or shape a meaningful future.
4. Show Curiosity, Organisation, and Independence
   • Reflect on any experiences where you pursued reading, research, or exploration beyond the classroom.
   • Indicate how this curiosity is self-driven and how you organise your time or focus to explore these interests in depth.

Question 2: How Have Your Qualifications and Studies Helped You to Prepare for this Course or Subject?

UCAS Guidance: Show evidence of relevant skills and knowledge from your formal education.

Key Points to Address:

1. Relevant Coursework or Projects
   • Highlight subjects, modules, or topics that map directly to your desired course. E.g., a unique history project if you’re applying for politics, or a statistical analysis module if you’re applying for economics.
   • Go beyond naming them: reflect on how they shaped your thinking or skills.
2. Transferable Skills
   • Emphasise aptitudes like critical thinking, problem-solving, time management, and research capabilities.
   • Crucial: Link them to your readiness for university-level study. For example, if you completed an EPQ, talk about how it taught you to form a research question and follow through with methodology.
3. Achievements in Context
   • If you mention a competition or award, integrate it naturally: “Through preparing for the UKMT challenge, I developed my logical reasoning skills, which I’ve since applied to complex chemistry problems.”
   • Focus more on the impact on your thinking than on the award itself.
4. Reflect, Don’t Just List
   • Simply listing books or achievements does not demonstrate intelligence - your commentary, critique, or creative insights do.
   • Use your experiences to show that you question theories, connect concepts, and generate new ideas.

What Else Have You Done to Prepare Outside of Education, and Why are these Experiences Useful?

UCAS Guidance: Focus on the activities or experiences beyond formal study that demonstrate your suitability and motivation for the course.

Key Points to Address:

1. Super-curricular Exploration
   • This is your most important point to address through all of your personal statement because it evidences your motivation.
   • Lectures, MOOCs, podcasts, articles, books, documentaries - any self-directed exploration that advanced your subject knowledge.
   • Reflect on what new questions arose from these activities, and how you engagement with them, not just that you completed them.
   • Remember that universities want to see you know what you’re getting yourself into, so make sure that you are not just sticking to the introductory overviews, and that you’re also looking at material which might be typical of an undergraduate syllabus.
2. Work Experience, Volunteering, or Employment
   • Talk about the skills you gained (leadership, communication, empathy) and how these relate to your course. For example, volunteering at a hospital might have amplified your compassion and problem-solving skills - essential for a prospective medical student.
   • You can also leverage these experiences in an academic direction. A week in a law firm may have shown you how legal principals are applied in practice, and the ambiguous nature of applying certain legislation to real-life circumstances.
   • Remember that work experience is only useful insofar as it relates to the skills and qualities which your course is looking for. Always ask yourself – will this piece of evidence about me make me a stronger student for this course?
3. Extracurricular Achievements
   • Sports, music, debate clubs, or drama can all reveal qualities like teamwork, creativity, and resilience.
   • Keep the focus on how these experiences support your academic or career aspirations, and remember to keep these succinct – universities are mostly focused on your academic potential and motivation.
4. Personal Responsibilities and Life Challenges
   • If you care for a family member or overcame a personal hurdle, show how you developed resilience, empathy, or independence.
   • Link these qualities meaningfully to the demands of university study (e.g., maturity, organisational skills).

How Do I Include These Things?

It is incredibly important that you do not simply list these experiences and achievements, but ensure that you explain how they have impacted your learning and added to your motivation and preparation for the course to which you are applying. With each experience, resource, or work you mention, you should demonstrate how your reading and experiences have expanded your knowledge and developed your interests and understanding of your chosen subject.

Relevant extra-curricular activities and achievements should also get a mention in the third section, how much space you dedicate to this section is dependent on the university you are applying to. For students applying to Oxford, Cambridge or other top UK universities, extra-curricular activities should be kept to a footnote mention with a greater focus on your academic achievements. When extracurricular activities are mentioned, as discussed above, you should ensure that the focus is kept on the skills they have given you and which can be used on the given university course.

For example, if you mention a specific lecture you went to, perhaps delve into the particular aspects of the lecture that you found interesting, and how you researched this in further depth in your own time afterwards. Be very specific in your personal statements: mention theories, the academics who espoused them, and, most importantly, your thoughts and ideas. Remember that no academic is above critique, and you are very much encouraged to share your personal thoughts (provided they are well-researched). This is the best way of showing you have engaged with the material you are reading at a good depth.

What Should I Avoid?

Your personal statement is submitted alongside your UCAS form, so there is no need to rehash or revisit certain details such as your A-Levels or GCSE grades. Avoid mentioning anything that is readily available to the Admissions Tutors and instead, use the space to focus on selling your own subject interest and dedication.

Try and keep your personal statement as academically-focused as possible. It is possible to include your captaining of the school rugby team to a championship win, or the Merit you received in your Grade 7 flute exam, but think carefully about how relevant this is to your overall application before devoting valuable words to explaining it in detail.

Aim to remain positive in your personal statement as you are selling your achievements and showing off why you are going to be a good choice for the university, so you should avoid using this space to explain potential disagreements that influenced your grade or reasons behind extended periods of leave.

If there is further information that you feel is beneficial for the Admissions Tutors to know, you should talk to your teacher about including a note in the reference section of your UCAS form. Admission Tutors prefer to read this from the teacher’s point of view, and it ensures you can use your personal statement space for the things that matter – the achievements, interests and eagerness that universities are looking for.

How Do I Start?

Starting a section in the personal statement can be done in a million ways and is often the part that many students get stuck on. There is no correct way to start your writing, some applicants choose to begin with a quote that is relevant to their interests while others open with an anecdote that provides insight into where their curiosity for the subject has come from.

How you open will set the tone for the rest of your personal statement, including establishing your enthusiasm and interest in your subjects and providing the Admissions Tutor with an introduction to your personality. Never use someone else’s words or pretend to be someone else in your personal statement, the Admissions Tutors will quickly see through this and with only a short space to express your true academic self, you don’t want to waste space on other’s content. We recommend speaking as though you were speaking to your headteacher, in a clear, mature tone that retains a sense of who you are as an individual.

How Do I Finish?

Finishing a section or the personal statement as a whole can be as hard as finding the right words for your introduction. The final paragraph doesn’t have to be long or expansive, but simply enough to round off your statement and summarise your interest and dedication to your chosen subject. This part may need some reworking after 4,000 characters of blowing your own trumpet, so get plenty of feedback to avoid getting carried away and coming across too arrogant or self-assured in your outro!

Remember that a ‘big finish’ is not really required, since you should have convinced the admissions tutors sufficiently in the previous paragraphs. Always be sincere, genuine, and try to summarise the motivation you feel personally to study your chosen subject. Honestly will always shine through!

Some Final Top Tips

• Honesty: NEVER suggest knowledge you don’t possess, or refer to a book you haven’t read.  By mentioning something in your personal statement, you are inviting the interviewer to bring it up in interview. Ensure you’re prepared for this possibility.

• Style, Tone & Language: Try to make the statement as fluent as possible. You want the admissions tutors to see that you can write with clarity and precision.  This does not mean however that you should get someone else to write it for you. While you would be hard pressed to find an admissions tutor who truly believes that a personal statement is the exclusive work of a student, it’s essential that the style, language, tone and vocabulary are your own. Only include words and phrases that you would be comfortable using at interview. At the same time, do not be too informal: making jokes is dangerous and likely to strike the wrong note, sound over-confident or fail to impress. And beware of overusing superlatives. It is believable that you are ‘fascinated’ and ‘committed’ to your subject, but not ‘completely fascinated’ and ‘utterly committed’.

• Too much tinkering… Getting the personal statement right takes a good deal of time and effort. The process of redrafting is important, but at the same time you need to know when to stop. Many a promising statement has been spoiled by excessive and often, last minute meddling.

• A second pair of eyes: Editing and re-editing a piece entirely about oneself can become exhausting, and it can become difficult to tell what should and shouldn’t be included, and what does and doesn’t make sense for someone else to read. We recommend giving your statement draft to a trusted parent, guardian, family member, teacher, friend, or anyone else who can read through and give you honest appraisal on the clarity of your writing.