Personal Statement Lab

Students will receive a:

• Copy of our book ‘So you want to go to Oxbridge? Tell me about a banana…’  (packed with the course and college profiles, preparation tips, and guidance on written work )
• Course report (filled with case studies, reading lists, and past interview questions)
• Personal Statement Lab workbook  including notes and information shared during the day)
• Summer action plan to advance personal statement development over the summer

Covering;

• Why universities ask to see a personal statement?
• How it is it used in the application process for Oxford and Cambridge?
• The general structure of an Oxbridge personal statement including tone, style, content and real examples.

Students are divided into the following groups to focus on the main aspects and uniqueness of these personal statement types:

• Medicine, Engineering, and Law
• Classics, Languages and Literature, Humanities and the Arts
• Social and Political Sciences and Economics
• Sciences

Workshops leaders discuss the similarities between the subjects within the groups, the unique academic disciplines and how to tackle these specific themes.

Tutorial Discussion: Why These Questions Will Support The Personal Statement and How To Structure The Subject Specific Statement. As a collaborative activity, students complete a questionnaire related to their personal statement group. Each student will answer 10 questions from their relationship to their subject to how activities at school and current issues impact their subject passion to open their thought process of planning a personal statement. Groups then discuss how to connect the answers from the questionnaire they have just talked through and why each point is important. Following this, groups then discuss how to structure a personal statement, specifically to their subject area. Groups then move on to the importance of tone in a personal statement. The workshop lead will run an activity analyzing a first draft and a final draft of a real successful Oxbridge personal statement. The lead will also then go through hints and tips of editing and revising personal statements down the line, which most students struggle with.  

Students will complete an individual drafting exercise where they write a paragraph they can add in to their personal statement using the information and knowledge they have gained in the morning sessions.

The workshop lead will then discuss the importance of introduction of the personal statement. Then the importance of the personal statement within the interview; The Iceberg Method.  Questions and Close