Many students have the same or similar high school grades, so how do they choose colleges from the hundreds of people applying for their courses when they don’t know any of these people? The personal statement helps with this process.
What is a personal statement?
A personal statement is basically information about you, but it helps admissions staff decide if they want to offer you a place on a specific course at their university. All colleges have a certain image and look for more than just your high school grades; they want to know if your personality, attitude and life experience will “fit” their university.
Think of it like a job application. When you apply for a job, you should write a personal statement that tries to persuade the company that you are the best person for the job. In the same way, the personal statement is meant to persuade colleges that you are the kind of student they want.
So how do I know what colleges want?
Start by reading about the university, the major you want to study and the “admission profiles”, as these will give you information about the type of student the university is looking for. Colleges want the truth too so don’t lie about your abilities and they want you to write so don’t ask someone to write the personal statement for you. Some areas to cover include why you want to study this subject, what your future career plans are, what you do in your free time, what skills you have (academic and non-academic), what is interesting and/or different about you.
Then find some resources for writing personal statements and get some tips.
There are many websites that will offer advice on writing a personal statement, but it is best to look for reputable organization websites such as UCAS or widely used student advice websites such as The Student Room. Remember to ask your teachers, friends and family for advice. A good question to ask them is “what do you think makes me different from other people?” or “how would you describe me?” because the answers often give you interesting information that you hadn’t thought of. The personal statement is not something you can write quickly, so be prepared to think a lot about yourself, your qualities, skills, experience, likes and dislikes.
Okay, I’ve done a little research and thought a lot, now what?
Write down some ideas and themes that you think are relevant and then expand on them in sentences and paragraphs. Then show your personal statement to as many people as possible for feedback and advice, and write it over and over again until you’re happy with it. Always read it with a critical eye and imagine that you are the admissions officer for your chosen course and ask this question:
Would you give him a place in this course after reading his personal statement and WHY?
What should I focus on if I am an international or EU student and English is not my first language?
In some ways you are very lucky because your high school experience, hobbies and life experience will already be different to many UK/home students so you should build on this in your personal statement. But we must also make 2 things very clear. Firstly why you want to study in the UK and secondly you need to prove that your level of English is good (usually IELTS 6.0 or higher). It is no good having IELTS 6.5 if your personal statement is full of grammar and spelling errors. But DO NOT pay to have someone write your personal statement on one of the many websites that offer this service. If you have IELTS 6.5, you are not a perfect native English speaker and universities may reject your application if they suspect it is not your writing.
Read and listen more
The links below give you more tips, but keep in mind that the tips are not the same for every college, which shows why you need to research colleges and subjects to match your personal statement to the requirements.
http://www.dur.ac.uk/undergraduate/apply/personalstatement/
http://www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/undergraduate_courses/finding_out_more/podcasts/third_episode_the.html
Remember to use the Target English forum to ask for advice on different UK universities.
