How to Write a UCAS Personal Statement For The 2024 Entry
Submitting a good personal statement is a normal part of any application to a UK university. This is your opportunity to prove to your admission tutors that you deserve a place on the course.
Your personal statement can be challenging to create when you only have 4000 characters to work with. Understandably, you need to maximise the space that you use by creating something that is well thought out, as well as something that is edited heavily.
Understanding a UCAS Personal statement
Your personal statement is good for showing off your motivations. Obviously, you use something like this as a way of demonstrating both your passion and your plans to contribute to student life. By doing it, this way you can make your application a lot more personal.
Getting Help With Your UCAS Personal Statement
When submitting a UCAS personal statement, you’re going to have to send out an application to 5 different universities without favouring any of them in the application itself.
This is harder than it seems, but the trick is to focus on creating a neutral personal statement that talks about you.
Obviously, if you’re going to write personal statements, you need to know where it is you’re going to study. However, if push comes to shove, it’s not mandatory to know where it is you want to study.
If you’re going to apply to different courses, they need to be somewhat similar. Otherwise, it’s not recommended.
If you were going to apply to study politics at one university, you could apply for international relations at another. As long as the two have some overlap, you’ll probably get away with it. It’ll certainly damage personal statements you try to write.
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Top Tips For Writing a Personal Statement
Let’s take a look at some of our top tips for writing great personal statements.
Use Your Strengths
The best thing you can do is talk about the areas where you’re strong. Use your strengths to your advantage.
Show Enthusiasm
Make sure that you show you are enthusiastic about your course because it does make a difference.
Make Edits
You’ll probably need to make substantial edits to your personal statement before you send it.
This is normal, so give yourself time to make changes after you’ve written it.
Get Feedback From Mentors
The best thing you can do is get feedback on your personal statement before you send it. Speak to somebody you respect and ask them to read it for you.
What Not to Do With a Personal Statement
Obviously, there are things you shouldn’t do with a personal statement. Let’s take a look at some of them.
Don’t Be Cliche
The admissions team will read a lot of personal statements. Don’t be cliche because it doesn’t help you.
Don’t Plagarise
There are a lot of good UCAS personal statement examples out there on the internet. However, if you try to copy them, it will damage your application.
University applications work by using advanced plagiarism tools to capture any cheating applicants. You will be punished.
Don’t Mention Your Grades
Your grades are on your application. The admissions team doesn't care what grades you get in a personal statement.
Be Honest
Don’t try and lie about yourself. You’ll be discovered, and your application will be denied.
Don’t Just Rely on Spell Check
It’s true that you need to use a spellchecker. However, don’t just rely exclusively on the spellchecker to catch mistakes. Read the document yourself.
Don’t Talk too Much
Your personal statement is not an autobiography. Don’t try to turn it into one.
Don’t Be Clever
There’s no point in trying to use big or impressive words to try and prove you are intelligent.
Instead, your focus should be on showcasing your intelligence naturally.
Don’t Be Late
You have plenty of time to write your personal statement.
Don’t leave it till the week before. Make sure you start early to give yourself enough time.
General Top Tips
There are plenty of other things you should keep in mind when trying to write a personal statement.
You should always start by talking about your motivation for studying. Try to keep this neutral and strictly factual.
You should demonstrate anything you have done that shows you’re interested in the course. If you read a book that influenced your decision, talk about it.
You should mention any work experience that you’ve done. Being able to demonstrate you have experience working in your chosen industry will help a lot more with your application.
If you have any meaningful achievements that you want to talk about, then this is important to include. If these achievements are connected to extracurricular activities, the more so, the better.
Finally, wrap your personal statement up by thinking about the impression you want to leave on the reader. Try and finish your statement in such a way that you leave a lasting impression on the admissions team.
Notes on Deferred Entry
If you want to take a gap year and you are applying for deferred entry, make sure you mention this in the statement. The university will want to know what you’re doing with your gap year. There are some subjects that don’t accept a deferred entry, and it’s worth keeping this in mind.
If you’re not sure whether your gap year will work with the course you want to apply to, then you need to check with the course provider. They will be able to give you advice about whether or not you’re likely to be accepted.
Advice For International Students
International students should follow the same principles as UK students but should also be able to explain why they want to study in the UK, and they should also be able to demonstrate the English language skills necessary for study.
Get Help Writing Your Personal Statement
Writing a personal statement isn’t for everybody. If you’re struggling or simply don’t feel confident writing, then contact us. We would be happy to help create a winning personal statement for you using our extensive industry experience.
We can help with writing UCAS personal statements thanks to our experience and can either proof an existing statement or we can craft one for you from scratch while you do something important like go to open days. It’s definitely recommended that you take the time to work with professionals when writing your statement. After all, it’s a big part of your application, so getting it wrong could be catastrophic.