UCAS 个人自述精要001

 

Writing a personal statement is probably one of the most difficult parts of the UCAS form. Many students won't have done much creative writing since GCSE and even if you have, it's still very hard to write about yourself.

 

We've produced this short guide to try and help you write a personal statement. Just read through it, follow the steps, and you should be ok.

We suggest you have a pretty good idea of what course you want to study before continuing much further with your personal statement. Generally personal statements are quite specific so if you decide to change the course you are applying for you would need to rewrite your personal statement.

Before you start remember this is a "personal" statement - i.e. it's about you, and there is no real right or wrong way to do it. What we've written below is just a guide, and should not be stuck to rigidly. You may find by choosing your own structure, and writing what you want to write about, gives a better picture of yourself to the reader than anyone else can.

UCAS advice

In the advice for applicants book, UCAS give you a short overview of the personal statement. This doesn't really tell you much, but should tell you enough to get you started. You get a description of the personal statement, a list of bullet points of information you want to include and some information about printing it. You may also find you college or school gives you some additional information. If you think this information is enough to go on, and your statement is already forming in your mind then you can stop reading here and get on with your statement!

Aims of the Personal statement

Many universities don't interview applicants, so the only information they have about you is your UCAS form. Most of the UCAS form only contains your details, the bits the universities are interested in is your grades, your references and your personal statement. The personal statement is the only bit you really have control over, so this is your chance to present a good image to the admissions tutor, even if your grades don't really reflect that image.

If you are applying to an oversubscribed university course, and everyone applying is likely to have good grades, the personal statement is the only thing that tells you apart from other applicants, so you want to try and make yours as good as possible.

When the admissions and subject tutors look at your personal statement, they are likely to be asking two main questions:

1. Do we want this student on this course?
2. Do we want this student at this university?

These can be broken down into a number of easier to answer questions:

· Is the student suited to the course that they are applying for?

· Does the student have the necessary qualifications and qualities for the course?

· Is the student conscientious, hardworking and unlikely to drop out?

· Will the student do their best and cope with the demands of the course?

· Can the student work under pressure?

· Will the student be able to adjust to their new environment at university?

· What are their communication skills like?

· Are they dedicated to this course and have researched it well?

· Do they have a genuine interest in the subject and a desire to learn more about it?

These are the sort of questions you need to answer in your personal statement. Unfortunately you cannot answer them directly, you need to provide evidence and make it sound believable.

Ultimately, admissions tutors are human too, and may well have hundreds of personal statements to shift through, so even if you think you've answered all these questions really well you may still be unlucky. There are other techniques you can use to make your statement stand out and appeal to admissions tutors, but remember they are all different and may have different ideas about what they look for in a prospective student. Some of these techniques are discussed in the personal goals section.

Notes about yourself

Now you have some idea of why you're writing a personal statement you need to think about what you're going to write in it. You don't need to start thinking about the wording or structure yet, just get down some ideas of the things you think you could put down.

The best way to do this is to use a set of headings and write bullet points about how you relate to these headings. Here are some headings to think about.

What you want to study at university and why

· Specific aspects of the courses that interest you

· Examples of coursework you have completed

· Practical work you have enjoyed

· Things you have read related to the subject area

· Work experience or voluntary work in this area

· Conferences you have attended

· Personal experiences which lead to the decision to take this subject

· Where you hope a degree in this subject will lead

Experiences that show you are a reliable and responsible person

· Part-time job

· Business enterprise

· Community and charity work

· Sixth form committee

· Helping out at school events and open days

· Young Enterprise, World Challenge, Duke of Edinburgh award, Asdan Award Debating societies and what you've gained from these experiences.

Your interests and skills

· What you like to do in your free time

· Sport and leisure activities

· Subjects you study which are not examined

· Musical instrument which you play

· Languages which you speak

· Prizes you have won or positions achieved in your interests

Gap year

· Why you're taking a Gap year (if you are)

· Why you want to take a gap year

· What you plan to do

· How this may relate to your course

If you're not taking a gap year avoid this section. If you are it could still be left out, but you may be asked why you're taking it at an interview.

You should now have lots of bullet points about yourself, all of which will be useful in preparing your personal statement. Don't worry too much if you don't seem to have done much off the list, just think about things you've done which show all your good qualities, or could be written as to show your good qualities.

The important thing is that you have a good reason for why you want to study the course, it doesn't matter if the reason sounds stupid at the moment - you can work on the language later. All admissions tutors will be looking for people who are enthusiastic and passionate about the subjects they want to study, so make sure you really are. If you're choosing this course just because you can't think of anything better to do, that's not a good enough reason, and maybe you should consider looking for a course you enjoy more.

Now you've got some ideas together, it's time to think about turning them into a personal statement - almost.

You and your subject

Saying why you want to take your course is possibly the most important part of your personal statement. You can have perfect grades, great extra curricular activities and be a really great person, but if admissions tutors feel you aren't committed to your course, you won't get a place.

Hopefully the notes you have written for the section above have already given you a good idea of what to write about why you want to take your course. If not then you should at least be sure you want to take that subject - writing a personal statement is a lot of work, and you don't really want to get to the end of it and decide you want to study a different subject, so before you go much further be sure you have chosen the right subject for you. Remember you don't actually have to choose the course you want to take yet, just have a rough idea of the subject area or areas you might be interested in.

Now you need to think about exactly why you want to take this subject. Even if you are 100% sure that this is the course for you, you still need to get this idea across to the admissions tutors. If they accept you, you are going to be studying this course for at least the next three years, and you need to convince them that you are committed to it. Have a think about exactly why the subject appeals to you, and write down as much as you can about it. It doesn't matter if you only scribble a few notes, you can modify them before you write the statement, the important thing is you can be sure of the key reasons why you want to take the subject. Write down as many as you can, if you have too many you can always just pick the best. Other than that I can't give you much more advice - only you know exactly why you want to take your chosen course, but bear in mind, if you can't think of any good reasons - should you really be taking that subject?

What if I want to do a joint degree?

There are two options you can use to tailor your personal statement to joint degrees (ones where you take two subjects e.g. economics and politics). You can talk about just one subject which you feel is most important, and not mention the other. This has the advantage that you can apply for two different joint degrees and only talk about the common element e.g. for economics and politics and politics and law, you would only talk about law. If you decide to do this make sure you talk about the qualities you have which show you are suitable for the other part of your joint degree. Alternatively you can just talk a bit about why you want to do both subjects, although the approach you choose will probably depend on how closely related your subjects are.

What if I want to apply for different subjects?

There is no easy way to write personal statements for two unrelated subjects. If the subjects are similar such as maths and statistics or accounting and business studies you may find you can write a general personal statement which applies equally to both courses. If this is the case you many not want to mention either of the subjects by name, and instead talk about the related work that you've already done and how you've enjoyed it.

If your subjects are totally unrelated there is no way you wan write a personal statement which will cover all of them. Instead you need to come up with a statement that gives you the best chance of being accepted. For example if you are applying for one subject at four of your choices and another subject at the other two, you may just want to write a statement related to the subject you chose to study at four universities and either forget about, or change the course at your other two choices.

You also want to consider your predicted grades in relation to the universities you are applying to. Universities which normally make lower offers are less likely to be concerned about a badly targeted personal statement, whereas for universities which make high offers, the statement will be much more important. Try and alter your statement so it is more specific to the universities which ask for higher grades, as this will give you the best chance of being offered places at all your choices.

There will probably be some cases where there is nothing you can do, for example, if you are applying for three totally unrelated subjects each at two different universities. There is no advice which will help in a situation like this, except just to consider whether this is really what you want to do. Even if you do apply for three different courses, you will only be able to study one of them, so if you can try to limit your choices to similar subjects.

Read example statements

Some people may know exactly how they are going to lay out and write their personal statement, but for the rest of us it's a bit more difficult. Even though you now know what you're going to put in your statement, do you know how to make it read well?

The best way to get an idea of how to go about producing your personal statement is to look at some other people's statements. This gives you a chance to see the sort of structure and language other people use, how they explained why they wanted to study their chosen course and also their own interests and abilities.

When you read through statements have your own notes from the section above ready, if you find anything you've done but haven't already thought about note it down. Also after reading lots of personal statements you will be able to judge which ones you think are good or bad, and fine parts of statements you really like or dislike, this will come in useful in the next section.

Hopefully your school or college will give you some example personal statements, but if they don't, there are some personal statements on Studential, and also a list of links to personal statements on other sites. Also if should be easy to find personal statements by searching on Google.

 

 

Personal goals of your statement

Now you've looked at some personal statements, you may have an idea of how you think yours might go. Whether you do or you don't you should have seen lots of statements you do like, and also a few that you don't. Use this knowledge to decide how you are going to write yours. At this stage you don't need to think about structure very much just think about what your are, and what you are not going to do, to give yourself a set of guidelines to follow when writing your statement.

If you still have no idea what I'm talking about here are some example guidelines or goals for a personal statement:

Not sound arrogant and pretentious
I would try not to start any sentences with I
Try and have an interesting phrase to start and finish on
Try not to quote books, magazines or publications and make it sound like I had only read them so I could put them on the statement
Not lie outright and stay as close to the truth as possible

Goals like this give you an idea of things to focus on and think about when writing your own statement. They also stop your statement from looking too much like one of the examples which you might have copied bits from.

Some example goals you may or may not want to use:

Don't try to be funny or make jokes in your statement
Don't start every sentence with I
Don't include your hobbies and interests unless they are relevant
Don't use vocabulary you don't normally use and just looked up in a dictionary
Don't use famous quotes in your statement
Don't repeat things already on your UCAS form
Don't write a list of all your hobbies and interests without explaining them
Don't lie or embellish the truth
Don't say you are going to do something before you come to university
Don't include boring phrases or hobbies which everyone does
Don't take any political viewpoints

 

 

Remember you don't have to have any of these goals as your own. If you think you are really witty and some light humour will go down well in your statement then put it down. These goals are really just ideas you might want to use - remember a personal statement is supposed to be personal and you should write whatever you think will work for you.

Language of the statement

From looking at example personal statements you have probably found some language which you like or think works well. The first thing to remember is don't directly copy any of it - not even a single sentence! The reason is, copying statements is plagiarism, and if an admissions tutor sees a statement they recognise they will probably reject you instantly. You should also not copy single sentences for the same reason, sentences which stick out in your mind, may stick out in the examiners also. It is ok to find a sentence or paragraph which is saying what you want to say and adapt it to fit yourself though.

You need to use language which makes you sound enthusiastic about your courses and an interesting person. If you're still wondering what sort of language to use look at existing personal statements, prospectuses and on the web to find sentences which you think fit your views.

University prospectuses are a good place to look, find your course, see how it is described and see if you can work anything similar into your personal statement. Write down a list of words or sentences you would like to use like this:

to gain greater understanding of the world around you.

sends a signal to prospective employers and graduate schools

students of economics become problem-solvers.

the fact is economics affects our daily lives.

a challenging and diverse discipline

develops analytical skills, quantative skills, research skills

It's interesting and relevant

Don't copy the sentences you find outright, change them or write your own sentence in a similar style. If you can't find any sentences you like try and write your own - it is a personal statement after all.

Structure of the statement

Now it's time to think about the structure of your statement, you should have read lots already, and may have a fair idea about how yours is going to look, but this section should clarify things a bit if you don't.

Most statements are written in an essay format, but you don't have to do yours like this. I wouldn't recommend writing it as one large block of text. Even though you can fit more words in, this just makes it hard to read. You could however use headings rather than write in an essay style. I haven't seen many statements which do this but if you think yours would work better like that then do it.

A starting guideline is to spend half the statement talking about the course and why you want to take it, and spend the other half writing about yourself and your own abilities, though one you get into it this can be easily changed. Another approach is to split up your notes into a few categories and write a paragraph on each category. For example:

Paragraph 1: Introduction to my subject, the parts I'm interested in and why
Paragraph 2: What I had done related to my subject which wasn't on the UCAS form
Paragraphs 3 and 4: work experience and things I had done in school
Paragraph 5: My interests outside of school (also contained my responsibilities)
Paragraph 6: My goal of going to university and closing comment

Again this is only a guideline, and depending on yourself and your course you may want to change things. The last option is to simply find a statement you like and use it as a template. Take its structure and write your personal statement using this structure, being careful that you don't use any of the language mentioned there.

Spend most of your time on the start and finish of the personal statement. A good start will interest the reader and cause them to read the statement properly rather than just scanning it. A good ending will mean the reader remembers what you wrote, and hopefully will recommend you. In my opinion it's a good idea to start with why you want to take your subject, and finish with why you want to go to university or what you want to do next.

Writing the statement

Hopefully you now have your notes ready, you've thought about how you want your language and structure and the goals of your statement. You are almost ready to start writing it, here are a few things to bear in mind before you start.

Remember the aims of a personal statement. You need to show the admissions tutor why you should be accepted on your chosen course at your chosen university. In addition to what you say in your statement, the language you use and the way it is laid out will be judged as well.

Also remember you only have a limited amount of space, but don't let this put you off too much. A long personal statement can easily be trimmed down. It's harder to increase the length of a short personal statement, but if yours it too short don't worry. There is no requirement that you fill the entire space, its better to have a short and well written statement than a long and irrelevant one.

Be positive and interesting, if there is something you are unhappy about, try to portray it in an attractive light. You can find more information about how to write about bad things in your personal statement here (link)

Before you go, have a look at the websites and prospectuses of universities you are applying for, and see if they say anything about writing personal statements. This information would probably be written by the admissions tutors, and would give you a much better idea of what sort of things to put down.

Now you're ready to go. You want to write in a way that is informative, interesting and useful. Along with writing about what you've done, try and explain why you did it, or what you think you learned from it. For example:

I currently have a part time job and this has taught me much about teamwork, responsibility and time management in the workplace.

From this point, you're more or less on your own, so move on to the next section when you've got a complete (draft) statement.

After writing the statement

By now you should have a pretty much complete first draft of your statement. Don't worry if it sounds disjointed, you've missed bits out or it's too long or too short, you can correct things like this later.

First read through what you've written slowly and try to read it from someone else's point of view. Make sure it's easy to read and not confusing, make sure you've said everything you want to say and not under or oversold yourself - if you are confused by reading your own personal statement, it is likely anyone else reading it will be too.

Next get other people to read it, mainly your family, friends, teachers and anyone else who you think will be able to give you a good opinion. As well as checking for spelling and grammar mistakes, they will be able to tell you if they think there is anything you've missed out. Also show it to head of year or career advisers, people like this will have seen a lot of statements, and have a good idea what they should sound like.

You could also get people on the internet to look at your statement, and see what they think. There are many web based communities where you can post your statement or email it to people and they will happily give you advice for free. There is one downside though: if you post your statement on a message board or forum, anyone can look at it, so you may get people who steal parts of your statement.

Hopefully by looking at your statement again and showing to other people you should have a whole bunch of changes to make to your original statement. Before making these changes, save a copy of your original statement so you can go back to it if you need too. Keep making changes, showing people your statement, and making more changes - it's not unusual for people to have done 10-20 drafts (though many do much less) before they are happy with their statement.

Once you've got a statement which reads well, and you are happy with it, it's time to look at the size of it.

 

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