Personal Statement - Management 4

Why do you want to study this course or subject?

Having seen my father start a business when I was young, I have grown up in an environment where entrepreneurialism is an integral part of everyday life. Being involved with his company from a very young age, including extensive work experience there, I feel that I have gained a real insight into both the hardships and rewards that come from managing a business. My father never had formal business training, and in hindsight this might have helped him avoid some pitfalls. I am keen to go into the world of business too, aiming to start my own company one day, and so I decided a degree in Management would be right for me. As well as providing a great foundation for a career in business, I particularly relish the diversity of the subject, from fundamentals like accounting and finance to specialist areas like economics and psychology. Psychology plays a major role in modern society and is something I have recently become particularly interested in; I have learnt a lot through a friend's Pre-U Psychology textbooks as well as by reading books such as "Blink".

How have your qualifications and studies helped you to prepare for this course or subject?

Knowing that I wanted to pursue a course in Management, I chose my A-level subjects to provide a broad base of skills, from analysing and presenting data in Physics to essay writing in Economics. Studying Economics at A-Level and reading books such as "The Undercover Economist" and "Freakonomics" have given me an appreciation of what an important role the subject plays in the modern world; from a farmer's income depending on the demand for their crops to governments maximising their revenue in wireless spectrum auctions. I hope to expand my knowledge further through the many economics modules that make up a Management degree course. I have found studying Statistics as a part of Maths A-level very interesting. It is becoming increasingly important to be able to be able to find patterns and logic in seemingly random data in this age of information, and I have enjoyed being able to do this having learnt about different statistical techniques. Although my school do not officially offer it, I have also been teaching myself Decision Maths aiming to take the exams this year. I felt this both complements the statistics that I have learnt, and also gives me an advantage when studying as it assists logical thinking. This experience of independence has forced me to develop effective time management and self motivation techniques, something which helps me both in other subjects and in my life outside of school, as well as making the transition to university work a lot easier.

What else have you done to prepare outside of education, and why are these experiences useful?

Running my own venture buying and selling items on eBay has helped me develop my communication skills dealing with both customers and suppliers. However I found it increasingly frustrating trying to find appropriate items to buy due to the available search options lacking the precision that I needed. Noting that there was nothing better on the market, I developed a new search engine for use with eBay with my own ranking algorithm. The aim was to make the undervalued items more prominent whilst relegating irrelevant items. My search engine has won awards from several mainstream websites and is now used by many people on a daily basis. Running the website has given me a great appreciation of online promotion and marketing. This task required me to learn several new programming languages and to analyse a market which I knew little about.

As a keen cyclist, I spent most of the summer planning, training for and taking part in a 1000 mile cycle ride from Land's End to John O'Groats, raising over GBP 4000 for a local children's hospice. Completing this challenge helped me prove to myself that I could be determined enough to carry on working towards a goal through even the toughest of conditions.

I believe that a Management course would give me all the necessary tools which are vital for a head start in business, whilst still being equally applicable to the challenges of daily life.

Universities applied to:

• LSE (N203 BSc Management)
• Manchester (N2T7 International Business Management with American Business Studies)
• KCL (N200 BSc Management)
• York (N200 BSc Management)
• Warwick (N200 BSc Management)

Grades achieved:

• Maths (A2) - A
• Economics (A2) - A
• Physics (A2) - A
• Further Maths (AS) - A
• 6A* + 4A GCSE

How personal statements have changed?

The current personal statement format, with three 'scaffolding' questions, was introduced by Ucas in September 2025. This personal statement was submitted before then, using the old essay-style format. It has been carefully edited into the three-question format, with all of the original wording kept.

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