You've never really experienced procrastination until you've tried to write a university personal statement.
In theory, it should be so simple. Just write a few paragraphs about who you are, and why any university should be delighted to welcome you into its fold.
The reality tends to be a bit different, as your writing ties you up in knots once again, and doing literally anything else seems preferable. Before you know it, your whole uni application is being held up.
Which is what this article is for. Follow the steps here and you really can rattle off a well-crafted personal statement in an evening. Start at 5pm and by nine you can be kicking back on the sofa feeling smug and relaxed.
Sound good? Let's get to it.
Understand the questions (5 minutes)
The personal statement is divided into three questions. Ucas calls these 'scaffolding questions' - they're supposed to help create a framework for your personal statement.
What these questions do is show you exactly what you need to be writing about.
- Why do you want to study this course or subject?
- How have your qualifications and studies helped you to prepare for this course or subject?
- What else have you done to prepare outside of education, and why are these experiences useful?
All three come back to the same thing: you need to answer the question in a way that shows you are right for this course.
So, keep them front of mind while you go through the rest of the steps here. You want to make sure that everything you're going to write is angled towards providing an answer to them.
Check the university websites (30 minutes)
Know your target. Before you write a single word, load up the websites for the universities you’re applying to. A lot of them have admissions statements for their courses, which often include the kind of information they want to see in your personal statement.
As you can imagine, this is pretty handy stuff. Read these pages thoroughly and jot down anything that stands out. While you're there, look back through the relevant course pages. Look out for common themes across all the universities' courses and note these down too. You can address these in your personal statement answers.
Make some (very) rough notes (45 minutes)
This bit should be fun. Fire up your laptop: you're going to start typing without worrying about what you're writing. Ignore your spelling, grammar, character count...none of that stuff matters at this point. These notes are strictly for your eyes only. Try to write at least a page or two.
First of all, write down why you want to do the course – this can be a real brain splurge, just get out anything and everything that could possibly answer this question.
Next, get down anything you can think of that you've done at school or college that connects with your chosen course. And any further learning or research that work has inspired.
Then write down anything course-relevant about yourself: hobbies, interests, books you’ve read, things you’ve done – anything along those lines.
You can write all this in rough, but try to make any examples as specific as possible. Even if it feels like what you’re writing doesn’t have anything to do with the course, it might help jog your memory to something that is relevant.
If you found personal statement advice from your chosen unis in the previous step, jot down a few notes that cover those points, too.
Get writing (two hours)
Now you've got a ton of notes, the first thing is to get them in a logical order. Go through each of the questions and simply group your notes under it.
Once your groupings are all done, it's then time to clean up your writing and link things together. Remember that you’re not writing an essay, so keep it snappy. You want to get straight to the point without wasting any words on flowery language.
As you go, keep checking what you're writing. Each point you make should connect clearly to showing why you are right for this course. If you mention particular qualities or skills you have, use your notes to back them up with specific examples.
Check it over (25 minutes)
Once you’ve finished, read it over a couple of times to make sure you haven’t made any mistakes.
If you have the time, leave it for a day (or at least for an hour or two) before giving it a final check.
Take any feedback you can get from your teacher and let your parents take a look, too. Reading it out loud can also be helpful when it comes to spotting any sneaky errors.
Make sure it’s not too long (15 minutes)
Personal statements are limited to a total of 4,000 characters. If you've written more than that, look through what you've got and strip out any adverbs and adjectives you don't need. You might find quite a few.
If there's still too much, go through each of your points and give it a rating in terms of how well it shows you being right for the course. Once you've rated all the statements, take out the ones that ranked lowest.
And there you go. Misson complete. Great job, and good luck with the rest of your application.
Need more detail? Read: how to write an excellent personal statement in 10 steps
