When it comes to completing your UCAS application, the Personal Statement is one of the most important parts to consider.
While your grades show your academic ability and Admissions Tests assess your knowledge and capabilities, a Personal Statement is all about you. Tutors want to see the person behind the application and understand why you’re a suitable candidate for your chosen course.
Although each university will have its own unique way of shortlisting applicants, your Personal Statement is your opportunity to demonstrate your strengths and let your personality shine through.
However, hundreds of thousands of applicants apply for university every year, which is a lot to compete with. As such, you need to stand out from the crowd and really get across your reasons for wanting to study your topic, which can make the prospect of writing one and including all the right things pressurising. To help you, we have written this ultimate Personal Statement guide. Let’s get started.
The Personal Statement Format
The UCAS Personal Statement format is unique from what is seen in many other countries, as well as the system that was previously used in the UK. While applicants originally had to write a single, free-form document explaining why they should be admitted to a university course, this system was replaced with a new structured format that involves answering set questions.
There are three unique questions that must be answered in your Personal Statement. These are:
- 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?
The questions should be answered in this order, although you can write your responses in any order you wish. Each question has a minimum character count of 350, with an overall character limit of 4,000 across the whole Personal Statement.
The Personal Statement is submitted via your UCAS account, where you will have textboxes that your responses can be placed into.
Generally, this format is fairly simple and offers a basic framework for how you should approach your Personal Statement. However, there’s more depth to it than what you may initially think, so let’s now learn how you can approach the writing of your Personal Statement.
How to write a Personal Statement
Your Personal Statement isn’t a long monologue of your life so far, nor a gigantic list of all your achievements. Think of yourself as a storyteller, with each question being a new chapter. The questions are there to help you work from the start and explain how you developed an interest in your chosen subject. Each question builds on the last, so let’s see how you can effectively answer them.
Before You Start
How to get started
Before you sit down to write your UCAS Personal Statement, the first thing we recommend is to research the courses you want to apply for. This will help you prepare your statement as courses vary from university to university, and your content should reflect this.
Bear in mind that you are only able to send one Personal Statement to all your chosen universities, so you can’t overly cater to one. Look at all of the details for each course, including the structure, modules and examination methods, as well as what they’re looking for from a student. This will support your first draft, though bear in mind you’ll redraft it a few times before it’s perfect.
For example, Oxford lists the personal characteristics that they look for in applicants to their Medicine degree:
How many words should a Personal Statement be?
Personal Statements can be up to 4,000 characters long (615-800 words), split across the three questions. The minimum character count is 1,050, as each question has a 350 minimum character requirement.
An equal split of characters between each question may work well, but it’s alright to use more characters in one part of your statement if there’s a lot to cover compared to the other parts. In particular, Question 1 may not need as much space as the others, as excessive writing here won’t be as impactful as the later questions. However, ensure each question gets a good amount of space to prevent weak spots in your writing.
When to start writing it
It’s never too early to start thinking about your Personal Statement and what you’re going to write about. But there is a deadline: October 15th for all Oxbridge courses, including Medicine and Dentistry, and late January for other undergraduate subjects.
Technically, you’ll be preparing for your Personal Statement a long time before you even think about it, as you’ll be building up the experiences that you’ll need to write about. During this time, think about what you want to talk about and how you would want to talk about it. This will help you develop a strong foundation for your plan, which you should aim to start working on during the summer holidays at the lastest.
If you have a lot of other things going on in life, it’s essential that you start as early as possible so that you don’t end up rushing it in the last few weeks. Remember, Oxbridge and medicine applicants have around 3 months less to work on their statements, so take this into account when planning your schedule.
Your Personal Statement is the first thing Oxbridge Admissions Tutors will see about you. It’s imperative you get it right.
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What To Include
Creating a Personal Statement can be a daunting task at first, but the use of set questions allows us to develop a strong backbone for our writing based on what is asked in each questions. Let’s look at each one to see what is recommended to discuss:
Question 1: Why do you want to study this course or subject?
This first question is designed to let students introduce themselves and explain their motivations for studying their chosen course. In essence, this question acts as the introduction to your Personal Statement.
While it may seem that you need to provide a long backstory as to why you’re interested in the subject, it’s not necessary to go into too much detail. Aim to condense this information into one or two impactful sentences that summarise how you got to where you are.
However, this question doesn’t just come down to how you developed your interest. You also need to explain what it is that interests you about your subject and what you plan to do with your education in the future. Again, this will need to be heavily condensed as you may have enough to say here to fill the whole 4,000-character limit!
Key points to bring up in this question include:
- A key moment or person in your life that inspired you to follow this path.
- Details about an area of your subject that specifically interests you.
- Things that you have seen or read that have bolstered your interest further.
- A potential plan for the future once you've completed your education.
The most important thing to remember is that this isn’t the place to write about why you should be admitted onto the course. The next two questions are all about your qualifications and relevant experiences, so this is instead the part of your statement where you explain why you want to study the course.
Question 2: How have your qualifications and studies helped you to prepare for this course or subject?
Question 2 is where you can start to discuss the practical reasons as to why you would be a valuable student at your chosen university. This second part is specifically about your official qualifications, including your grades and any other formal activities you’ve completed that provide evidence for your skillset.
For most students, this question is mostly going to relate to their A-level performance (or equivalent). As your primary qualification, these qualifications are going to play a key part in getting your place at your university, so spending some time in your Personal Statement to explain how you engage with your studies is important.
This doesn’t necessarily mean you should list off all of your achieved grades (your education history is already included in your UCAS application) but instead, explain how you like to work and what skills you have learnt that will be implemented in your university studies. It’s recommended that you discuss your most recent qualification, so avoid going further back in your education (e.g. GCSEs).
This all relates to your actual studies, but you may also wish to discuss your other academic achievements outside of grades. Some relevant points to discuss in this question include:
- How you work within your studies, specifically in relevant subjects.
- Transferrable skills from your studies that will support you in your time at university.
- Additional achievements or roles held in your school, such as being head of house or team leader.
- Formal qualifications achieved outside of school, such as awards in academic competitions (do not discuss other super/extra-curricular activies here).
While this gives you a fairly broad range of topics to discuss, it’s vital that everything you discuss remains relevant to your university degree. You may have performed well in an art competition, but this isn’t going to benefit your Computer Science application as much as you may hope.
That’s not to say that everything you discuss has to directly link to your subject, but everything should include a transferable skill or piece of knowledge that relates to what you’re applying for.
Question 3: What else have you done to prepare outside of education, and why are these experiences useful?
The last question of the Personal Statement is all about your experiences outside of school that relate to your application. There are plenty of things that could discussed here, including:
- Work experience and placements.
- Volunteering experiences.
- Hobbies and clubs outside of school.
- Post education activities (if applying after completing your more recent form of education).
- Personal experience/extenuating circumstances
What you cover in this question is entirely down to you but you shouldn’t aim to discuss all of the above activities. Instead, consider the additional activities you’ve done in preparation (as well as just in general life) and decide which would be the most impactful and relevant to your application.
In this question, more than any other in the Personal Statement, you need to ensure you directly link everything you discuss back to the course you’re applying for. While some talking points have obvious links (e.g. hospital work placement for a medicine application), you’ll likely also have more general experiences to discuss. When discussing these, it’s essential to explain how it is transferable to your subject and how the skills you learnt will benefit you in your studies.
Your Personal Statement is a glimpse into your passion, how keen you are to learn and what you already know about your chosen subject. Through all of these questions, you’ll have ample opportunity to explain how you’ve been preparing for this application and why you’re prepared to enter the university.
Beyond this, writing in a reflective manner is a great way to better express your points and make your Personal Statement stand out. Reflective writing refers to discussing more than just the base-level elements of your experience but also the ways in which they taught you and helped you grow as a person. This shows to the admissions tutors that you not only have learnt a relevant skill but also are aware of why this is important and how it can be translated into other areas.
As an example, let’s say a medicine applicant is discussing how they learnt the process of taking a blood sample during a placement. Instead of just describing what they saw the nurse do, a reflective personal statement would explore more than the act of taking a sample. In this case, the applicant could discuss how the nurse interacted with the patient to reassure them, an essential skill for medical professionals across many aspects of their day-to-day tasks. What started as a simple task now reads as a major learning experience for the applicant, resulting in a better understanding of an essential skill.
When writing your Personal Statement, the quality of your work needs to match that of the top university you’re applying for. If you’re applying for Oxbridge, G5 or any other Russell Group university, you’ll need to be more selective with what you write about so that only the most relevant and impressive things are discussed. These universities are highly competitive and receive tens of thousands of applications each year for far fewer available places, so your writing needs to stand out in order to stand a chance.
When it comes to structuring your Personal Statement, a lot of this work is done for you thanks to the question-based format. However, you still need to ensure your answers flow and don’t unnecessarily use up characters while writing. While you don’t need to plan elaborate introductions and conclusions for each question, it’s still important that it’s easy to read and has a natural start and end point. Despite the shorter length of the expected answers, paragraphs are still important to include in appropriate places.
Personal Statement planning is essential to selecting the best talking points and figuring out the order in which to discuss them. Ideally, each talking point would link to each other in some way so that you aren’t suddenly jumping from one topic to another. That may not always seem possible, but even a loose connection between two talking points goes a long way.
Before writing your own work, it’s helpful to read what successful applicants had previously written for their statements. While most of these examples will be written in the previous, free-form structure for statements, the content features techniques that can translate to your own work. You can find successful Personal Statement examples for many different Oxbridge courses in our Analysis articles:
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Our Personal Statement do’s
1. Show passion for your subject
Admissions Tutors aren’t going to pick a candidate who doesn’t seem particularly interested in their field. Show your passion and eagerness to learn and succeed. Why do you love your subject? Why have you chosen it? What do you find most interesting and why?
2. Talk about you
This is your chance to talk about you, your interests and skills. It’s no good saying you’re passionate if you don’t prove that you are. Write in a natural style to show off your personality, making sure it’s genuine, relevant and specific.
3. Use appropriate language
Re-read your Personal Statement multiple times and check that the content is academic, engaging and clear.
4. Provide evidence to back up your claims
It’s all well and good saying you love medical science, but this is going to fall flat if you can’t back it up. Talk about your school subjects and results, any wider reading and relevant work experience. Perhaps you attended a lecture on your subject — this would be good evidence.
5. Link your activities outside of education to your course
Tell tutors why these activities are relevant and what you have learned as a result. Focus on transferable skills gained too, such as time management or organisational abilities.
6. Spell check and look for grammatical mistakes
Poor spelling and grammar make for a terrible first impression, so ensure you triple-check it’s written to the highest standard before submitting it. More importantly, have someone you trust check through it as well, as a fresh pair of eyes will spot things that you can’t.
Our Personal Statement dont’s
1. Write a clichéd beginning
Don’t waste time thinking of a catchy opening, especially for the first question. The best Personal Statements get to the point quickly, so avoid starting with phrases like “From a young age”, “I am applying for this course because”, and “Throughout my life I have always enjoyed…”. Go straight into why you are interested in your course subject.
2. Use cringe-worthy language and cheap gags
This is not impressive and can indicate that you’re not a serious student. It’s essential you don’t come across as verbose or pretentious too, as Admissions Tutors will spot this immediately. They are well-versed in the ramblings of students who think this tone makes them seem more intellectual.
3. Overcomplicate things
Say what you need to, be specific and don’t waffle too much — you’ll run out of characters fast.
4. Go overboard with extra-curricular activities
Talking about these is good, but the truth is, Admissions Tutors have very little interest in what you do outside of education unless you can find a way to directly link them to your subject.
5. Plagiarise content
You can read Personal Statement examples online for inspiration but avoid copying and pasting them. During your interview, you’re likely to be asked about specific parts of your statement, and if you’re caught off-guard, you’re going to look silly. This could ruin your chances of being accepted. Use a plagiarism detector to ensure your essay is unique.
Excessive use of AI is a similar problem that you should avoid, although it can be used as a helpful tool to support your work. Learn more about how you can effectively and appropriately use AI in your Personal Statement in our dedicated guide.
6. Mention universities or specific courses by name
You can only write one Personal Statement, so it’s the same for each course you apply for. Avoid mentioning specific unis by name or detailing exact specifics of a module, for example. Keep it general.
Now you know what to include in your Personal Statement and the best practices for doing so, we hope you feel more confident writing it. We have plenty of guides and successful personal statement examples to go through in our Free Personal Statement Resources page. Good luck submitting your UCAS application!
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