Hi, I’m Andrew, currently a chemical engineering graduate at UCL! I decided to start this personal statement guide because I realized over the course of 2 years, checking 10+ personal statements, I’ve been regularly seeing the same mistakes and more often than not, giving the same feedback to my mentees. If you’re reading this, you’re probably on your journey to craft the perfect personal statement that you’ll be proud of and I hope this guide will serve as a rough framework for you to do so.
Disclaimer: This is solely my take on how to write a personal statement specifically for the UCAS application and does not serve as a single source of truth on how a personal statement should look like. Coming from a STEM background, I would advise the humanities students to take this guide with a pinch of salt as it may differ in terms of expectations and requirements.
What is a personal statement?
A personal statement should be a statement to demonstrate your curiosity and passion towards the course that you are applying to. What it SHOULDN’T be is a lengthy passage on how knowledgeable you are on the subject. Often, I find myself having to edit out line after line of my mentee’s first draft just because it went into a deep dive on the explanation of a specific topic. While it’s important to show you did research on topics beyond your curriculum related to your course, do it with full conscious that you’ll be able to relate it back to the subject you are applying to.
Always remember, the university is not concern about the extent of knowledge you have, they will have experts covering those contents over the next 3 or 4 years. What they are looking for is a thirst for knowledge with constant intellectual curiosity that would enable you to thrive during your time in university.
Structure
Now we’ve gotten the definition of a personal statement out of the way, let’s begin with structuring! This aspect is often overlooked by many students as I tend to see a trend of including many paragraphs with different proportions of lengths. You want each paragraph to be relatively the same in length while maintaining a cohesive flow as you move from one paragraph to the other. In case you are struggling to structure it, I always like to follow these five paragraphs answering the key questions as shown:
- What triggered your interest in the subject?
- What have you done further to learn more about the subject?
- What activities did you participate to demonstrate your passion for the subject?
- What extra-curricular activities did you participate to hone the soft skills that are important to your course?
- With a degree in this subject, what do you hope to achieve?
Let’s go a little deeper to what I mean in these respective paragraphs.
- What triggered your interest in the subject?
Start off with something light! It doesn’t have to be too technical; it could even be something relatable in your everyday live that you observed. The example I wrote when I was applying was observing how nasi lemak packaging was water and oil proof then relating it to how chemical engineers played an important role in this innovation. What is important here is your ability to relate that observation back to the subject. As we move on further in this section, you will be constantly
reminded to relate your content back to your course. This goes to show how important this aspect is in a personal statement and is also a crucial point that most of my mentees miss. - What have you done further to learn more about the subject?
Showing the slightest initiative to learn more about the subject goes a long way! Whether it’s reading a book (beyond the curriculum) or attending a conference, these are great things to talk about to demonstrate your interest in the subject. The objective of this paragraph here is to validate your interest in the subject ensuring that this course will be the right course for you. It should ideally convey what you did. Why did you find it so interesting, how is this career important in the subject and the correlation back to the course that you are applying to. - What activities did you participate to demonstrate your passion for the subject?
Now we are getting into the meat of the personal statement. I’m sure you would have done a lot of activities surrounding the course you are applying to. Pick a few that you are most comfortable and proud to showcase. If you’re applying to top universities (e.g. Cambridge, Imperial) that require additional interviews, this would be the part where they might scrutinize you on, so its important that you feel comfortable talking around it. A tip here is not to get bogged down with the details! Explain what you did, how you did it, what was so interesting about it and again, relate it back to your course. - What extra-curricular activities did you participate to hone the soft skills that are important to your course?
Many people tend to keep this part rather brief thinking it wouldn’t be much benefit since its indirectly related. My advice would be to pick a few traits that are relevant to the course you are taking and use extra-curricular activities to show you have them. Try to quantify your impact here, (e.g. led a team of X to do Y events) and focus on the outcomes/ results of it. - With a degree in this subject, what do you hope to achieve?
So you’ve come to the end of your personal statement, so what? This paragraph ideally should allow you to express what you would like to achieve with a degree in this subject. Some ideas to help you think around this is to what sort of profession would you like to be in? Could be in research or industry? The communities you see yourself impacting with the knowledge you’ve gained from this course.
Content
The next part comes the content of the personal statement. Say you have picked an experience or something to talk about in your personal statement. It is more important to get through the why’s and your opinion around it than the details. Tell the reader what you did briefly, what you had learned from it, why did you find it so interesting, and most importantly the relation it has to your course and the potential it has in the future.
Common content from mentees
I’ll also be going over some content that are commonly included by students and my thoughts around it.
A-Level subject choices
While good subject combinations to the course you are studying towards demonstrate your passion and interest, I find it to be a waste of space. Like other students who are applying, they would be taking similar subject combinations and it wouldn’t be wise to exhaust your limited characters on taking XYZ subjects in A-levels, hence making you a suitable candidate for the subject. You would also have to consider some courses like engineering does not directly apply the subjects taught in A-levels like chemistry, physics and math, instead it applies the knowledge of these subjects to solve problems. (E.g. An explanation of taking chemistry, physics and math making you a suitable candidate for engineering wouldn’t make you very outstanding in your application.)
Internship experience/ Job shadowing
This is one of the few contents that really sets you apart from the other candidates. Not many students would have the opportunity to intern or shadow during their A-Level tenure and an experience like this will show genuine interest in the subject. Just remember to relate it back to your course and don’t get too caught up in the details.
Being one dimensional around a theme throughout entire personal statement
I have seen students explaining 1 theme in great detail throughout the personal statement, from going to a conference then reading up more and even doing an internship at the very end. At first glance, it seems very cohesive covering the end-to-end journey on validating your interest in a career of that choice, however it lacks character to the personal statement. I am not able to gauge the candidate holistically and I feel like you’re not able to show yourself completely taking this approach. This is why it’s important to include ECA to show what kind of person you are outside of academics.
Multiple mentors editing on your personal statement
As you engage with multiple mentors giving feedback to your personal statement, there may be times where they give different and contradictory advice. It is down to your judgement on which style you would like to follow. There is no right or wrong to this. Just be smart about it and write what feels comfortable to you.
Sympathy in Personal Statement
Unfortunately, there is no sympathy or pity when evaluating your personal statement. Although it may sound like it develops maturity for university, the UK personal statement application is not influenced by this. You can save yourself some words by just getting straight to the point rather than telling a sobbing story.
I hope after reading this guide, you’ll be able to have a clearer picture on how a personal statement should look like! All the best in your application journey and feel free to reach out for further advice or guidance!
Written by:
Andrew Wong, chemical engineering graduate @ University College London
(andrewwong2028@gmail.com)
CollegeLAH 