Personal Statements: What’s the point?!
Writing a personal statement can seem incredibly daunting, especially if you’re applying to Oxbridge. You’ll often have a seemingly impossible amount of work experience and volunteering to fit into 4,000 characters (although this is more difficult in covid times!).
Oxbridge and medical courses are extremely competitive. They consistently attract the top students from schools, and the universities and colleges then need to be able to choose the very best applicants from an already extremely impressive selection of applications.
Although the personal statement is just one component of your application, and is certainly not the most important component, it is the only thing that provides the admissions tutor with an idea of who you are as a person before they meet you at interview.
It is your opportunity to show your reasons for choosing your subject, your motivation, and your personal skills. It is also your opportunity to set out the key personal qualities and features that you have, which make you stand out against a group of applicants who will all have very similar academic profiles.
Your Personal Statement is your initial chance to sell yourself and explain not only why you have a passion for your chosen career, but also how you will be a valuable asset to their University.
Who sees your personal statement?
Each university (or college, if you're applying to Oxbridge) will have dedicated tutors in your subject, who will assess all the applicants. The people assessing your Personal Statement are highly involved in the teaching of current undergraduates, and will likely be your interviewers and future tutors. This means they have a good idea about the course and community, and a clear understanding of what they're looking for.
Why think about ‘purpose’ when you’re writing?
Fundamentally, because you can't write a good personal statement without it. In the same way that you can't write a good essay without understanding the marking criteria, you can't write a good personal statement without spending a considerable amount of time learning and understanding the reason your personal statement exists.
Your personal statement must answer several key questions about yourself (which we’ll talk about in another blog), and show the admissions tutor why they should pick you. You must develop your own 'admissions tutor hat' - so that you can critically asses your personal statement with the perspective of 'this is important to me (the student), but why should the admissions tutor care?', 'why does this show I'll be a good student?',. 'why would an admissions tutor want me to have this skill?'
Putting this into practice
You will, very soon, be writing list after list of things you've done, and skills you have which you want to include in your personal statement. As you work through this, you should already be asking yourself why an admissions tutor should care about the things you're writing down.
This shouldn't be a process which gets rid of lots of things you want to include - but you should make sure you're always clear on why you want to include them.
"I have done the gold maths challenge every year for the last 5" with no further elaboration, is not a good sentence in a personal statement. Ask the question ‘so what?’ after every sentence. Why should each example be important to them?
