Before you submit your Personal Statement
UCAS Deadlines are around the corner and our Oxford Campus Officer, Tarun Rao, discusses the most overlooked tips while drafting your personal statements!
UCAS Deadlines for some university courses in the UK are around the corner. In order to best help you with your personal statements, Project Access has compiled a checklist for students to ensure their personal statements are the best they can be before they submit their applications. This checklist is split between basic/common issues in personal statements and more significant/substantive points to note.
Basic issues in personal statements
✔ Check all grammar, spelling, and punctuation
A basic rule, but obvious grammar, spelling, and punctuation mistakes are common in personal statements. Even in an otherwise well-written personal statement, obvious mistakes can give a bad impression to admissions tutors.
In-built spell checkers are there on Google Documents or Microsoft Word. However, these can sometimes fail to catch incorrect words or other contextual mistakes. If possible, use a tool such as Prowritingaid, Grammarly, or Languagetool.
✔ Make sure to use the UCAS website to count your characters
The character limit for a personal statement set by UCAS is 4000 characters. Many word processors (e.g. Microsoft Word, Google Documents) have tools that allow you to see the number of characters in your Personal Statement. Unfortunately, the tool used by these word processors can give a different result from UCAS’s own form which stops applicants from writing more than 4000 characters. This can result in students finding out minutes before the deadline that their personal statements are too long to be submitted via UCAS.
To avoid this, there are a variety of different online tools which use the same algorithm that UCAS uses to count characters. At the same time, many of these are not official so it is worth checking if your personal statement is within the character limit using the UCAS’s own online form well in advance of the deadline.
More significant and substantive points
✔ Make sure your paragraphs have clear topic sentences
A point often missed by students writing personal statements is that admissions tutors often have to read many personal statements in one day. As a result, they do not have the luxury to devote excessive time to reading each individual personal statement. Admission tutors will prefer personal statements that have clear topic sentences.
A personal statement that is well structured and makes its points clearly will, therefore, be looked upon very favourably. On the other hand, a personal statement that makes many disparate points with little semblance of structure will be looked upon unfavourably by an admissions tutor. One of the most important determinants of what makes a personal statement is the use of strong topic sentences.
A good topic sentence should set out, at the beginning of each paragraph, what each paragraph will be focused on, how it links to the overall message of the personal statement, and why you are interested in the respective course.
✔ Check that each point is dealt with sufficiently
A common mistake in many personal statements (that we have noticed in speaking to various mentors) is that points are not dealt with in sufficient detail. Students often make the mistake of thinking that name-dropping a certain academic or theory is enough to indicate their passion for a certain subject. What is missed, however, is that the individual reading your statement will likely be familiar with the subject area mentioned, and will want to hear your own opinions and thoughts on it. This aspect when missed by many personal statements, often gives surface-level coverage at best to even otherwise interesting concepts or ideas that they raise.
As a good rule of thumb, every point that you make within a personal statement should be explained using the PEEL structure (various variants of it exist; all roughly saying the same general point). As per this guide by Staffordshire University (worth reading in more detail), PEEL consists of a Point, Evidence (for said point), Elaboration (how the evidence proves said point and why it is significant), and Linking this point to the overall message. In this context, the overall message should be that you are a student interested in your subject and capable of handling its academic demands.
This writer has read many personal statements, and the most common issue in many personal statements is that paragraphs routinely fail to follow all aspects of the PEEL structure. The most common mistake is to not give sufficient elaboration on a point that is raised, as well as not linking this back to the overall message of the personal statement.
✔ Check each sentence for its word length
Lastly, another common issue in Personal Statements is sentences that are overly wordy or are too long. Long sentences are difficult for admissions tutors to read or follow and can prevent the most important points of your personal statement from being expressed well. This can be particularly difficult to spot for students for whom English is not their mother tongue. A good rule of thumb to follow, to help avoid this, is to always ensure that each individual sentence is not more than 35 words. This is not a perfect rule as there may be exceptions, but is a useful rule of thumb.
The PA team wishes you all the very best for your applications! If you would like to consult with and get guided support from PA mentors for FREE, please click HERE to find out more.
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