This blog post comes from a resident personal statement reviewer, Nick, with some editing and formatting from myself. Enjoy! Note that this advice is intended for those applying for courses that aren’t medicine, nursing, social work, teaching, etc. where relevant extracurriculars should be handled differently.
You’re not simply the sum of your academic achievements, so why should your personal statement be? read more…
Exciting times. I’m about to reveal the greatest tip for writing a UCAS personal statement. In fact, it’s more of a philosophy.
The UCAS application process can be summarised in five stages. These are:
- Optimism – Registering, happy thoughts of university
- Confusion – Filling in grades, exam boards, etc.
- Frustration – Writing the personal statement
- Panic – Tracking decisions
- Stress – Waiting for results
I call it The Five Increasingly Worsening Stages of UCAS. Today we’ll be looking at stage three.
Tell me what’s wrong with the following extract, which I’ve taken from just about every economics personal statement ever written.
Wishing to delve further into economics than AS-level, I read “The Undercover Economist” by Tim Harford and “Freakonomics” by Steven Levitt. Both books gave insight into how economics is applicable to everyday life. I also keep abreast of current affairs and am an avid subscriber to The Economist.
The answer is everything. Everything is wrong with it. And yet, applicants continue to make the same mistakes over and over again. You can’t blame them; they don’t know any better. They followed their teachers’ advice. “Talk about books”, or whatever.