Personal Statements

Before you begin to consider writing your personal statement, please watch the videos above. Writing a contemporary personal statement is no easy task, especially when its about you.

Your Learning for Life teacher will also give you a comprehensive introduction to writing a personal statement, and give you access to some exemplars, that have been written by students in previous years.

Remember! UCAS uses a piece of similarity detection software called copycatch, which looks for similar statements that have been used before, so you cant find something that you found online!

You will start writing your personal statements in Learning for Life lessons from March onwards. It will take a number of drafts, and then we will aim to have a statement, which could be set to UCAS, completed by the end of Applications Week in July. You are of course welcome to update it over the summer.

The latest guidance note (2020) on writing personal statements is available below. We have left the 2016 (previous version) on here as well as it may work better for some of you.

If you're struggling to get some ideas down on paper, try and have a go at this worksheet that is provided by UCAS. It gets you to answer a few questions to help give you a few ideas about what you can include.

Take care with the advice that you receive. Its always good to let family friends, parents and others read your personal statement but do take care! The advice on the structure of Personal Statements has changed vastly in the last ten years, and a helpful person that was working on these a few years ago may unknowingly undo a lot of your good work. Additionally, some of the YouTube videos and support materials that are provided by some Universities are a bit out of date as well.

Writing in good English is also a significant part of writing a good personal statement. Try the following links:

Nominalisation Skills

Writing in Plain English

Applications for creative subjects (Arts)

This is really helpful when reviewing a document and viewing the various versions. Have a look at the online videos - it may be useful for you.