Your personal statement should be unique, so there’s no definite format for you to follow here – just take your time. Here are some guidelines for you to follow, but remember your personal statement needs to be ‘personal’.

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• Write in an enthusiastic, concise, and natural style – nothing too complex.

• Try to stand out, but be careful with humour, quotes, or anything unusual – just in case the admissions tutor doesn’t have the same sense of humour as you.

• Structure your info to reflect the skills and qualities the unis and colleges value most – use the course descriptions to help you.

• Check the character and line limit – you have 4,000 characters and 47 lines. Some word processors get different values if they don’t count tabs and paragraph spacing as individual characters.

• Proofread aloud, and get your teachers, advisers, and family to check. Then redraft it until you’re happy with it, and the spelling, punctuation, and grammar are correct.

 

We recommend you write your personal statement first, then copy and paste it into your online application once you're happy with it. Make sure you save it regularly, as it times out after 35 minutes of inactivity.

Here are some useful documents to get you started:

https://www.ucas.com/undergraduate/applying-university/writing-personal-statement/how-write-personal-statement

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• Personal statement mind map (2.58 MB)

• Personal statement worksheet (227.9 KB)