Personal Statement 'Content' Lesson

Everyone has an idea of what goes in a personal statement. I mean, it’s in the name – ‘personal’ – that means talking about yourself. Depending on you, this might be the scariest part of the whole application or the easiest thing in the world! Either way, it’s probably the area where you have most freedom to express yourself; there are many dos and don’ts about how you use the information you include, but people choose all sorts of things to mention.

What is the purpose of a personal statement?

A common misconception is that a personal statement is basically an autobiography. Which is sort of true - it’s full of facts about you - but here those facts have a different purpose; they’re not part of a narrative, they’re evidence in an argument. This principle unites all personal statements and is key to a great one, since while the evidence used is personal, the central argument (the statement, if you will) is always the same: 'I am a good candidate for your degree course.' To get cynical for a minute, it’s a sale - one where the product you're selling is yourself. So the purpose of the facts you include is to exhibit all your most attractive qualities to the university. The traits most attractive to universities, in the opinion of this writer – who admittedly is not a university, and gets more wrong than he cares to admit – generally fit in one of four categories:

  1. Passion for the Subject

  2. Commitment

  3. Relevant Skills

  4. Personality

We'll call these our Categories of Usage.

Admittedly, they're kind of blurry; ‘commitment’ could be counted as a skill, and ‘passion’ a trait of personality. But the four of them cover most of what universities are looking for, so we feel secure about giving the following advice:

Since your statement's purpose is to show off these qualities, anything that isn’t evidence of at least one should either be cut, or woven into evidence. There should be evidence of all four in your statement.

So what turns a fact into a piece of evidence? What sort of information a personal statement might include:

  1. Extracurricular Activities

  2. Achievements

  3. Books and Articles

  4. Life Story

Extracurriculars

In this category, we’ve included everything from work experience and attending special events like lectures, down to out-of-class discussions with friends about your subject. Go crazy with it.

Achievements

Anything that’s taken commitment to achieve can be relied on to impress universities, within reason. Making a football or a chess team is likely to go down better than the story of how you amassed your stamp, figurine or celebrity toenail-clipping collection. Cool as those may be.

Books and articles

Any widely-accessible book about your subject might well be familiar to an interviewer. So if you have interviews, be prepared for questions (some last-minute brushing up might help) – and don’t lie about what you’ve read!! Interviewers could also conceivably access articles and podcasts you mention, but couldn't grill you the same way about a live lecture you went to (as only someone who attended it knows what it covered). So the lines of this category exclude live events (we've counted those as extracurriculars).

Life story

An example of this: a student who's grown up in a different country to their parents might discuss how this made them more aware of how most people assume the way they were raised is the 'normal' way. This is the category most often left out of statements; particularly those for non-humanities subjects, and those applying to Oxbridge. They often put their eggs in the ‘evidence of analytical skills’ basket instead, using conclusions they’ve reached about books and stuff to show their uniqueness.

Some important notes:

Firstly - you'll quickly notice there’s no ‘correct’ balance between the four categories of information. How much you talk about any of them is entirely up to you; we suggest you touch on all of them, but even that is optional! It’s worth researching what the university you're aiming for values highest, something your mentor can talk to you about. By general consensus, at least 80% of your statement should be about things directly related to your subject; higher if you are applying for Oxbridge, but surprisingly they don't give statements as much attention as most universities (instead they have aptitude tests and interviews)