Personal Statement/ UCAS

Now let’s talk about personal statement/ UCAS…

I probably should have posted this first but for some reason Banks and Open days were the main subjects in my head.
Your College will help you out as much as possible (I hope) but still UCAS will probably wind you up just a tad.
Checking everything over and over again can get tiresome and the dreaded Personal Statement -(gulp!)

I swear for the Personal Statement it takes forever but you will feel a thousand times better once you get that out of the way…
Mine’s pretty good – if I admit it. It got me in to University so it must have been alright!

Some passages include:
“These skills can then be combined with my own interests. I am very excited about the range of subjects that I will be able to study. I am also hoping to expand on my [entrepreneurial] thinking.”

“What I loved about the [pick a task you liked at College – mine was Business]. I'm thoughtful with leadership qualities. Other attributes I have are I'm dedicated, hardworking, sociable and reliable.”

“I have a good outlook on the plans of what might happen after university. I hope after university that I can afford to go on my gap year. I've always wanted to travel and gain experience of working out of my comfort zone. However, I know I need more independence and would hope to find that from going to University.”

“I love socialising with my friends but then again, a lot of seventeen year-olds do. I tend to read as many books as possible. From reading, I can establish new vocabulary, widen my imagination and I love how many different story plots can come out of one genre.”

“Overall, I'm a hardworking, conscientious person who would be an asset to the course and the university.” *

Advice I could give you on Personal Statements is to listen to what your teacher is telling you and the other is to use a thesaurus and a dictionary and remember everything that you’ve done so far in your life (that can be as easy or as hard as it might seem).

So stick your headphones in (or whatever you do to concentrate), water/coffee, snacks and just write until the computer screen becomes fuzzy or if you start seeing sentences when you blink.
But remember that sometimes sentences will just come to you and sometimes you will spend half an hour looking at the screen with a blank mind so you might have to keep those snacks and headphones nearby just in case you have a moment of genius…

Oh and to UCAS, prepare yourself. You will have to spend a lot of time in front of the computer checking and rechecking what you’ve just submitted.
It’s a slow but rewarding process because after, you don’t have to look at it again until the universities accept you or not – and to check your results.

It’s not nerve-wrecking at all.

Survival of a University Student =)

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*P.S if anyone tries to copy this onto their own personal statement - UCAS have their own special reader that can pick up any submitted statement and find exact passages that you’ve copied. Punishment could mean rejection from UCAS leading to un-acceptance into universities… (I wouldn’t take the risk – would you?)