A personal statement is a huge part of your university application. It’s your chance to impress universities, and show them that you have the skills, experiences and qualities necessary to study at their institution. In short, it’s an opportunity for you to really show off!

What to talk about

The most important thing to remember when you’re writing your personal statement, is to talk about you and only you. This is your application, so don’t be shy!

Here’s some top tips…

• Say why you’re applying. Talk about your ambitions, your interest in the subject area and why you want to progress through higher education.
• Talk about your individual qualities and how they will come in useful while you’re at university.
• Include any work experience or achievements that are relevant to the course you’re applying to.
• Don’t forget to talk about clubs or societies that you’re a part of. Sometimes hobbies can help sway a university into making you an offer.
  Remember, you can only write one personal statement for your five choices – so try not to call universities or course titles by name. If you’ve chosen courses that are similar, you should be able to talk about the subject in general. But, if your choices are all very different, you may have to talk about common themes instead.

How to write it

Your personal statement needs to be ‘personal’, but it’s important to remember that it needs to be written in full English – that means absolutely no slang words!

Here are some more useful tips…

• Be enthusiastic, but be careful with using humour or quotes, as it can often be subjective.
• Make sure you structure your personal statement appropriately, so that it has an order to it. There’s nothing worse than jumping from one thing to another.
• Keep an eye on the character and line limit – you have 4,000 characters and 47 lines available to use.
• Proofread, proofread, proofread. It’s so important to check your work as you go, and it’s also a good idea to ask your family, friends and teachers to cast their eye over it too.

Finally, if you do have any further questions about your personal statement please don’t hesitate to get in touch with our team on enquiry@hope.ac.uk. They will be more than happy to assist you.