ucas personal statement

The personal statement writing guide includes a comprehensive and practical guide and is packed with inspirational and easy to follow advice, this article contains systematic instructions on the techniques to help increase the chances of your university application, however this article contains a short guide on how to edit your personal statement and create tension and suspense within your writing. For most potential students there are some clear reasons why they wish to embark on university.
Writing the personal statement for university submissions is one of the most difficult, daunting tasks for any potential student. This article will offer insight into how you should edit your personal statement – which is one area where students tend to overlook. It is often said that personal statements are often autobiographical. This may well be true, because a wise maxim is “write about what you know.” And, if there is one thing we all know more about than anything else it is our own lives. Often students only write about the reasons why they wish to embark on a particular university course and many personal statements lack emotion. However, in a work of fact, emotion, is a key ingredient in successful personal statements. And, while students life’s may differ considerably from one other, we will each have known the full gamut of emotions. It is important when writing your personal statement that you convey a sense of place to your reader and the way to do that is through the use of the five senses sight, sound, smell, taste and touch. It is all too easy to forget that scenes which are indelibly etched on your own mind will not be equally clear in the reader’s unless you make them so by your writing.

Tension is one of the second most important elements in writing, closely allied to suspense – the “what happens next” ingredient. The problem for many students is to try to condense the writing into 600 words. Obviously, the admission officer knows you only have this limited space, but nonetheless does judge you on the four minutes it takes to read your personal statement. The secret to a good personal statement is not to give away too much to quickly, keep us guessing, hanging onto every word, thus building up tension and suspense. In order for there to be tension in your personal statement, there must be (or have been) something important at stake. Perhaps this was your family life or what you belive is your future. Perhaps the reason why you chose the course you wish to study. Whatever it is, by not divulging the outcome too soon, you will maintain the reader’s interest for that much longer. The following personal statement starts with a powerful introduction: The prospect of helping people has driven me to fulfil many goals in life and this is truly my dream. Although it is great to have ambitions – I now want to translate my goals into reality. Becoming a nurse is a natural extension of my interest in medicine.

Following graduation, I found myself advising investment bankers on the stock exchange, secretly desiring the opportunity of helping others overcome illness and promote health. In this personal statement the reader is captured by the reason why they chose to become an investment banker. The author of this piece has demonstrated a powerful introduction, the style is simple, straightforward nattative. This personal statement will surely provide a valuable insight as to why she wishes to become a nurse. How to edit your personal statement for university submission You’ve finished the actual writing, so now what do you do,? Well, for a start, don’t be in a hurry to send off your personal statement before checking it. Few, if any, writers never need to revise their work. Some do as they proceed but most will get their first Personal Statement draft down on paper without worrying too much how it’s written, and then, when it’s finished, go over it, pruning, polishing and tightening the general words. Therefore, this article is about how to edit the personal statement used for either job application forms or personal statements for university entry. It is advisable to check the following: That you haven’t been over-lavish with adjectives and adverbs.

If you find you have, customer some of the former and, where possible, exchange the latter for stronger verbs. Threat you haven’t used clichés or hackneyed phrases bit have found fresh images always of describing yourself in the best possible light. Make sure you haven’t constantly used the same word in the same paragraph. This can be very irritating to the admissions officer and it only needs a little more thought to re-word or, very often, it can be omitted without affecting the sense. A thesaurus is useful for finding alternative words. Make sure your spelling and grammar and impeccable. If in doubt consult a dictionary and/ or grammar book or ask someone whose knowledge of English your trust to read this through for you. Alternatively, send your personal statement to Get Into Uni who will edit this for you – to perfection. Make sure you haven’t used over long, unwieldy sentences or paragraphs. If you have you must break these up. That you’ve started your personal statement with a powerful introduction so this captures your reader’s attention – straight away. That your structure is easy to follow and that each sentence hooks into the next line. A key advantage is to use a professional to edit and improve your personal statement. If, however you are working in isolation and do not have that advantage, be wary of allowing family or friends to read and comment on it. For one thing an outside will be objective and critical: they may be full of praise or go to the other extreme so far as style, at least, is concerned.