Hi everyone, I'm back (Ben that is)! Today I'm going to give you all a brief run through of personal statements. Of all of the things that students tend to stress about when applying to university, writing their personal statements is normally right at the top of that list. So, I thought this topic would be something you'd want a student's perspective on.
First of all, my advice is to not panic. If you're reading these blogs as we post them then you've got ages before the deadline. In fact, the advice I'm going to be giving you is less about writing the actual statement and more about what kind of things are meant to be in it, and how you can go about getting the kind of experience that you can write about in your personal statement.
Secondly... I'm not the only source of information about this. You will be endlessly nagged by your form tutors (if you aren't already) about getting it submitted, its content, tone and the like. There are also a wide (and I mean really wide) range of resources that you can make use of. Most universities will have a section on their website about the application processes and these will normally include a section on personal statements. Here's a link to King's YouTube video for example.
The advice on a personal statement may vary from department to department within universities so it might be worth looking how your preferred Uni approaches it. Universities are pretty confusing bureaucratic mazes even for current students, so you may have to do a little bit of digging to find the specific page or section that relates to the course you're interested in.
Broadly however, personal statements are about showing to the university who you are, why you're applying and demonstrating that you can do what is required of you at university. It helps if you can demonstrate this, not just with the words on the page but with reference to things you've achieved, experience you've had, work you've done and the best advice I could give is to absolutely use these experiences to demonstrate that you have the qualities that your course is looking for. GOOD NEWS, the DNA course is a proper interesting and impressive thing that you absolutely should talk about.
Don't just mention that you attended, talk about what you learned from it, things such as:
- What it was like engaging with researchers, academics and other students and what you learned from the interactions and process
- Any projects that you worked on during the week or any concepts that you found interesting and did some further reading on.
- Which skills you gained or whether the experience shaped the way you thought about (neuro)science or university.
If you're looking for concepts to talk about/things that demonstrate you're well informed, I'd start by reading some of the pre-reading that we're going to be sticking up with most of the sessions. This stuff has been chosen by the academics to be relevant, informative and comprehensible and would be a great place to start.
And that's it from me today! Tomorrow you will have Stella telling you all about her experience getting into her Neuroscience and Psychology at King’s College London.
Ben.