So, you’re nearly done with IB DP/high school and have identified the universities and courses that interest you. You sit down to write your personal statement and start looking for tips online on how to successfully write an eye-catching application – probably for UCAS, Oxbridge, Russell Group Universities or some top European business school. You come across a plethora of advice which can be broadly classified into two categories. Some college admission specialists argue that a personal statement has to have a significant academic focus – thereby making heavy reference to leading academics your chosen field of study. On the contrary, other personal statement writing tutors claim that outlining one’s personal achievements is the key to standing out amongst the fierce competition for a spot at a leading academic institution. These polar opposite views only end up confusing students. So how to write an excellent personal statement?
The short answer to this million dollar question is actually quite simple in my opinion:
Let’s look at the above two points in more detail.
Understanding the academic institution
Understanding the academic institution one has applied to, simply means being able to pinpoint what makes it different from its competitors. For instance, the London School of Economics (LSE), which I attended, has “rerum cognoscere causas” as its motto. Translated, this means “to know the cause of things”. Hence, LSE is not a business school, as it is proud to help its students understand ‘why things are the way they are’. Precisely for this reason, a candidate applying to LSE should write a more academically-focused personal statement. The opposite is true when applying to a business school like the London Business School (LBS). Put differently, writing a good personal statement for LSE, or likewise for Oxford or Cambridge, will involve name-dropping leading academics in the field of study the student wishes to pursue and is applying for.
Thinking about your past experience
Thinking about what past experience truly allows you to stand out from everyone else is not about coming up with a long generic list of activities you have engaged in, in your past. Indeed, notice how I encourage you to think about a “past experience” rather than “past experiences”. That is because talking generically about how you have been involved in charity work, playing an instrument and doing sports on a regular basis will not help you stand out. Why? Because many students are doing that too – day in and day out. In other words, those experiences don’t add any additional value to the cohort you are hoping to join, should you be offered a place on your dream course at university.
The key is to think about that one experience which nobody else might have had, and then leverage it by articulating clearly in your personal statement how the experience itself, along with the skills acquired in the process will allow you to succeed in the course you are applying for and enrich the quality of the cohort itself. For instance, one of my closest friends, who applied for an undergraduate spot at Cambridge, was a semi-professional online poker player – a game which heavily relies on Maths-based reasoning. Mentioning this in his personal statement immediately made him stand out from the rest of the candidates and helped him secure a spot since he convincingly articulated how this would help him excel in the course and add value to his classmates at Cambridge.
All in all, the most challenging part of writing a personal statement is to find the correct balance between the two suggestions outlined above, especially since UCAS applications involve submitting one personal statement across five different universities – which is a challenge in itself and might be the subject of one of my future blog posts.