Personal Statement

 

These are important. Universities have three things which to go off before offering a candidate an interview. Your academic grades, your reference and your personal statement. In a way, it would be difficult to change your reference and academic grades as these are built up over a number of years at school/college. Personal statements can however be worked upon. They are used by the university to determine what sort of person you are. A glance at your grades will tell them if you are academically capable. Medical schools however need to know that you are more than just a nerd who sits at home working 24/7. As Cambridge university once said, ‘students who have 5 A’s and done no extracurricular activities are not as good as those applicants who have 5 A’s and have done something other than study in their spare time.’ The logic is obvious.

What to put and not put into your personal statement.

Academic achievements rarely should be listed in a personal statement. There is a section for this on the UCAS application form. By academic achievements I mean exam results, if you have won the maths challenge then feel free to add that to your personal statement.

You should in your mind have a fairly good idea of why you want to study medicine. You need to put this on paper and make it sound professional at the same time. ‘I enjoy human biology and like caring for people,’ is just not good enough. You need your application to stand out.

Talk about your experiences, both voluntary and/or work. it is important that you get across not just what you did, but how that experience affected you. So name your role, say what you did then talk about what you learnt from it. This is likely the first time you have had to seriously evaluate yourself, so take your time with it.

Talk about the things you enjoy doing in your spare time - Sports, chess whatever and say why you enjoy it if possible.

The above is not a framework for writing your personal statement, just a few points you might like to consider whilst writing it. It is easy to end up with a repetitive personal statement. By this I mean, ‘work experience in a hospital helped improve my communication.’ Later on you say, ‘my voluntary work at the care home helped improve my communication skills.’ Now in the above you can probably figure a way to rephrase the two to sound different. In your personal statement however, you may have a toughie. Again keep working on I as repetitiveness sounds dull and boring.

Be prepared to write 5,6 or more drafts before you get it perfect. Spend plenty of time on your personal statement and make sure you get it read by anybody you can find – family members, friends and teachers. Teachers, especially head teachers  can be quite useful in at these times, hand them a draft and ask when you can collect it from them. The first aim of showing people your drafts is to avoid making stupid mistakes. Don’t be afraid to ask teachers for help, it’s what they are paid to do. Parents can be a great tool to motivate teachers into helping you as much as they can!

Personal statements cannot be done overnight or in a week. Plan your time carefully. I would recommend that you start working on your personal statement soon after you receive you August exam results. Before that you probably won’t want to. Although the deadline is 15^th October, you should have your application ready to go, at the latest by the end of September.

What you write in your personal statement will be the talking point of your interview. So it has a large role in both the selection process. Do it well.

Lastly don’t ever volunteer your negative qualities!

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