Writing a Personal Statement

Whether you’re applying for Uni/College or a job, your personal statement is likely to be the first thing people read. It’s almost like a blurb for the rest of your application. You want to make your personality and skills shine so people can’t help but read on! Typically, your personal statement will be asked for in an online job / UCAS application form or you can put it at the top of your CV. Read on for some tips on how to write your personal statement…

Start with Bullet Points. It can be really hard to know what to say or how to start a personal statement but we like to start by writing down, in bullet points, all the things that make you, you! What kind of personality do you have? What kind of energy will you bring to a group of students or colleagues? What skills do you want to immediately draw their attention to? What kind of work experience or voluntary experience do you have? It’s important that you don’t copy and paste from your CV, but what parts of your CV are you most proud of that you’d like to highlight? Once you have some of these answers, you can try and write them into full sentences.

It doesn’t have to be too long. Generally, the rule of a personal statement is 100-150 words. Short and snappy is never a bad thing but try not to lose out on your character when writing it.

Structure could also help. Try structuring your personal statement using the bullet points you’ve gathered about yourself. You could try the following:

Describe yourself
Describe your experience
Describe your work/voluntary experience
Describe your goals

Evidence is better than making statements. What makes you a good listener? What makes you a good leader? If you’re making statements about yourself, try to give some evidence as to why you think you have these characteristics. If this is the first time you’re writing a personal statement, you can always talk about projects at high school, sports teams and other extra-curricular activities to provide evidence.

Give to a trusted adult or read it aloud. Sometimes we just don’t spot those little mistakes because we’ve been staring at the same piece of writing for too long! To combat this, send your personal statement to a trusted adult for them to read through. Ask them for feedback or ask them to read it just for gramma and spelling errors. You should always remain in control and sometimes we just don’t have the brain capacity for constructive criticism. You could read it out loud yourself in front of a mirror. Ask yourself questions like: Does it sound like you when you read it? Does it make sense? Is it captivating?

We hope some of these tips have helped you write your personal statement. Have we missed anything? Or did a particular method work for you? Let us know in the comments.