Personal statement examples, answer by answer

Why extracts, and not whole statements?

UCAS checks every personal statement with similarity software, which compares it with statements sent in before and with websites and books. If it finds passages that match, UCAS tells you and the universities you applied to, sends them a report showing the matching text, and leaves it to each of them to decide what to do. UCAS’s own advice is not to copy and paste and not to post your statement online.

So a full example statement is something to read once for the shape, not to borrow from, and it is less useful than it looks anyway, because it is about somebody else’s reading and experiences. The extracts below were written for this page, not taken from real applicants, and they are short on purpose: what is worth copying is the change from the weaker version to the stronger one, not the words.

All three answers share 4,000 characters including spaces, with at least 350 in each, and admissions staff read them as one statement, so there is no need to repeat something in a second answer. The personal statement guide has the rules in full.

Question 1: why do you want to study this course or subject?

Chemistry, weaker: “I have always been fascinated by chemistry and the way it explains the world around us. I enjoy learning about reactions and hope to pursue a career in the field.” Stronger: “What first made me want to study chemistry was finding out why the iron nail in our A level rusting experiment corroded fastest in salt water, and then reading about how the same chemistry decides how long a steel bridge lasts. I want to understand reactions well enough to predict them, rather than only describe them.”

History, weaker: “History has always been my passion because it teaches us about the past and helps us understand the present.” Stronger: “Reading Eamon Duffy’s The Stripping of the Altars made me ask how a whole parish could change its religion in a generation, and how we could know what ordinary people thought about it, when most of them left no writing. That question, about what the sources can and cannot tell us, is the reason I want to study history.”

Medicine, weaker: “I want to be a doctor because I want to help people and I find the human body fascinating.” Stronger: “Volunteering on Saturdays at a care home, I saw a resident who had stopped eating start again after a nurse noticed her dentures no longer fitted. It made me realise how much of medicine is noticing, and that is the part of the job I most want to learn.”

What changed in each: the weaker versions could have been written by anybody applying for the course, while the stronger ones name the thing that started the interest and say what question it left. That is what UCAS’s question asks for, and it gives an interviewer something to ask about.

Question 2: how have your qualifications and studies helped you to prepare?

Chemistry, weaker: “I am studying A level Chemistry, Maths and Physics, which have given me a strong foundation for the course.” Stronger: “A level Maths has been more use in chemistry than I expected: rearranging the Arrhenius equation to find an activation energy from my own rate data was the first time a graph I had plotted told me something I could not have guessed. My Extended Project on lithium-ion battery recycling taught me to read research papers slowly and to say where the evidence was thin.”

History, weaker: “Studying History and English Literature has developed my analytical and essay writing skills.” Stronger: “My A level History coursework on the 1926 General Strike was the first time I had to decide between two historians who read the same evidence differently, and English Literature has made me pay attention to how a document is written as well as what it says, which I used when reading strike bulletins from both sides.”

Medicine, weaker: “Biology and Chemistry have given me the scientific knowledge needed for medicine.” Stronger: “In A level Biology I found the topic on the kidney hard until I drew the nephron from memory every week for a month, and by the end I could explain why a diabetic patient passes glucose in their urine. Chemistry taught me to check my working, which matters more to me now that I know drug doses are calculated.”

What changed: the weaker answers list subjects, which UCAS points out the universities can already see elsewhere on the application. The stronger ones pick one piece of work and say what it taught that the degree will use, so they show the preparation rather than claiming it.

Question 3: what else have you done to prepare outside of education?

Chemistry, weaker: “I attended a university summer school, read New Scientist and took part in the Chemistry Olympiad.” Stronger: “I took part in the Chemistry Olympiad and did not get past the first round, but working through the past papers showed me how far a question can be pushed beyond the syllabus, and that is the kind of problem I now look for when I read New Scientist.”

History, weaker: “I volunteer at a local museum, which has improved my communication skills.” Stronger: “Volunteering at our town museum, I helped catalogue a box of letters from a family who emigrated in the 1880s, and the gaps between what they told relatives and what the shipping records showed made me think about why people write the way they do to the people they love.”

Medicine, weaker: “I have completed work experience at a hospital and a GP surgery, which confirmed my desire to study medicine.” Stronger: “Watching a GP explain a new diagnosis of type 2 diabetes to a man who spoke little English, I noticed that she drew a picture before she used any words, and checked he understood twice. I have tried to do the same when explaining things to the residents at the care home.”

What changed: UCAS asks why each experience is useful, and the weaker versions leave that half out. One experience with what you noticed and how it connects to the course is worth more than several in a list, and a modest result told honestly, like the Olympiad above, reads better than an impressive one with nothing said about it.

The changes that come up again and again

Across all three questions, the edits that make the most difference are the same few. Replace a general claim with the particular thing behind it: a book with its author, an experiment, a conversation, a problem you tried. Say what you made of it in a sentence of your own, because the reflection is what shows the reader how you think. Cut the opening flourish; a sentence about lifelong passion or the world around us is the one most readers skip.

Then check every sentence is one you could talk about for a few minutes, because an interviewer may ask about anything in the statement, and the University of Dundee’s advice on the new format is the same as UCAS’s: give different evidence in each answer and do not spend the characters repeating yourself.

Getting feedback on a draft

A teacher who knows the subject is the best first reader, because they can tell you which sentence they would ask about in an interview. Read it aloud too: a sentence you stumble over is usually one that is trying to say two things.

With an account, Check my application in cookie’s Interview prep reads a draft against the course you are applying for and points to sentences that are vague or claim more than they show, quoting your own words. It sends the text to an AI provider, so it uses credits, and the statement you send UCAS still has to be your own work: Cambridge, for example, says AI can be a prompt for ideas or help with research, and that false claims about your achievements are treated like any other application fraud.