One of the significant problems with personal statements for college or university is that the statement doesn’t relate to the course for which you’ve applied.
We typically get this: people apply for medicine majors and then put some random course like engineering at the end. And if you get an application for engineering that it’s got a personal statement about medicine, the personal statement will go straight in the bin.
Very often, when people are applying for more than one course, they haven’t quite decided what they’re going to use for, and the statement ends up falling between two stools. So if you’ve applied for both psychology and sociology, you’ll find the statement is not a fit for either of them. That’s why you need to try and focus on a particular course that you’ve chosen.
Sometimes, when it comes to personal statements, some things do turn us off. Word Philocaly has to admit they fall into a number of different categories.
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Only Write Relevant Work Experience
First of all, we would say it is the work experience category. For instance, you would say something like, “my mother is a journalist and his father runs a television company.”
Trust us, the college or university will not award you a degree in nepotism, so they are not interested in how your family owns various portions of the media industry.
The institution authorities will only be interested in work experience if relevant and if you got it off your own back. But they are not interested in what your family does for a living if you’re applying for a course that doesn’t map nicely onto the school curriculum. Then you’ve got to work even harder to make it clear that you understand what the course is about.
For example, you’re applying for neuroscience or anthropology. Quite often, if I talk to those admissions choosers, they have to reject people because it’s clear they haven’t understood what the course is about.
You Must Understand Your Study Program, Subject, and Major Clearly
So that’s vitally important. It’s pretty evident if a candidate is not particularly clear about the degree program’s requirements, which can be for many reasons.
It could be that you haven’t had the opportunity to study a subject that you’re interested in. It could be that you’re picking a subject that can get you into the university easier because your grades don’t allow you to choose the one you prefer. It could be just that you haven’t done enough research about the topic that does fascinate you.
Poorly Written Personal Statement Is Not Acceptable
So the main thing that would put the college and university admission off is based on candidates’ personal statements. If the personal statement for college or university is poorly written, don’t expect your application to get through the first round of review.
Honestly, there is no excuse for not running your personal statement through a spellchecker in this day and age. So, it’s important to make sure that you’ve read your personal statement carefully and get someone else, i.e., a friend, a family member, or us (Word Philocaly provides proofreading, editing, and writing services for your personal statement!), to proofread for you.
This critical step is to ensure that your personal statement makes sense. If an admission officer is reading a personal statement and it’s laden with mistakes, be it punctuation errors or wrong sentence structure. The officer will think, “Gosh, the student maybe doesn’t care quite so much about this application!”
Get Someone to Help You Proofread and Edit Your Personal Statement
The reality is that when you’re writing your personal statement, you are just being too close to your writing. For that reason, you can be absorbed in the writing process of putting together your personal statement, thinking you’ve created a masterpiece. As professional writers, our team members do this too, and that’s why we need someone else in the team to do the proofreading and editing to ensure that our writing for our clients is error-free and highly effective.
Thus, you need to put your personal statement down for a few days and then come back to it later. Because when you come back to it, you have fresh eyes, and you’re probably likely to see any of the errors you might have made. And you can at that time go back and fix them. So give yourself some distance and go back one idea per sentence and one primary idea in any paragraph.
Keep these writing skills in mind when you come to create your personal statement. It is a piece of work and evidence whether or not you have the capability of extended writing. Of course, for most degrees, writing is a skill that your university or college will be assessing as you progress through your degree.
Research about Your Course before Writing a Personal Statement
The first thing you need to do before you even begin writing your personal statement for college or university is to start researching the courses you want to apply for. You should quickly realize that the degrees you’re applying for across those different universities have something in common.
Beyond just the title of that degree, they might have a particular way of studying. This is when you need to start using your skills as an online detective. It would be best if you started looking at the online prospectuses but going further than that.
Most websites and most online prospectuses will have links to further information. That’s an invitation to you to look at the course structure and what the modules are offering. Look at what you get to choose; look at some of the subjects you’ll discuss. That’s where you start your research.
Again, BE RELEVANT.
For instance, the psychology course at Oxford is somewhat neuroscience-based. So if you end up talking about health psychology or forensic psychology, it’s not going to be relevant to the study. Therefore, colleges or universities are going to feel that it’s not the right course for you.
Moreover, we would suggest that some information isn’t good things to say in your personal statements. Here are some examples:
“Ever since I was young I loved film.”
“In my free time I like socialising and hanging out with my friends.”
Frankly, you’d be an extraordinary person if you didn’t like those two things. But those two things don’t tell me anything about you except that you’re probably a saint and friendly person. So it’d be best that you steer clear of those general statements.
One more thing you have to avoid when writing your personal statement for college or university is that you go way back to your life. Statistics have shown that there is an alarming number of personal statements that start from a young age.
Don’t start from your early childhood or a young age! Those admission officers are not interested in your formative years. What they are interested in is what you’ve been doing very recently.
Be Smart, But Not ‘TOO’ Smart
Also, don’t try to be too clever in your personal statement that there is a tendency that you want to use a quotation at the beginning of your statement or use quotes several times. There is some advice on some websites telling you to start your personal statement with a quotation. Bad advice.
Why don’t you just start with your genuine enthusiasm coming and don’t try to be too clever? Just begin your personal statement with something that enables admission officers to get a sense of what is motivating you in the subject.
Your Personal Statement Written by Professionals
The process of writing a personal statement could be daunting. To convey your ambition for a university or a particular field of study, you’ll need to put yourself in the shoes of the person who read and review your personal statement.
Fortunately, help is available. Word Philocaly offers professional writing services, editing services, and proofreading services for your personal statement for college or university so that you can secure your dream subject at the university of your choice. Get your personal statement now.
