Tips for writing your personal statement

When you’re applying to university, you’ll usually need to include a personal statement in your application. These are intended to show why you’ll be a good student for the university, so it should include things like your passion for the subject, your transferrable skills, and why getting a degree in that subject is important for your career goals. It can be tricky to get started with writing your personal statement, so here are some top tips for crafting something that will stand out.

The UCAS personal statement format

For 2026 entry, the UCAS personal statement format is changing. Instead of writing one long piece, you’ll now have to answer three questions:

· Why do you want to study this course or subject?

· How have your qualifications and studies helped you to prepare for this course or subject?

· What else have you done to prepare outside of education, and why are these experiences useful?

Each answer must be at least 350 characters. All three of your answers combined have a maximum character count of 4,000 characters (including spaces), so bear this in mind when writing your responses.

Even if you’re a postgraduate or international student and therefore not applying through UCAS, these questions are a good place to start in crafting a good personal statement.

Planning your personal statement

Creating a plan can help the writing process go a lot more smoothly. You can write it out in bullet points, or a mind map, using the three questions above as your sources of inspiration. Anything you can think of to include can go into your plan, because this stage is more about ideas than worrying about the overall length of your personal statement.

Writing your first draft

The blank page at the start of your first draft can be the scariest part, so start with something easy, whatever that means to you. That could be answering the question that you feel most drawn to first, or just turning your bullet points from your plan into full sentences. Once you have the beginnings of a paragraph on the page, you’ll hopefully find that your ideas flow together, and it’ll become easier to continue writing.

Make sure it’s your own work

Having someone else read over your personal statement and suggest some changes is fine, but the work should still be your own. That means not using AI to write your personal statement, as this is considered cheating by many universities and can be detected. The UCAS guidance on using AI is that it should not be used to generate chunks of text that you copy and paste, but it can be used for things like brainstorming ideas, guidance on overall structure and checking your

spelling and grammar. The same sort of guidance should apply to input from anyone else reading your personal statement. Having another pair of eyes on your personal statement, whether it’s a friend, a teacher or a parent/carer is a great way to help you spot any spelling or grammatical mistakes that you may have missed, but they shouldn’t be writing it for you.

Be honest

It can be tempting to make things up in your personal statement, but don’t do it. The personal statement is to show off your passions and achievements, and making things up will only harm you in the long run. University admissions teams are looking for students who have passion and potential, so you don’t have to claim to have joined a million extracurricular clubs to stand out. Often, things you don’t think are very relevant can be a lot more relevant than you might initially think, so you’ll have plenty to draw from in your own life that you can include. Your previous studies can be a great source to pull from, as can any part-time jobs, extracurricular clubs, hobbies and extra reading you’ve done related to the subject you’re applying for. These all demonstrate transferrable skills and your ability to commit to something, which is a big part of what universities are looking for.

Editing your personal statement

When you’re editing your personal statement, that’s when you need to think more carefully about the overall character or word limit to make sure your response will be suitable for the requirements. This is also the stage where you make sure everything is spelt correctly, your grammar is good and your sentences flow. Try to make sure you’re not overusing buzzwords like “passionate”, “dedicated” and “hard-working”. There’s nothing wrong with these words in small doses, but they can be overused in personal statements, and it’s better to show you have these qualities through talking about the ways you demonstrate them than to just use them with no justification.

And… breathe!

The hard work is done, you have a draft you’re happy with. Before you submit your personal statement, it’s a good idea to let someone you trust have one last read through of it to spot any little errors you may have missed. After that, all you have to do is submit your application!