5 Big Tips For Your Postgraduate Personal Statement
With the 2023 summer postgraduate intake application deadline approaching in a couple of months, many prospective students will be required to write a personal statement. The statement presents to the admissions committee that you intend to thrive at their university and how they can help you achieve your dream and career goals – so it’s important to make your personal statement stand out from the crowd.
With that said, let’s drop into our 5 top tips to help you write your personal statement.
Tip 1: Do your research
It’s more than likely the person reading your application will be tutoring or graduating from your chosen programme. They’ll be expecting to hear what drew you to the course. To demonstrate you have done your research, you should talk about aspects of the course (modules, specific text) that helped create a spark of interest.
Tip 2: Stay on the path
A clear and concise personal statement equals an effective statement. To help you write a concise statement, you should create key points to mention and not steer off the path. By steering off, you have effectively created a long and messy personal statement that no one wants to sit through.
Tip 3: Effective points
To expand on Tip 2, your personal statement should have the most effective and important achievements you have. Unlike a CV, you don’t need to mention all of your previous employment or achievements/certificates.
But you may pick and choose why some of the opportunities and achievements have persuaded you to apply and how they can help you in the future.
Tip 4: Proof
When selecting the points to write in your personal statement, you should aim to avoid ‘showing off’ and ‘overselling’ yourself. You don’t need to highlight all the achievements you have gained, you only need to persuade the university you have what it takes to pursue a higher level of education. Additionally, selling yourself high without proof of evidence can land you in a pile of embarrassment.
Tip 5: write more than one version
During your undergraduate application, you would have written a single personal statement which was used in a centralised system (UCAS). However, during your postgraduate application, you will be writing directly to each university.
This means you have the opportunity to tailor your personal statement to fit each course you apply for – and we suggest you use it.
While it’s tempting to create a single universal application in which you can change variable sections, the approach can be quickly caught on by admission officers. A good statement should include why you want to study the specific programme at the university.
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