Help in Writing a Personal Statement

Writing a personal statement is an important task for any student who wishes to apply to and gain a place at his or her chosen degree programme in a university. A personal statement is one of the ways in which university admissions officers evaluate whether their applicants have the skills, knowledge and motivation to perform well and complete their degree programme.  Schools have to choose the best and most qualified students because their reputation in the quality of graduates that they produce will suffer. If they rely on government funding for financial support or have tie-ups with commercial organisations for their research projects, they must show that they have the best students in a specific field of study. Since there are more students applying than places available especially for popular degree programs in esteemed institutions, students must make sure to do their best when writing a personal statement.

Write personal statement is a prelude to many other academic tasks that the student will be assigned later such as Military essays, Philosophy essays, English Literature essays, Arts essays and many other coursework assignments depending on the student’s chosen subject of study. Below are some tips for writing a personal statement:

• Make an introduction that will catch the attention of the reviewer enough for him or her to continue reading through the personal statement. Bear in mind that university admissions officers are busy people who may have only spend less than a minute to decide whether to continue reading through the end of a personal statement or reject it altogether if the first few sentences appear to be insignificant or poorly constructed.
• Make sure that your grammar is correct, you have no spelling errors and your punctuations are placed appropriately. Using the language well ensures that your ideas will be communicated clearly to the reviewer.
• Avoid redundancy by deleting unnecessary words and lightening overweight phrases. At the same time, reinforce the message you are trying to convey by making strong verbs and using more adjectives, then eliminate run-on sentences and clichés.
• Create a well-structured personal statement that clearly separates the discussion of ideas from one another and uses transition words and phrases to guide the reviewer into the flow of ideas.