Each week, St. Clare's Careers and Higher Education Advisor Melanie Moorhouse creates a Careers Newsletter for our students. Providing a wealth of information from application deadlines to information about upcoming talks at St. Clare's, each newsletter is full of helpful tips and advice for our IB students.
Last week, Melanie included top-tips for personal statements, which we thought might be useful to share:
Personal Statement Top Tips
When you are writing your personal statement it is important to remember that you are writing for a specific audience; the admissions tutor.
Put yourself in their shoes what would you look for?
- Someone who demonstrates (not just states) that they are interested and engaged in the subject?
- Someone who has an interesting academic point of view?
- Someone who thinks beyond the obvious?
- Someone who can connect their learning from relevant subjects inside the classroom to additional reading, observations and experience from the real world, news articles or current events?
- Someone who can balance their studies with other activities and keep on top of it all?
- Someone motivated and determined - likely to see the course all the way through?
Imagine you were sat with the admissions tutor what would you talk to them about to allow you to showcase your analytical thinking, your interest and enthusiasm?
You can find some top tips on what not to do in this article from Alan Bullock Personal Statement Guru.
You can hear from an expert from the University of Southampton, Paul Drinkwater in this Youtube video.
Finally – you will never fit everything you have studied and done in, so prioritise. What is most relevant and will be most interesting?
The best personal statements are those where the student has written about things they are genuinely interested in relevant to the subject they want to study in a critical academic way showcasing their ability to make connections between several sources of knowledge.
And remember you don’t need to talk about all your IB subjects particularly the ones that are least relevant to the subject you are applying to study.