UCAS application=HELL

[Silver Scribbler]

I had a really good guide for writing a personal statement that I used when I was doing my first draft last week. Here it is -

http://www.studential.com/guide/write_personal_statement.htm#link_aims

Hopefully that'll help you. Things you really want to stress are communication skills, ability to work with others and responsibility.

I must say, this is a most useful link. I thankyou good sir. You have just made my life far easier

You are very welcome. It is hard trying to turn off all your modesty, but you just have to for this. Try and emphasise anything you have contributed to in school, or better yet organised. Also experience of the subject area is a good thing to talk about if you have any.

 

[anNIALLator]

Hooray for ignoring things and pretending they don't exist!

 

[Superbeast]

Ha! UCAS is a breeze compared to the Student Finance application. You've got that to look forward to, too.

Oh dear god the Student Finance Online was a abomination this year. Makes UCAS look like a flower bed of roses by comparison.

The personal statement is easy - open with a snappy sentance not "I want to study (subject X) because I've always enjoyed it and wanted to be (Career X) since I was a child" as the people reading it get so many of those they will be bored and see it as unintelligent.

Never lie, never copy somebody else's, but...exaggerate the truth. There's a great analogy I heard - if you spent a couple of years at the local Sunday football club setting up the goals, carrying the balls around and occasionally watching the kids whilst the real manager of the group went for a smoke; then it becomes "Through two years of volunteer work with a local football club I gained useful insight into the world of voluntary work and the difference it can make to a deprived child's life, and is something I would very much enjoy becoming more involved in at University" - you are under no obligation to actually *do* any volunteer work once you're in, but it's truthful(ish) and scores brownie points with whomever reads it.

But yeah, never copy anything off a website in case it gets entered into a search engine - that just makes things much, much worse for you - and if the institution has a lot of applicants (there are more and more each year) then they may be quite thorough in checking out whether what you've written is something you've done or just made up/copied.