How did you start your PS?

[BoysWillGrow]

I'm doing my personal statement and I'm getting a bit stuck really. I'm thinking do i start with why i love the subject, a joke, something to grab attention.... argh i just dont know.

I've rewritten my intro again and again and I just don't know, so inspire me how did you start yours?

What is the PS for? If you are submitting an application to a PhD program, have a look at the departments website and follow the format of the PhDs listed on the site.

Hi, I'm looking to do business management and psychology.

Lots of guidance here www.thestudentroom.co.uk/wiki/Personal_Statement_Library

Examples here:
Business management: www.thestudentroom.co.uk/wiki/Category:Business_and_Management_Personal_Statements
Psychology: www.thestudentroom.co.uk/wiki/Category:Psychology_Personal_Statements

I do hope, however, that you're referring to joint honours courses, rather than two separate courses. Given that a PS is meant to convey how utterly devoted you are to the subject you're applying for, there's no way that you can write a PS that will work for two degree courses that are so different.

With regards to how you actually start it,

• "from a young age / I have always wanted to study..." etc. are massive cliches
• jokes often fall flat on their face in a PS - you don't know your audience, the admissions tutor might not share your sense of human, and there's no way of delivering it correctly. Don't do it!

Why you love the subject and want to study it, aspects that interest you, relevant extra reading etc. should comprise 70-80% of the PS. The rest can be taken up with things such as extra curricular activities, focusing on anything that is relevant to your course.

Which unis are you applying to?

PS don't ever say passion. It's such a cliche in personal statements that the sight of it makes you want to gouge your own eyes out.

Yes its a joint course. Thanks those links are really helpful. Note to self, do not say passion.

Another word to avoid is fascinate and its derivatives.

For a joint course, you want a roughly even amount of accademic content for each subject, for example mentioning some extra reading for each subject would be a good idea.

A PS is a fairly traditional and formal piece of writing. Including jokes and trying to make yourself seem unique will usually fall flat and are best avoided. When starting your first draft, you can just start with "I want to study X because...". This will help you get your ideas on paper. You can always change the beginning later. The content is more important than having a really snappy opening line.

TSR also offer a personal statement review service which is free, so you can get advice from a helper on how to improve. This could be useful if you're not getting much advice from elsewhere.

If its advice on actually starting to write it that you're after, rather than what sentence to use as your opening gambit, for my DD I recently advised that those started in the middle - ie write all the easy paragraphs in different sections and then put them together - the hardest line is the opening, so you might want to actually leave that until last.

It can be useful to start with something topical from the news or about a book you have read linked to what you want to study. This signals that you are really engaged with the topic and are thinking of the connection between your potential studies and their application.

FWIW - DD's friends DF is the head of a uni department (in a science faculty) and claims to pay no heed to personal statements.

DD who's applying for a course which admits by audition was told by a head of department that they "don't mind what you put in your personal statement".

So my advice is not to spend too long on it!

My daughter is applying for 3 places who all interview. She thought the PS didn't matter until one said they don't interview everyone and cut the numbers down using the PS. So, now it matters!

Oh that's interesting.

I think it varies enormously from course to course. Probably depending on how competitive it is.

I do know one admissions tutor at an RG uni that claimed to have put all the applications which met the threshold for inclusion into a bin and picked the ones to make offers to at random.

They felt this to be much fairer than using PS to distinguish between candidates, given that some applicants have schools that give a lots of assistance and others virtually none.

Thanks for the advice. It's hard to know how much of a difference it makes, I've got a load of paragraphs all jumbled up at the moment.