Writing Personal Statement

[Wiltingflowers]

DC just let drop that, within his year, a good quarter of students got (ie. purchased) professional help in writing their Personal Statement! That help ranged from proofreading - all the way up to hiring someone to write the whole thing for them from scratch on the basis of answering a questionnaire. None of those who did it had their statements flagged by UCAS - which is what he/I would have been terrified of - and all proceeded to uni.

DD in Year 12 is applying this autumn and has started thinking about her PS. Her friends in the year above advised going on Fiverr as they had done and finding a writer - only costs about £60 apparently and loads of them did it (and all are now receiving offers).

what are your thoughts?

Are you seriously so concerned that you and your children are mot capable of putting together a basic statement if why the uni should want them in their course that you would pay a professional to check it you are mad. Are you university educated and a professional? If so a quick look at the ucas videos on how to write one and you can support your own child. Any school I've ever worked at kids ask the relevant subject teacher and their form tutor to check it and the head of Sixth form possibly head teacher also sees it. If someone cannot do this how will they cope with academic essay writing and critical thinking about subject matter at university?

"Are you university educated and a professional?"

No, @Boomboom22, I am not. What an assumption! I don't even have English O'level and I work as a care assistant.

@TizerorFizz hang on, so your brilliant daughters who did it all by themselves actually went to a private boarding school? And you're saying they didn't get any more help than kids at the local comp got? I'm sorry but you must be mistaken. My DS was told to google examples of personal statements at his state school. My friend's kids at private school got a huge amount of help, as did the kids at the local grammar, although not quite as much.

I don't agree with the concept of paying someone to write the whole thing, but I think you're being very unfair to say any kid who wants to go to university should be able to write a PS entirely on their own with no help at all. You defended this view by saying that that's what your daughters did, but they clearly didn't.

I had 5 children in private schools and I have never once heard of a faked personal statement. I have copies of 4 of theirs and the school head reads them all to check they are okay but given how little weight most universities place on them I am surprised anyone can be bothered to take the risks of cheating.

My DS had a comment on his offer saying that his offer was based on his personal statement which showed true passion for the subject.

He wrote his himself with a little input and some suggestions from us. Mainly making sure he mentioned the good stuff he had done which was relevant and help with the order.

The school then read through it before he sent it.

Of course they are not but they have had a lot less of a leg-up than your DC or mine. At least have the grace to admit that.

Why is this all anti private school? No my DDs did not get loads of help! Firstly, they didn’t need it. Secondly we didn’t expect it. The idea that every privately educated Dc has their hands held in this way is ludicrous. I frankly don’t care whether my Dc have had a more expensive education than others but it wasn’t about buying a PS being written for them. It was about having the ability and confidence to do it yourself.

Gosh @TizerorFizz you just don't get the privilege that (I have now learnt from this thread) your DDs have had. Put them in my kids' 'requires improvement' state comp and they wouldn't have thrived (though no doubt you will claim they would have coz that's your riff!). I am so grateful for the humanity of @TwisterTimeAgain and @Sarahcoggles. I didn't even get English O level so I will be paying £60 for my DD's statement to be enhanced. Her crappy school won't do it, I can't do it - and £60 as a one-off is cheaper than the £6000 (per term!) you probably paid for your DS's boarding school. As @TwisterTimeAgain rightly says, you have no grace.

"I had 5 children in private schools" says @Xenia

For sure, I have had two DCs in an 'inadequate' (recently upgraded to 'requires improvement') state comp. Respectfully, I don't think you can relate. My DC have been told to google exemplar Personal Statements and that is the full extent of the help they have been given. Your 5 children will have been helped massively with PS - that's what private schools do. At least acknowledge that and stop gaslighting those of us in a different situation

Unless you sent your 5 dc to really crap private schools, they would have been given guidance, shown exemplar PS, written them and submitted for the school to improve, rewritten and had it re-checked and then submitted. Maybe yours didn't but if he pissed off in that case as any decent private school does this as a minimum.

@TizerorFizz my previous comment applied to you also. You must have sent your dc to a crap private school if they honestly got no help. My 3 went to 3 different PS. Two leading public schools and one very good day school. All had the same help.

I think that private schools do give examples of personal statements that work. Possibly from previous successful applicants. I guess that they have access to certain experiences and an inner confidence built in by being at such a school.

Working with lower socioeconomic economic students is humbling. I support applicants with their PS without taking away the essence of their personality. Some of these students have succeeded in spite of external factors and I believe that they would have been incredible if given the private school experience.

My dc go to the leading private school in the area in terms of academic results. DS is year 13. I’ve never heard of anyone paying for PS to be written. I didn’t even know it was a thing!

All pupils in year 13 had an overview session about the ucas form and told all the standard stuff which was mainly “write about why you want to study the subject, nobody cares about your extra curricular stuff”. DS had to write a draft. School mentor then looked at it and made some comments about stuff that he might want to focus on/omit (didn’t make amendments though). DS then reworked some bits (mainly due to the character limit) and submitted to head of sixth form who then read through and approved it. That was the extent of the school input. I suspect it’s more than some schools do though.

i work in a professional role and write a lot for work. I checked his statement before it went to head of sixth form. My suggestions were mainly about changing the odd phrase here and there to make best use of the character limit.

Most schools don't bother much with them outside of context, if only because they're so brief.

The exception is Oxbridge. I'm surprised a PP's child got in with a statement that wasn't all his own: many of the interview questions come from the personal statements, and tutors can usually tell a mile off who has such significant academic integrity issues, if only because they can't speak well on their subject or answer questions on it.

An editor is more a grey area: there are some that are ethical; there are some who aren't. Someone who will read it and give it feedback is probably on the ethical side (as long as student doesn't have to sign a declaration saying it's his own work); someone who re-writes it for you isn't.

I had a horrid schoolmate who paid a uni student to write her child's for Oxford. Child got interview based on scores but didn't get a place because he froze every time he was asked to go into depth about what he said he'd studied/was passionate about. Ironically, he'd have been so much better off if he had written a slightly more mediocre one himself that was at least honest. The scores would have gotten him through. But the plagiarised essay torpedoed him. The last thing a tutor wants to deal with is a student who so obviously cuts corners, who suffers from integrity issues, and isn't even clever enough to fake it in an interview.

With ChatGPT etc, I wouldn't be surprised if unis started making applicants sign some sort of declaration—or scrap it altogether.

quite. At DC's school there was a very large percentage of applicants whose parents had no experience of university. I helped a friend of my daughter's with her PS. Was that wrong? Given the lack of support at home and school? No of course not.
I don't think people are being anti private school. Your money. Pay for what you want with it. But they are irritated by the disingenuous posts from some who claim their kids did it all alone. Those posters really have no idea

This has nothing to do with anti private school and everything to do with disingenuous statements that their DC are just naturally amazing and didn't get any help or advantage along the way. It begs the question, if you really believe that, then why take them out of state education at eleven and invest so heavily right through to eighteen? What were you buying? Hopefully more than access to ponies and black tie socials. You say your DD would have done brilliantly anywhere. I'm sorry but you can't possibly know that. There are DC who meet the same high Oxbridge offer grades and who have all the odds stacked against them at home and at school. They have proved that they can do brilliantly anywhere. Your DC and mine, not so much.

I have copies of 4 of my children's. All I remember is first the private and better state schools get on with it early. They had to have done a draft and submitted it to the school by July of lower sixth (before the summer holiday) to make sure they had thought about their university subject, choices etc.

Then they got some input back. I imagine they were told not to write about stuff already on the PS like exam grades and not just to write about hobbies but concentrate on the subject they will be studying. They then wrote their own. Two of mine stuck out in my mind - I loved the opening sentence of one one child wrone and one of the twins had such an interesting one all about what he is like as a person in the sense of his interests feeding into that university subject, it was on a totally different plane to that of his twin and I was not surprised his head mistress said she had liked it. As the PS makes very little difference to if you get in both twins got in where they wanted to be despite what I would say was the less interesting one of one of them. I checked most of them for typos as I am sure did the school. That was it. I believe the PS is being abolished.

My sons' school by the way hand 100% failure rate for oxbridge their year (which is very different picture from the London state schools with which it competes) so don't assume private school always means better than state in all ways and loads to Oxbridge.

I certainly however agree that my children have had lots of help eg their father is a teacher and a musician and organist (and I do loads of music) so things like music practice at home would be me accompanying their pieces which I enjoyed very much over the years. Not every home has a piano never mind parents who can teach music. There are masses of ways my children have been advantaged although I would put for every child top of every list that a parent loves them and tries to spend time with them above everything else.

Wish I'd kept my children's personal statements. Would have been a lovely souvenir of a very stressful particular moment in time.

I don't have the final versions, just drafts and don't have my second daughter's (but I do have the first child's from 2002/3). I also have my own draft UCCA (UCCA in those days not UCAS) we filled in a 1978 form as practice for our 1979 one.
Let us see if I can upload that bit ..... yes.

You had to fill in "Further Information" rather than a personal statement in those days. My head mistress wrote at the end "this must be neater" but no changes to my list. Most girls did not go to university from my private school in NE England in 1979. I was rejected by Durham and Bristol in my view because my predicted grades from the head mistress were much too low and yet that summer I ended up with the best A level results in the school so it was a pity the school did not get that right; but never mind. I went to Manchester University for my law degree and all was well.

Love that form Xenia!

I think the new format will be similar to that for 2025 entry.

Omg that's what my PS looked like @Xenia
I remember doing it in pencil, sitting on the door in my bedroom. Once happy with it I went over the pencil in ink. It lamely listed 'listening to music' and 'reading' as interests. I wish I'd kept it.
My future career would almost certainly have been 'journalist', which did in fact come to pass.
I went to a crappy comp which didn't even have a school uniform so don't think it even got checked! Fortunately UEA took me in spite of my PS!

Some schools guide and help some merely tell you to google.

LSE said that 1779 applicants started their personal statement with "From a young age I have (always) been…" which is shocking but only if you know never to start it with that opener. Ds wanted to be a bin truck driver at 5 because he loved trucks.

There is a wealth of information out there for personal statements, from students who show theirs on YouTube, published ones on websites and information from universities.

But I do agree that if a parent hasn't been to uni or if they haven't been on MN reading ahead of where their child is to gain information then it is tougher. I did have input into Ds's personal statement, I couldn't understand what he was writing about due to the subject (computer science) but I could help him cull it down and rephrase sentences.

Floor not door.

I don't think anyone is reading them for most courses. It's a pretty blunt numbers game now the cap has been lifted on student numbers. If I was unsure about a student I would invite for interview and might read the statement in preparation but would not make a decision based solely on that.

So interesting about the old UCCA form, I did one of those and couldn’t remember what was asked, my over-arching memory was that it wasn’t at all stressy. I went to a Comp that had low expectations, all my friends left at 16 and out of 200+ students about 20 stayed into sixth form and half of us applied to Uni.

I was told by the Physics teacher he had never taught a girl at A level before and would rather not do so! May explain why I ended up doing English. Most of my friends who left at 16 have done well, some went into banking and have had rather stellar careers. I am the go to person for them when their children are thinking about Uni applications, I didn’t have anyone I knew apart from teachers who’d been to Uni so I know how hard it is when you don’t know people to chat to.