Applications
Personal Statement
What is a personal statement?
A personal statement is the UK and Irish equivalent of a statement of purpose, and it is weighted differently: roughly 80 per cent of it should be about your engagement with the subject rather than about the institution. For undergraduate applications through UCAS it is capped at 4,000 characters including spaces and 47 lines, and the same statement goes to all five course choices.
Reviewed
Who needs a personal statement?
Applicants to UK and Irish universities, undergraduate and taught postgraduate.
Common mistakes
- Naming one university in a UCAS statement, which the other four also read
- Reusing a US-style SOP, which spends its space on faculty the tutor did not ask about
- Drafting in Word and pasting past the character cap, which some portals truncate silently