Lies, damned lies and personal statements

When I was 8, Mrs Holmes, my Year 3 teacher, appointed me as Blackboard Monitor (I’m showing my age now). I was the proudest boy in the world, as at the beginning of every session, I made sure that the blackboard was beautifully free of chalk. What a responsible child I was - an experience that has stayed with me forever. Nevertheless, fast-forwarding nine years to when I applied to university, I didn’t include my mighty blackboard-rubbing responsibilities in my personal statement. Obviously not, I hear you say, but my ridiculous example is in fact very little removed from things that students really do include in their applications.

Let us shift our perspective to the University of Hogwarts, Potions department. Professor Severus Snape is reviewing applicants for his undergraduate degree in Alchemy. How much weight will he give to my prowess at Quidditch? The fact that I have grade 8 in the ukelele? That I lived off a diet of rabbit droppings and twigs for a month to win my Duke of Edinburgh Gold? From my understanding of the world of Harry Potter, the answer is: Not much.

This is not to suggest that such activities and achievements are unimportant. Far from it – at d’Overbroeck’s we have spent recent years fundamentally redeveloping our enrichment programme – but there is no point in putting these things onto a university application just because you did them, and even less point in doing them just to put on a university application – who wants frostbite just to put a line on a personal statement that is probably going to be viewed with contempt by Professor Snape anyway; “They go outside? When they could be in here studying? Reject them!!”.

Now whilst few Admissions tutors will be as narrow-minded as the fictional Professor Snape, the point of your application is essentially to demonstrate first and foremost a love of the subject, and secondly that you are a rounded individual (less likely to drop out). It is this second section that seems to fill students with bowel-loosening terror, that makes them take up activities that they hate simply ‘to put them on my UCAS form’. But it is all so unnecessary. The role of this second section is really to demonstrate normality – that you have other interests that you enjoy and that you can talk about them intelligently, explaining what you get out of them.

In recent years, I have had students writing about their interest and involvement in: Debating, cricket, starting up their own business, swimming, going to the gym, reading Biographies, mixing music in their spare time, painting, singing, playing the piano, working in their mum’s shop, volunteering, setting up websites, performing a concert in front of thousands of people and repairing broken old Ford Cortinas (No blackboard monitors, however...). They all did these things because they enjoyed them, and as a result, they were able (with prodding and support!) to write about them in a believable way. Essentially it’s not what you do that matters, just that you do something!

The best personal statements are therefore not those that make a million claims that can never be substantiated – at best these will simply produce a ‘so what’ from the reader – but rather those that can show what makes you tick; if your interests support your degree, so much the better, but that is not their real point. Their point is to show the other side to you, the side that doesn’t read books, but instead goes out into the garage and lovingly restores broken old cars from the 1970s – so much more interesting and believable than yet another first 15 rugby captain.