 Hello everyone and welcome to the University of Cringe. Thank you for joining me today and we will be discussing on how to write an outstanding personal statement. Now this is an important part of the UCAS application form and I will be covering what should be covered as part of your personal statement. So UCAS explains a personal statement as a chance for you to articulate why you would like to study a particular course on subject and what skills and experience you process that show your passion for your chosen field. And that's what really the important part of this personal statement is, that you have made a decision of what subject but why is it that you would like to study that subject and this is where the personal statement comes into effect. It's an essay about you and why you would like to study that particular program and why we as a university should consider you as a candidate. So this is your opportunity to actually tell us everything we need to know about you. Also there is a limit, as you can look, it is 4000 characters or 47 lines of texts. As I said, it is a piece of writing all about yourself. It shouldn't involve your college, your group of friends, your teachers, it's got nothing to do with that, it's all about you. It's a summary of your academic commitment and skills, as well as your career and your careers and your aims. So yes, we know as part of your application form, what you, your GSEs, what you have done, what grades you have got and what you are currently studying in terms of your level three qualification. Here this is an access program, an A level, BTEC, IB, whatever it may be, but that's perfectly fine. What we want to know actually is what skills do you have from that, what experience do you hold and it's a marketing tool to advertise your best qualities and potential. Now what you may find for some of the courses is that they do not involve any kind of an interview. We do not ask for an interview in some of the courses, whereas for some courses we do, but for the majority of them we do not. You do not need to come in for an interview and in that case the personal statement is just as important because this is an interview on paper. This is an opportunity for your admission tutors to find out a little bit more about you. So what should a personal statement not be? It is not a letter, so do not structure it like one. It is not your life story, you do not need to know where you were born, where did you live and what is your current address. It is not an academic essay, so you don't have to list all the books that you have read. It is not a place to list your qualifications. These are listed elsewhere on your UGAS application. So from that perspective this is all we should always be looking forward to. Now what do the admission tutors look forward in an outstanding personal statement? As an admission tutor I am looking for applicants with strong subject interest, resilience and motivation to complete their degree, good qualifications and academic suitability for the course, relevant experience. Now these are the thoughts from Ray Paul, our admissions tutor from Faculty of Business and he wants to see how a candidate can show strong subject interests by going through his research, a resilient and motivated personal statement so that they can present a case of completing their degree, the good qualifications and academic suitability for that particular course and a relevant experience that could be a volunteering experience as well. Our other admissions tutor, Julie Bowden from the School of Health Sciences says that as an admission tutor I am looking for applicants with an ability to care for other people selflessly, a strong and realistic interest in the profession, evidence of skills and qualities, resilience and motivation to complete their degree. That is what she meant and that is what even Ray Paul mentioned that the personal statement should be resilient and motivated that the candidate can show that they will be able to complete their degree. So why is your personal statement important? You would like to tell you that by letting you do a task. You will be taking a look at two of the personal statements in the following slides. What you will be doing is you will be acting as an admissions tutor but with one place only left for a course and you will have to decide who would you offer the place to and why. So I will be reading out the first of the personal statement, personal statement A. Hello, my name is Sean. I am from Pickham 6th form and currently in my final year. I am 17 years old and study BTEC computing. Business has always fascinated me so naturally I have decided to produce this at university. I think the study of business would lead to a career. I am interested in all aspects of business and that is why I want to study it at Middlesex University that and the chance to live in London. My hobbies and interests range from football, learning the piano and writing poetry. I currently play for Pickham FC which is a Sunday league football club located in Pickham. My position for the club is sentiment field and I can also play as a right midfielder but prefer sentiment field. As well as football I also play cricket, go to church and work part time. Overall, I think I would be a great asset to any community, school, college. I would excel and pass many students and prove first to myself and then to everyone else that not only I can do it but never doubt in myself in the beginning. So, that was personal statement A. If you are able to see any errors or any punctuation or grammatical findings that you can find off, you can. The personal statement B is business is not just about buying and selling. It is about the interaction between people, the innovation, the knowledge and the determination to be success. I believe I am a hardworking, driven individual with natural interest in business. For example, I used to question why video games were priced differently. My enthusiasm for business studies then grew from a visit in my youth to my father's office. I was intrigued by the amount of work and effort that was put into running a business, wondering how it was possible to manage so many people involving such careful delegation and use of time. Studying BTEC business has strengthened these early interests. I particularly enjoyed learning about the human behaviour side of the business and I am keen to explore this further at the university. Over the last two years, I have successfully managed my time playing football for my local team and studying and believe time management will be a skill important to university but in meeting different assignments and deadlines. I currently work at Sainsbury's as a shelf stacker, moving around the shop, flow and getting a wide range of views on how the company works. Again, I have enjoyed being on the inside, see how everyone works together and how different roles and staff contribute to the smooth running of the company. With my personal experience and the knowledge I gained through my degree, it would be helpful for me to note it down. So what should you include in your personal statement? Well, 70-80% of your personal statement should cover which course or courses you are interested in and why. Dealing out why did you include that along with the fact that you also have to include any background of the reading or the preparation or any research that you did by finding out about that course that you were interested in. The academic and independent learning skills. The personal statement should involve the skills that you have academically as well as you gain through independent learning. The personal statement should always cover the relevant attributes and experiences of a candidate, for example, that a candidate was a class rep or a candidate showed various volunteering experiences in its personal statement. If vocational, you should show understanding of career challenges that you might face and your ability to cope with these challenges, which would all be included and would be important to make a personal statement and outstanding one. The remaining 20-30% of this personal statement should cover your future career plans, your hobbies and interests and some of the summaries they would like to gain and perform in some of the little words. So it can involve or some of the mind maps that you can create with certain keywords could be job shadowing, internships, MOOCs, work experience, test days and summer schools, Duke of Edinburgh, NCS, quality newspapers, online forums, blogs, museums. So how should one always start a personal statement? Let's see some of the examples that we have over here. Let's say, hi, my name is Anaya and I would like to study science at a university. The second one would be, I am currently completing my BTEC in construction and would like to continue my studies in this. The third one can be, from a young age I have always been interested in psychology and would now like to further my knowledge in this subject of psychology. Or one can also write, witnessing the excellent care my grandfather received from palliative care nurses and their dedication to his complex needs, initiated my interest in nursing or adult nursing. So what do you think of these opening lines? Do you think you would be able to include them in your personal statements or the best one would be to create your own opening lines? So here on we will be showing you the 10 most common opening lines used in the personal statements which we were able to carve out from the 2018 UCAS application cycle. These go from, from a young age I have always been interested in to for as long as I can remember I have, you can also start with I am applying for this course because or I have always been interested in this course. Also throughout my life I have always enjoyed or reflecting on many educational experiences that you have gained over your years. Some more that you can see or have a look at. So how should you start your personal statement? You should always be yourself, don't try to copy someone else's idea or try to imitate an older personal statement. Remember the fact that UCAS has a system of plagiarism wherein it has all the records of all the previous years personal statements and they check how much of a criteria you were able to lift out that was authentic and original from your end. You should try to begin your personal statement by forming some kind of mind maps that can create some ideas that you want to include and it will create a pathway for these mind maps to articulate in your personal statement. Don't worry if your first draft is too long, you can edit it later but the important thing would be to first reach through to that first draft itself. I know it would be a hard process but you should always get ready and prepare yourself a draft so that you can edit it into your final version. Expected you a few drafts before settling on a final version which reflects to the fact that the first draft couldn't be the one that you would be going on as final choice. You can create several different versions of the first drafts which could involve a different portrayal of your techniques and how you can show your aims and interests. Another aspect that you can involve would be you can chat to your teachers, peers or family members about your strengths and achievements and you can discuss whether they do agree of your ideas. One important aspect that you can cover by using your peers or family members could be once you do have your first version or the draft of your personal statement can always ask your family members to read that out loud to you because once you are reading you have your own mind process as to what you wanted to say but once anyone else is reading and you are listening to your own personal statement you can actually cover some of the errors that you would not have been able to while you were reading. There are seven questions that you can ask to yourself by answering or writing down a personal statement which could go as why do you want to study the subject and how can you demonstrate your interest in the subject which will reflect the fact that your interests do match with your favorite subject or course that you put up as your first choice or second choice in your UCAS application. Why are you suitable for the course you wish to study? Now this could involve your suitability, your interests and your aims that could be matched with your career and the course that you have selected or to study. What relevant skills and or achievements do you have? The skills that you possess or you would have gained while studying or volunteering or some of the achievements through extracurricular activities that you have gained over those years could be an important factor that you can note down in your personal statement. How can you evidence your academic and independent learning skills other than exam results that again reflects to the point wherein whatever extracurricular activities you guys took can present it as an evidence for your independent learning skills? What relevant work or voluntary experience do you have? What are your career and academic goals? Now these could be mapped out with your favorite subject or subject of choice and you can then relate or direct it through your career or course. What are your hobbies and interests and how is this relevant to your application? A personal statement should always have your hobbies and interests and you can actually relate or try to make it relevant to your application by matching it out with your key subjects. Some important personal statement tips and tools. Be original, honest and authentic. Now authentic would be something that would relate to the fact that as we have discussed earlier you guys always has a plagiarism system and they can always note down how much authentic you were in your personal statement. That is the reason that you have to write your personal statement yourself. It cannot be done by anyone else. You cannot ask anyone else to write it down for you. It has to be you and only you. Ensure your spelling mistakes, your punctuation errors or any grammatical errors are not prevalent or present in your final version of your personal statement. You can always go to your teachers for the spellings, punctuations and the grammars that you can actually correct while not correcting it by yourself. Don't assume your sense of humour is the same as the admissions tutor. Now this goes with the fact that when we discussed about Repaul or Julie, what they possessed or what they wanted from the personal statement is not something that you can always give. So you can articulate your thoughts in a certain way that could match their thought, but you cannot assume whatever is your thought or thinking process would be the same as of the admissions tutor. Evidence your academic curiosity and subjective interest. The evidence could be from your extracurricular activities as well as any of the awards that you would have gained academically. Show what is unique about you. Show your USBs. Sell us through your personal statement and try to show us why you could be a perfect candidate for that particular course. Ensure you write in a well-structured and clear manner and it cannot be wherein you have different, different paragraphs and they do not make sense or are not cohesive. Identify your goals and motivations for your subject of choice that you can always involve and could be a strong factor in your personal statement. And lastly, but not least, demonstrate that you are a resilient learner. As both of our admissions tutor had one common point that the personal statement should be resilient and motivated, showing how much you are able to complete the degree. The personal statement tools that we at the University of Greenwich offer could be or you can use, try to use it while registering on to our HE application journey tool via Moodle Direct and use the personal statement feature. And this is an interactive tool created by the University of Greenwich to guide you through your UCAS application. Sign up for the UCAS hub to access personal statement and mind maps along with the worksheets. Any questions that you have, you can put it down or ask from our recruitment unit through the telephone line 020-8331-9000. You can also put up an email at our email address courseinfo.gr.ac.uk. You can also join us at our events, primarily our events like open days through www.gr.ac.uk slash events and open days. Thank you and may I wish you all the best for your applications.