What is UCAS?
The Universities and Colleges Admissions Services (UCAS) facilitates the application process for many higher education institutes in the UK, from undergraduate to postgraduate. The UCAS application process will involve filling out the application form, writing a personal statement, submitting reference letters, and other steps depending on your level and subject. Level- and subject-specific guidelines can be found on the official UCAS site: https://www.ucas.com/
The UCAS Personal Statement
The personal statement is a key part of the UCAS application, as it is your chance to present your individual qualities and convince schools that you are a worthy applicant. Therefore, you will need to spend a lot of time on this essay and include the right information.
Here are some ideas for what to include in your UCAS personal statement:
- Make the essay as personal as possible. This is your chance to show the admissions staff who you are and what makes you unique. Take some time to think about your life, your interest in your proposed major, and what led to this decision.
- Talk about why you want to study your chosen course. Spend a lot of time on this. This is a chance to either stand out and distinguish yourself as a unique candidate, or else blend in to the crowd as another average applicant without clear ambitions. You should be passionate about your chosen major, and you should relate this to some personal stories from your life, your influences, and your past upbringing, if possible.
- Focus on your skills and experiences. This includes things you may have learned in classes (math, research, quantitative skills, for example), skills you may have developed through extracurricular activities (leadership, communication, interpersonal skills, for example), and what you have learned from work experiences (professionalism, time management, for example). Be specific, and try to be as engaging and sincere as possible, rather than just stating a list of qualities that you have.
- Avoid mentioning any schools by name. You only write one personal statement, and this essay can be used to apply to several different schools. So you should not mention the name of any particular university, department, or courses that you plan to take.
Guidelines for Writing the UCAS Personal Statement
The UCAS Personal Statement has a word limit of 4,000 characters or 47 lines, which will be around 500-600 words.
You should write your personal statement in a Word document first, so that you can proofread, edit, and revise the essay as many times as you need. When you are ready to submit it, you can simply copy and paste the essay into the online application.
UCAS also offers a personal statement writing tool to help you practice writing your essay.
You can view the official UCAS guidelines here:
Still Need Help?
If you need examples of successful UCAS personal statements, you’re in luck! We have several free sample UCAS personal statements that you can use to jumpstart your brain and start putting pen to paper (or … fingers to keyboard).
If you’re still stuck, we are happy to help write your UCAS personal statement. It’s important that you first think about your experiences and goals, and provide as much information to us as possible. Contact our essay writing service (or simply email writer@essaysmith.com), and we’ll do what we can to get you on the road to UCAS success!
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