How To Write An Amazing Oxbridge Personal Statement
And better your chances of acceptance
A little bit about me
My name is Tse and I’m currently finishing my 2nd year of Engineering at the University of Cambridge. Cambridge is renowned worldwide as an excellent university. However, when deciding whether Cambridge would suit me, I spent hours researching the university and finding out what they described as people they were looking for to see if I would be someone who could ‘fit in’ and enjoy my time there. I think understanding that helped me to make a sensible decision about whether applying to Cambridge was the right thing for me to do as opposed to just doing it because it was a ‘good uni’.
So, what is Cambridge looking for?
“Admissions decisions at the University are based solely on academic criteria — your ability and your potential….there’s no magic formula that will guarantee you’re offered a place. However, all Admissions Tutors are looking for the students who they believe:
● have the most academic ability and potential
● will benefit from and flourish in the Cambridge learning environment
● are best suited to the course they applied for
Your ‘academic ability’ will most likely be evidenced through the grades you have already achieved and are predicted, however, your personal statement, in addition to the interview is where you can show your ‘academic potential’.
The statement gives you the chance to demonstrate your ‘self-discipline, motivation, commitment, and the desire and potential to go beyond what you’ve learned so far’. The aim is to show whether you are interested enough in your subject to still be as driven to pursue it at the end of the course as you were at the start. Your job is to demonstrate your engagement with the subject both inside and outside of the classroom. This will essentially be the bare-bones content of your personal statement for example ‘I went to a museum on…’, or ‘I read this book about….’.
‘Benefiting and flourishing in the Cambridge learning environment’ at first might sound like a statement that could be made by any university. However, when applying to Oxbridge it is essential to understand what this means. Oxbridge is unique with their supervision/tutorial system which provides a platform for enabling you to ‘critically and independently’ think while ‘keeping your mind open to new ideas’.
It may sound corny but independent and critical thinking is like a journey. You start at ‘I went to a museum’ and then you begin to discuss what you learnt during that museum trip, what it led you to investigate further, what conclusions you came to through that further investigation and why you came to those conclusions. These thoughts and further explorations are what would help to separate you from everyone else applying: visiting a museum is not unique to you, but the thoughts you have inspired by that visit would be.
The last part of the criteria is looking for people ‘best suited for the course they applied for’. These are often things inferred from soft as well as subject-specific skills that are touched upon in your personal statement. For engineering, communication is a key skill, especially in terms of explaining your ideas to non-technical people you may be working on a project with for example investors or policymakers. Running summer programmes and various activities to engage younger people with STEM was how I demonstrated that I had this skill and was ‘best suited’ for the course, so I highlighted these things in my personal statement.
Let’s explore those things further
- How to show that I have ‘academic potential’
This is all about you and up to you. There are general suggestions one can give based on subjects such as: attending/watching lectures (in person or online); reading books articles and magazines; trying to gain work experience; visits to museums and exhibitions; listening to podcasts — the list is endless.
Apart from a few courses such as work experience for Medicine (see ‘How to get into Medicine’ for more info) there are no required ‘extra-curricular’ activities. Admission tutors do not have a checklist to measure your personal statement against and you have the freedom to explore and do as you wish. This can be daunting and liberating at the same time.
My advice here is to think about who you are and what your favourite ways of learning are:
- do you enjoy reading? If so, read books and articles to your heart’s content.
- Are you more of an audio-visual learner? If so get stuck into a good documentary, TEDx talks or online lectures.
- Perhaps, like me, you are a do-er, a pragmatic learner who likes to have a beginning and end to things so the idea of completing a project excites and motivates you? Then go ahead and apply for work experience, taster courses and competitions.
Personally, I fall more into the latter and enjoy being practical: things like work experience and completing projects to enter into competitions were brilliant ways for me to explore the world of engineering. Although I wasn’t a big reader, I did read one book but only because it genuinely interested me. There were many times I would start reading an engineering book and then stop within a week because personally, it wasn’t my cup of tea! I began reading short articles on new inventions or the design engineering process as opposed to reading long books exploring niche technical details, simply because I liked seeing the bigger picture rather than getting stuck in the nitty-gritty. However, some of my friends were quite interested in the specifics and theory behind inventions so could read at length on this. The idea here is not what you but rather how you engage with what you do which is explored more in the next section.
- What can you do to show that you are a ‘critical’ and ‘independent’ thinker
So, you’ve read the book, gone to the museum, completed the work experience or whatever else floats your boat — how do you now make it your own?
One of the things I did before writing my personal statement was mind-map: with ‘Tse, why do you even want to study engineering’ in the middle.
From this, I started to write down where I think my interest in engineering came from and how it grew. Doing it in a mind-map form allowed me to quite literally map out the story of how one thing led to another.
Reading my personal statement now, I can still see the benefit of this exercise in the work. For example, in one paragraph I detailed my experiences of civil engineering. I was fortunate enough to get a placement at TfL where I was able to learn about the daily life of an engineer and how my studies translate to ‘real-world’ engineering.
During this placement, someone recommended the book ‘Why Buildings Fall Down’ by Mario Salvadori (which to this day is the only engineering book I have read). I remember reading a chapter in the book which talked about the collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge and resonance (AS-Level Physics content). Interested by this I researched more into resonance and structural collapse and was specifically intrigued by earthquakes in Mexico and how the magnitude of the earthquake affects whether short, medium or taller buildings were most at risk. Most importantly, I wrote about what I genuinely had an interest in.
- How do you show ‘best suited’ for the course?
Due to the limited character count (4000 characters), I would say that the best way to show this is through examples threaded into your main discussion points in relation to the above point. For example, at my placement at TfL, I noticed that the engineers would re-calculate the load (weight) of something every single time they wanted to use it as they had the dimensions on a sheet of paper but not the actual load. To help with this I created an algorithm to calculate the load of the components they were using. Being digital, it meant it could be easily updated by the team: a clear example of showing initiative and a desire for efficiency which are key skills for engineers. Perhaps, you should write a list of the different skills you think someone studying your degree choice should have and maybe think of ways you could show how you exhibit them. If you can, it is even better to link them to other parts of your personal statement.
Actually, writing the personal statement — top tips?
● Just start — Starting is often the hardest part and I would just say start even if you don’t start at the start — sometimes going straight into your main paragraphs is better and often introductions are written at the end.
● Write trash but write trash fast — That means not caring too much about grammar, spelling word choice, length etc — just get all your ideas on the page and from there you can begin to refine your words to make it more succinct and cut out the weaker parts.
● Every word counts — You have a limited character count so it is important that every word counts. Cut out qualifiers/intensifiers such as ‘really’, ‘quite’, ‘very’, ‘extremely’ and either just say your adjective or find a punchier one-word adjective that describes what you’re saying. Also, try and avoid repeating things that are in your application elsewhere such as your main UCAS form or any other additional information you have to submit e.g. an SAQ.
● The big so what? — At the end of every experience you’ve mentioned ask yourself the big ‘so what?’. You read Jane Austen, so what? Why would the admission tutor be more inclined to invite you to interview because of it? Asking yourself this means you can avoid empty statements that add no real value to your personal statement. It can also help you to avoid just writing a list of everything you’ve ever read and reminds you to choose a few examples that explore the ‘critical’ and independent’ thinking skills they are looking for.
● Style — The importance of the actual way your personal statement is written may vary from course to course (perhaps more important for subjects such as English and Law compared to Engineering and Mathematics), however, your best bet is to sound natural and not fill it with too many thesaurus-searched words as often that interrupts the flow and makes it harder to read. Avoid bland, generic descriptors such as ‘nice’ and ‘good’.
● Getting and using feedback — It is often useful to get someone else to read over your personal statement and what you have written to check that it flows, makes sense, gets across the points you are trying to get across etc. To help people who may be giving you feedback know what to feedback on, I had almost like a ‘cover letter’ on my personal statement where I explained what a personal statement was (as people may not be familiar with it) and a few questions for them to think about as they read it. I would then compare the comments of different people to see if there were some things that were coming up more often. If you have multiple people who you could ask for help, it may also be worth sending them different updates of your personal statement. For example, some people would be more than happy to help with the first draft whereas it may be better to ‘reserve’ someone else to when you are approaching your final draft for feedback. It is important to also remember that at the end of the day it is YOUR personal statement so take into consideration different comments but ensure your personal statement still sounds like you as opposed to sentences from a random group of people you got feedback from. Also, remember to thank people for their time. The Student Room I believe does a free personal statement review for active members of the platform so this could potentially be a place to seek reviews if you may not be able to find people in your immediate circle to help.
Final words
Should I talk about non-academic extracurricular activities I do?
The amount you talk about non-academic extracurricular activities would be quite dependent on the other universities you are applying to. If you are also applying to universities such as Loughborough where they look more at applicants as a whole rather than just the academic side of things then you may want to write a little bit more on non-academic extracurricular activities, however, Oxbridge often won’t pay too much attention to this.
One of the ways to get around this and get the balance right is to directly link a non-academic extracurricular to what you want to study. For example, I wrote about my involvement in my local youth council in less than a sentence and linked this to how in this, just like in engineering, you have to go through the problem solving process: we identify a problem in our local community, we try to figure out the root of the problem, and then develop ideas as to how this can be solved given constraints, and then go about trying to solve this.
What if the course at Cambridge is different to other courses I am applying for?
Depending on how similar/different the courses are, it might be worth asking to submit different personal statements for the different courses you are applying for. If the courses you are applying for are more similar then you could focus on the things that are similar between them. For engineering, Cambridge understands that other universities have specialised engineering courses so often don’t mind if your application is too biased towards one side of engineering. The SAQ can then provide an opportunity to talk more about what about the Cambridge course really appeals to you so make the most of that extra space and perhaps leave Cambridge specific things to this part as well.
For more information / advice check out these resources:
To get an idea of things you could do check out:
● the Subject Guides on the InsideUni website
● this resource put together by the University of Cambridge
● personal statements such as those on Studential can also give you an idea of things you could do to explore your subject further.
Other articles on the subject:
● https://oxbridgeapplications.com/blog/how-to-write-a-brilliant-personal-statement/
● https://oxbridgeapplications.com/blog/personal-statement-frequently-asked-questionsand-answers/
