so hi guys and welcome back to my channel my name is v for today's video i am going to be opening up my laptop and reading you guys my personal statements and giving you some advice on how to write a great personal statement to get yourself into any institution of your dreams obviously i can't give you very specific advice in terms of for you exactly you who's watching at home right now you with your socks on in your cup of tea watching the screen right now i don't know what degree you're applying for i don't
know what university you're applying for so my advice can only go so far but i have in my time written now a total of five personal statements and all five have gotten me into the things that i've applied for so if you're new here's a little bit of background just in case you might be wondering is she qualified to give this advice or not my first personal statement was for ucas and that is the uk system for applying for universities and you apply to five universities and i applied for exeter east anglia manchester queen mary
i can't remember the rest but that personal statement was my first one and i got into my universities so woohoo the next one was for oxford university for their foundation year and i applied and i got in then the next one was for oxford university again but for an undergraduate degree got in for that too and the next one was for harvard university for postgraduate study which i'm starting next month and i got in for that too and the last one which i don't like talking about because we didn't really get it but i did
apply for funding for harvard and i used i wrote a new personal statement but we did get in to the interview stage and we got as far as like you know getting the interview but sadly i didn't quite make the cup and get the funding so i guess you can say four out of five which is a good success rate right well five out of five except to get into you you decide let me know in the comments oh and last thing for oxford i was studying classical archaeology and ancient history and for harvard i'll
be studying international education policy just in case it helps you understand like why i'm referencing education and history within my personal statements but that's my experience and i have all of those personal statements loaded on here and i'm going to read parts of each of them out to you guys alongside with the advice let's get straight into it and i hope you guys enjoy oh one last thing one last thing please please please press subscribe because we are growing and glowing we're on our way to 160 000 subscribers and that was my goal for the
end of summer so i would really appreciate it if you're new right now for you to press subscribe and if you're old for you to press the notification bell so that you know every single time that i post and you don't miss out on anything because sometimes the youtube algorithm you just don't see my videos and i want you guys to make sure you get to see them so please please please subscribe and please please please please notifications and let's get straight into the video okay so my first tip is you must show and don't
tell and that sounds like such a basic piece of advice but it's so so crucial i think when i've read people's personal statements because i get sent a lot which i look over sometimes i can't do it all the time but i do do that sometimes with people that i mentor and when i'm reading it i'm like i know what you mean when you say i've been passionate about medicine since the day i was born you're trying to convey the notion that you absolutely are in love with your degree or the idea of studying medicine
and you just want to tell them so the only way you can articulate it is by saying i'm so passionate about it and have been for my entire life and that in like a conversation will be good but on paper it's not great because that doesn't really tell you anything all it says is you said you're passionate it doesn't really show them that you're passionate it just tells them that you're passionate which is not good enough in a personal statement you've always got to show so i'm going to give the example and then i'll read
it out from one of my personal statements i believe it was the oxford one where you can say i'm really really passionate about helping people and education okay great whatever but in your personal statement you could say in my spare time as i did alongside my a levels and juggling a part-time job at mcdonald's i also went and volunteered at my local high school teaching history to gcse students and that was how i spent my time because i care so much about my subject which is history that i'm applying for i care so much about
helping other students so in my spare time i went out of my way where no one told me to to do this volunteer work because i care and it was a whole year so instead of me just saying oh i'm passionate about history and also helping young people my personal statement has said it because i've given evidence for it do you know what i mean so that's tip number one try to not waste your words by just saying i'm very very passionate or i'm very excited about this no no no you're just telling me i
want you to back it up with some evidence you know so let's open up the laptop oh okay so this was my personal statement oxford i believe it was probably one version of it because this is definitely not the finished version but i said alongside my a level studies i completed a year's work experience as a teaching assistant at wesley high school planning and delivering history lessons to groups of ccsc students this was exciting as it allowed me to express my love for history in an active creative and intellectual manner i particularly enjoyed sharing my
knowledge about the importance of key figures like hippocrates and galen in the history of medicine exploring why religion led people in the middle ages to whip themselves as a means of curing the black death was interesting as my class challenged me to question develop and revisit my knowledge this placement improves my willingness to adapt in a new environment and growing confidence while gaining leadership skills oh v that was one of my paragraphs just to show that i loved history so much and why i was excited to study at university level another way that i showed
it was at school we had the chance to do an extended project qualification and i chose to do mine on history on slavery and i know that that wasn't exactly what i was applying for at university but i managed to turn it around and make it fit what i was applying for also in your personal statement what you want to do is if you're going to talk about personal experiences or things that are personal to you try to always tie all back to the degree you're applying for everything you say everything must always try to
tie it back even if there's no connection so for example if you're talking about i don't know that you love playing football yes that might be not relevant to you going to study history but you could flip it and say as someone who's been playing football i was the coach and the leader in the team and learn the skills of how to do a b c d which i can apply when i'm doing history at your institution because i blah blah blah so always try to find a common thread and i really wanted the people
reading my personal statement to know that i was from zimbabwe i don't know why it's something that i've always wanted to share with everyone and anyone so i put it in my personal statement and i'm gonna read it to you and it's been in every single one of my personal statements the oxford one the harvard one all of them i don't know why um i said being born and raised in zimbabwe has sparked my interest in historical topics such as chattel slavery conducting my epq on the transatlantic slave trade led me to read eric williams's
capitalism and slavery i found william's work thought provoking as he offered a different perspective on the reasons why britain abolished the trade in 1833 and then i just go on and on and on and on and on and on and like it just makes it sound really cool like okay she's born and raised in zimbabwe she's taking her personal routes to go and find out more about a subject that she loves outside of the classroom so it wasn't like someone told me to go and study this this was what i wanted to do in my
own spare time next thing is you must follow the guidelines of whatever institution you're applying for for example oxford and harvard have very different requirements for what should be in your personal statement with harvard they want to teach you how to change the world they want to teach you to become world leaders agents of change and how to go on to make an impact in the world whereas oxford there are a lot more academic they care more about what have you done in your spare time that's extremely academic that's going to contribute to your studies
when you're here so i feel like my personal statements for both of those institutions were very very very different i had very different requirements so when i was looking at oxford's website what they wanted is just not what harvard would have wanted and you've got to make sure you look up what your institution needs my harvard one needed to be a lot more personal a lot more about what you've done as a person what makes you stand out as a future world leader or as a future contributor to making change that's going to last for
generations to come so now we're gonna move on to reading some extracts from the harvard personal statement and hopefully um it'll be helpful okay right so in this paragraph i spoke about why harvard and why that degree you've got to be quite clear and unapologetic about the fact that you want to study at that institution or if you are doing like a ucas application where you can't be specific about the institution because you're applying to like five try to be specific about why that degree just try to make everything as concrete and it's like i
want this and i'm not sorry about it i'm not like being wishy-washy i'm being straightforward this is what i want and you just got to be like up front with it and i'm making all these spaces because there's i don't know how to articulate it but you just got to be stern with it and just be like hello i'm here and i want you to know i'm here so like see me you know what i mean so my senior paragraph i said i am confident that studying international education policy will provide me with the academic
knowledge that i need for the future when i hope to begin leading educational reform in zimbabwe and its neighboring nations my mission is to work in a global community dedicated to ensuring that all children girls especially receive a free safe and uncompromised education i want to learn how to use technological resources and to combine them with the existing local knowledge of affected communities and create innovative solutions for educational advancement the practical nature of this course strongly appeals to me as it combines academic thinking with practical solutions and then i just go on and on and
on my next point is that try your best to be quite like extra about your extracurricular and really big yourself up because i'm so sure that whatever you've been doing in your spare time is phenomenal and a lot of people always worry thinking oh well if i didn't pay for the experience or if i didn't have it all privately funded or if it's not something extraordinary and exceptional like i don't know going to see the pyramids in egypt or doing this and all that kind of crazy stuff then they're not gonna see you or you're
not gonna stand out and that's just not true at all like my personal statement is full of the most humble things that sound amazing like in terms of how i express myself in my personal statements about my job at mcdonald's honestly it's i even when i'm reading i'm like damn the girl worked hard like any situation that you've been in your life any experience you've had is actually so valuable you probably won't even realize it and the books you've read in your spare time is it the lectures that you've attended online is it the summer
courses that you've taken for free online or is it going to your local town hall and shadowing the local mayor or something because you care so much about politics or did you go and volunteer at a hospital and like help out on the front desk because you just were so interested in understanding the mechanisms of a hospital and how it operates or were you volunteering at your local high school teaching gcse history for free just because you care so much like try to dig deep and think about everything you've been doing up until this moment
that could contribute to showing your love for your subject and i think people underestimate extra curriculums because they just think oh it's got to be something that's so out of this world and it's like no no no no actually it can be quite simple and it says a thousand words it's like even though you had limited resources you still went out of your way and found a way to make it happen and i think that's so so impressive so if you can please try to dig deep and don't think that any of the experiences in
life so far are wasted because they're not and that's that's why i wanted to do this video to show you guys i did not pay for any of the experience on my personal statements and it still got me into both oxford and harvard and i think that's just really cool so if you have any experience at all it'll be worthwhile to mention so just dig deep and like think about everything you've done and mentioned in power by v in my personal statement i said i take great pride in the network and community i am building
and it gives me a great privilege to mentor aspiring young people who want to shape their own narratives and futures in 2018 i launched my access initiative empowered by v and have since hosted two academic conferences for over 300 students travel to local schools to empower and mentor students about opportunities within their communities and beyond for my efforts and drive to create change within my community i was awarded the future leaders award by the uk prime minister the rising stars award by members of parliament and the diversity and equalities champion award by oxford's vice chancellor
the leadership and communication skills i have developed through empowered by v will give me the confidence to integrate myself into american culture and engage with many initiatives at harvard's graduate school of education such as the ed talk and the black student union that helps students feel empowered yeah so that paragraph there was just me saying this is what i do my spare time i created an access initiative because i care so much about what i was doing and wanted to do my own way and help students for the students by the students and taking this
experience i was then awarded by people who are really really cool and i've managed to travel around schools talk to teachers help make a real impact so like you've got to really pack every single paragraph in a way that's like this is me and what i've done this is how it's helped me and how i've gained skills that are going to be useful and this is how i can implement it at your institution studying this degree and all of it falls full circle so even if you can't see the connection immediately you've got to dig
deep and find a way of like feeding all of it into each other you know what i mean and i'm sorry if like me reading these paragraphs is making this video a lot longer than it needs to be but i feel like don't just keep giving us advice share what you've actually written you know like why can't i actually tell you what's in my personal statement oh read it and read it out loud and read it out loud again i can't tell you how many drafts of my personal statements i've written before it comes into
this like full fleshed out thing the amount of drafts i had to write read it read it again read it again then read it again so many times so i would always say like don't be disheartened if by the 10th time you've written it still not good i think i've rewritten my personal statement for harvard maybe like 30 times before it was good enough for me to send off i lose track because you're editing and editing and editing and editing again so just remember like the first draft is never going to be the final draft
if you can write your personal statement in one draft call me teach me show me because it is difficult get someone to read it out loud to you because you'll hear the errors yourself straight away make every single sentence work for being there like there's always a word count in a word limit so make sure every single thing you're saying has a purpose and is there for a reason don't waste a sentence you just gotta like make it scream and shout from your personal statement like i want to be here so you've got to make
sure you show why you why them and why that degree or why that institution is going to be very like unapologetic about your confidence in your personal statement yeah do your research oh my god okay i think we should make this the last point because the rest of it's quite similar do your research on the thing you're applying for because i can't express to you how cool it is if you can say i've done this i've done that but i can't wait to do this at your place obviously once again if you're using newcastle you're
applying to many institutions talk about um modules that are common denominator across all the subjects you're applying for and all the institutions try and find something that's quite common because you can't be applying for five different subjects at five different institutions i'm assuming you're applying for the same subject at different institutions so try to find a module that might be similar or a theme that's similar but for me with harvard i was applying for harvard and harvard only for my master's i don't know where i got the confidence i would i couldn't tell you but
i only applied to one institution so i could be very harvard centered in mine well in every single paragraph to be honest with you i was dropping in modules that i can't wait to study when i get there oh okay so i said once at harvard i also hope to engage with the works of leading professors such as sarah dryson peterson and fernando ramirez in particular professor dryden peterson's research on the role that education plays in building communities and her focus on sub-saharan africa greatly interests me as a woman of african descent so i was
quite specific about what module by which professor and which aspect of it i couldn't wait to study and you can't lie like don't just name drop someone just because you just fancy name dropping them when i had an interview they asked me they were like so you mentioned in your work that you couldn't wait to read this is this is this by this professor in this module can you explain more and if i'd been lying i'd have been like but because i knew what i was talking about and i genuinely can't wait to like be
in her classes if i possibly can be it just it radiates from you if you can try and end it with something like quite punchy not punchy but something that's like hey i can't wait i'm excited and i'm looking forward to hearing back from you with positive news so we're gonna end with what i put in my harvard statement since it's the latest thing i've written and the other ones i would have changed slightly what i put but with this one i said quite simply i want to study it's no let's go from the top
part i put i want to be at the heart of decision making to lead and form global communities dedicated to addressing the urgent international education crisis quite simply i want to study international education policy at harvard so i can sit at the table with other future leaders turn my passions into solutions and become an agent of change for current and future generations across the globe and that's pretty much it like i tried to read as many snippets as i could from the personal statements because i know that personal statement writing is not easy it's quite
difficult and i wish i'd had lots more help when i was doing mine so i thought i'd read you guys some of mine so yeah my last piece of advice on this sheet that i've messed up is why you white them and why that degree boom bang and that's it that's the only advice i can give you guys i hope it was helpful i know it was quite general and obviously i have to because i'm talking to like thousands of you guys and i don't know what you're all applying for but um if you're applying
for international education policy at harvard university then this is very helpful but if you're not then i'm sorry um yeah that's it i hope that was useful please comment down below where you're applying and what you're applying for i'm quite nosy i love reading the comments so let me know and i'll be down there with you chit chatting away that's it i'm gonna see you guys in the next video and please press subscribe if you are new see you soon and bye
