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Putting together a personal statementfor your university application can be overwhelming – your future hinges on it being written well.If your application is full of clichés, exaggerations and downright oddities, it’ll be a one-way ticket to the admissions bin.
Here are some words you should remove if they feature in your personal statement.
Passionate
Possibly the most overused word when it comes to personal statements. Approach this with extreme caution. It’s such a strong word, and when it accompanies "since an early age" it just makes you think, really, you’ve been passionate about poetry (or whatever) since you were a child?
Top tip:Try to convey your interest in something without the dreaded P word altogether. For example, rather than writing "From an early age I have been passionate about poetry,” try “Poetry first grabbed my attention when I read..."
Team player
You’re a team player and can also work well individually? Congratulations, so can the other 500 people who've applied for this place on the course.
Top tip:Rather than using clichés like "team-player", give a real-world example of this in action. The same goes for demonstrating your solo working ability. These common clichés don’t mean much when they’re not backed up by an example.
Watching TV
It’s good to include a section about what you like to do outside of your academic or work life. However, if you pad out your statement with generic hobbies such as "watching TV", "going to the cinema" or "socialising with friends", you may just as well describe your interests as "breathing" and "eating".
Top tip:If you want to include a hobby, make sure it says something worthwhile about you and actually adds to your application. All the better if you can somehow relate it to the course you’re applying for.
We
Ashley Harrison-Barker, Home Admissions Manager at University of Hertfordshire, says "Always use ‘I’ and avoid using ‘we’ where possible. Admissions Tutors want to hear about you as an individual and your experiences. You may want to mention experiences you’ve had working as part of a team but try to focus on your role within that team and your contribution in helping to achieve the overall outcome, rather than just the outcome itself."
Extensive
Generally speaking, you want to avoid unquantifiable descriptions like "plenty", "extensive", "lots" and so on.
Top tip:Use real numbers, whether in months or years, to describe your experience of whatever it is you’re talking about. There’s only so much "extensive" experience someone can have, so actual figures will always stand out more.
Also
Try to avoid overly using words such as "also", "as well as", "additionally" and so on. These make your personal statement read more like a dispassionate list of things you've done rather than making it flow nicely.
Top tip:Instead of writing really long sentences, make sure each sentence covers only one topic. Using a mix of shorter simple sentences and longer complex sentences makes your work easier to read. It also shows your writing and communication skills.
Jokes and puns
Trying to convey a funny tone in writing is hard, especially in a formal document such as a personal statement. At best, you’ll make the admissions tutor groan at your terrible joke or pun. At worse, you could actually offend someone. So just stay clear altogether.
Top tip:Although this is a personal statement, you need to stay professional. Show your personality through your hobbies and interests rather than through humour.
Expert
If you’re an expert in something, why are you going to university to learn more about it? Maybe you have a lot of knowledge about something – that’s good, but describing yourself as an expert at this stage can make you sound pretentious and arrogant.
Top tip:Quantify your knowledge with qualifications, books you’ve read, courses you’ve attended and so on.
Overly long words
Did you swallow a thesaurus for breakfast? Words that are overly long scream "I couldn’t think of a word so I’ve used a thesaurus to find an alternative!"
Top tip:As a rule of thumb, if you wouldn’t actually use a word in real life, ditch it from your personal statement.
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