Personal statement

4000 characters for a personal statement, I'm already on 7000 and I haven't even finished...help

What is it that's taking up so much space? Are you talking about a lot of books, too many extracurricular activities, or are you going too far back in time? Maybe write what content you've got in each paragraph (don't actually post any of it) and people here cant tell you what's unnecessary?

Reply 2

gdunne42

Original post by heidi_fulton

4000 characters for a personal statement, I'm already on 7000 and I haven't even finished...help

It won't even be 4000 when you come to upload it, the line count will force you to cut even further.
Finish it.

Then go through it and mercilessly delete all of the irrelevant waffle that says nothing important about why you want to study your chosen subject or why you will be good at it. Cut out most of the adjectives and adverbs. Simplify long, convoluted sentences so you express your ideas more clearly.

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Reply 3

heidi_fulton

Original post by sindyscape62

I'm not even sure myself, it's all about nursing so they want to know all about your work experience and how much you've done at school etc and link it with nursing. But all the stuff I've done is all relevant!!

Reply 4

Nadile

Original post by heidi_fulton

Pick out the more relevant stuff, or maybe you're going into too much detail? Anyone at your school who could look over it for you?

Reply 5

Mimir

A good start is to treat the personal statement as a bunch of bullet points magically linked together to create it. Every time you see 'and' or 'further to this' or any other linking word/phrase, delete it and replace with a full stop.

Now look at it, and delete the short sentences or parts of them that are useless. Everything should say something about you. Nothing needs a background or a story.

Your personal statement should just 'end.' It doesn't need a grandiose soundbite at the end, just finish it.

Also, don't state things about something the reader will know such as "nursing is a difficult profession" or "reading is very important" or "patients can be difficult sometimes and a nurse must be able to deal with this, so..."

You'll be surprised how much you'll delete.

Reply 6

Failingstudent98

Original post by heidi_fulton

If medicine applicants can cut it down to 4,000- nursing applicants certainly can. Don't waffle, chances are there are loads of extra words that don't grammatically need to be there. Work experiences take 3 lines max- include maybe 3-4 and just say what you did and what it taught you. Nice and sweet. And prioritise! Make a list of the attributes nurses need, once you've got one example of that attribute don't waste the characters on proving you have it again!

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Reply 7

Charlotte's Web

Original post by heidi_fulton

Original post by Failingstudent98

The comment about medical students is not constructive and the belittling nursing students is not helpful to OP.*

The advice you are giving is incorrect with regards to nursing personal statements - work experience and volunteering for most applicants forms the vast majority of their statement. Writing separately about them for three lines and just stating 'what you did and what it taught you' is not sufficient to make a good application. Demonstrating that an attribute has been developed in several ways is certainly beneficial.

Reply 8

Failingstudent98

Original post by Charlotte49

Take a look at the Nursing PS Guidance in my signature, there are some tips in there regarding how to talk about your work experience and also how to structure in a way that maximises the use of your character allowance. There are some tips in there such as linking your experiences to development of a skill rather than discussing them separately that may help you. Only include the most relevant and most recent experiences, but feel free to talk in depth about one skill or experience which you feel is important.*

If you have any further questions, or if anything doesn't make sense in the guidance, feel free to let me know. *

The comment about medical students is not constructive and the belittling nursing students is not helpful to OP.*

The advice you are giving is incorrect with regards to nursing personal statements - work experience and volunteering for most applicants forms the vast majority of their statement. Writing separately about them for three lines and just stating 'what you did and what it taught you' is not sufficient to make a good application. Demonstrating that an attribute has been developed in several ways is certainly beneficial.

I'm giving the advice my careers advisor told me, and I'm not belittling nursing, I'm saying that medicine applicants do a tone of work experience and they all a manage to cut it down so for nursing it should be possible as well. With regards to three lines thing I meant three sentences- that's literally what our careers advisor told us for most of the healthcare applicants. It should be tiny amounts of what you actually did and then a larger amount on what you learnt from it and how you've developed as a candidate because of that. Half the application should be work experience (minimum). It's the advice we get given and it clearly works as everyone that applies for nursing gets offers from all their chosen uni's.

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Reply 9

Charlotte's Web

Original post by Failingstudent98

That's fine, but not the way your comment came across to me. I apologise if I misunderstood and jumped to conclusions.

Different advisors will give different advice based on different experiences. After dealing with many many applicants, the advice I give is what I find works, but again, is led by my experiences which are very different to that of other advisors. Advice from academic sources such as schools and colleges regarding nursing can sometimes be good, but lack in some areas as staff there often do not come from a nursing background, and it is very different from the traditional academic subjects they spend the majority of their time advising on. The advice you are giving makes more sense now you have explained it, and I'm not disputing that it does work. I would always encourage applicants to take as much advice from as many different sources as possible and decide what suits them.*