When to write personal statement ?
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When to write personal statement ?Is there a deadline for the personal statement, I have started to make some notes but I would like to type it up after AS results day ,is this possible? I feel as though my AS results would give me a good idea of what I want to do.
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Re: When to write personal statement ?quite how it works in these days of electronic UCAS forms i'm not entirely sure, but your PS will need to be ready so that your application can be submitted on or before the relevant cut off date ( October for oxbridge and medicine , January for everything else)...
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Yeah its fine , as long as you complete a draft before you go back to college(Original post by Tayberry)
Is there a deadline for the personal statement, I have started to make some notes but I would like to type it up after AS results day ,is this possible? I feel as though my AS results would give me a good idea of what I want to do.
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Re: When to write personal statement ?I think that most schools/colleges will give you a deadline for you to give it to them (as they check it before it's sent off and add their references), I think ours was maybe mid-November? The 18th, I think. Though schools vary greatly.
If you want to apply for Oxbridge (or medicine, I think) then you have to apply much earlier than everybody else - this year, I think the UCAS deadline was something like the 23rd January for most people, but for Oxbridge it's something like the end of October? I'm not sure, I didn't apply, but it's certainly much earlier.
Moreover, there's no harm at all in applying early, indeed I know many people who did, and many had most of their offers before mine was even sent off. However, I don't believe you will be discriminated against for submitting it later rather than earlier. Or the other way round.
I wrote mine in the 2 days before I sent it off (I had written a really brief draft, which looked nothing like my final thing, a couple of months before), I had my RE teacher check over it, then the Deputy Head (just to make sure I didn't sound like an idiot and to double check my grammar and punctuation etc.) and then I sent it. Some people spent months writing theirs, but mine hardly took any time at all and I got 5 offers for law. But then most of theirs were pretty good too. So when you decide to write it is up to you. Personally, I found that a few of the things I included were things that I'd done in year 13 (eg, being a prefect and learning about law in the Ancient Near East) and if I had sent it earlier I wouldn't have been able to include these things. The more experience you have, the better it can be, in my opinion.
However, if you want to start writing it, that's great
I really didn't want to write mine, and my mum and both of the teachers who read it said that it was very 'different' for a law PS, but don't let that put you off. It put me into a strop until I got my first two offers 8 days after it being submitted, and the next 2 a week later. Being different is good.
Sorry, this was all just a long and covoluted way of me saying if you want to start now, do it, (though I'm not sure that you can send it off until the 1st September) but if you don't, don't panic, even if everybody else has done it already. (though it doesn't seem like that will happen to you if you want to start already
) I felt really stressed when everybody else was doing theirs and I hadn't (they had to see staff every 2 weeks to do it and mine was busy, so I left it :L), and thinking about it just brought up some suppressed anxiety, but none of it was worth it! Maybe this was more for the many other year 12s who I'm sure will look at this and think 'crikey! Everybody else is already way ahead of me'; don't worry, they're really not
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Re: When to write personal statement ?I've finished my third draft. That's only because I was Oxbridge at the beginning of the year and my mentor had me writing one since October. Definitley start over the summer!(Original post by Tayberry)
Is there a deadline for the personal statement, I have started to make some notes but I would like to type it up after AS results day ,is this possible? I feel as though my AS results would give me a good idea of what I want to do. -
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Re: When to write personal statement ?Start now if you want. Write it as a word document. Keep updating it as time goes on before you send it off, because circumstances change. The more drafts you do, the better it will get. You'll look back at your first one and wince.
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Re: When to write personal statement ?I look back on my actual one and wince.(Original post by carnationlilyrose)
Start now if you want. Write it as a word document. Keep updating it as time goes on before you send it off, because circumstances change. The more drafts you do, the better it will get. You'll look back at your first one and wince.
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Re: When to write personal statement ?Well, yes, I think a lot of people do. I look back on entire decades of my life and wince, but it's always worth trying to put an old head on young shoulders! Luckily, I went to university before there was even a space on the form to put one, otherwise I'd never have got in. -
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Re: When to write personal statement ?I started mine the day my application needed to be sent (I am very very bad with organisational skills..). Spent half an hour writing, got it checked 3 times by 3 different teachers, did some minor adjustments and sent it off. Got 3 unconditional offers from my unis but rejected them all as I completely changed my mind :P
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Re: When to write personal statement ?A warning to others not to rush, then?(Original post by jellybean_)
I started mine the day my application needed to be sent (I am very very bad with organisational skills..). Spent half an hour writing, got it checked 3 times by 3 different teachers, did some minor adjustments and sent it off. Got 3 unconditional offers from my unis but rejected them all as I completely changed my mind :P -
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Re: When to write personal statement ?The deadline is usually January time, about 2 weeks after you go back after Christmas (IIRC)
However, set your own personal deadline well ahead of that. Get it done over the summer if you can and be one of the first to submit it when you're reading with your applications. Register with UCAS as soon as possible. You may need to get a password off your head of department/head of college when registering with UCAS, as it will immediately recognise you as a candidate of that particular school and make the process a bit faster. You can still register without that, but it will take longer and your college will have to manually approve it. The UCAS website will have all the tips for the statements as well as a word limit, etc.
The summer will be a great time to research universities, get a broad idea of where you'd like to go and come results day, you can evaluate your choices and start to put in applications. It will look a lot better if you can get the work in sooner rather than at the very end, and they'll be able to make you an offer sooner. Just have a good long think about the course, research it and get in touch with the universities as soon as you can if you need to discuss anything.
If you're thinking of going to open days, you can still put in applications. You pick 5 universities from UCAS, then select the top 2 around April time. So I chose my 5 and then started to go to open days. I had to wiggle around my choices a bit and add extra things into the personal statement to reflect what I'd seen and heard at the universities, but overall it's fairly straight forward.Last edited by SillyEddy; 18-06-2012 at 16:23. -
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Re: When to write personal statement ?Most schools and colleges ask for your personal statements around November, so it's definitely a good idea to write it early and pass it around your friends and teachers for opinions before handing in the final draft! That's what I did. Some of my friends didn't write it until the day before the UCAS deadline, so they had to rush it. I was up all night helping one of my friends with his statement! So yeah, I'd definitely do it quite early, but don't worry if it's not perfect the first time.
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Re: When to write personal statement ?We just got the news today we have to have our first draft in by the 29th June and hand them into our Reference. But the final deadline is January. I think the trick is to keep redrafting until its as perfect as you can make it!
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Re: When to write personal statement ?Not necessarily. I know at my school they never even told us how to join the school's UCAS group buzzword or handed us out the personal statement do's and dont's and paragraph plan until mid-September.(Original post by allstar)
Yeah its fine , as long as you complete a draft before you go back to college
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Although they had asked Oxbridge/med applicants to come forward before the summer, not that there were any, in fact I'm not sure in the 50 year history of my 1300 pupil school a single pupil has ever applied to Oxbridge or a med school
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Re: When to write personal statement ?All schools set their own internal deadlines. The final deadline for Oxbridge/medics/dentists/vets is October 15 and the overall deadline for equal consideration is January 15th, but remember that that is the date on which UCAS must receive your application. All schools and colleges need time to process the form once the student has completed it. Our school will turn it aound in 3 days, but if you read some threads on here, you will see some places taking months, and even having to be reminded by the student. The moral of the story is to get it in as soon as you are sure what you want to do and feel you have done the best you can, because it's not always in your hands how long things take once it leaves you.
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Re: When to write personal statement ?I've seen people get offers as early as November on the sticky in this subforum, do they just keep handing out offers until and after January?(Original post by carnationlilyrose)
All schools set their own internal deadlines. The final deadline for Oxbridge/medics/dentists/vets is October 15 and the overall deadline for equal consideration is January 15th, but remember that that is the date on which UCAS must receive your application. All schools and colleges need time to process the form once the student has completed it. Our school will turn it aound in 3 days, but if you read some threads on here, you will see some places taking months, and even having to be reminded by the student. The moral of the story is to get it in as soon as you are sure what you want to do and feel you have done the best you can, because it's not always in your hands how long things take once it leaves you. -
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Re: When to write personal statement ?how did you get unconditionals? :O(Original post by jellybean_)
I started mine the day my application needed to be sent (I am very very bad with organisational skills..). Spent half an hour writing, got it checked 3 times by 3 different teachers, did some minor adjustments and sent it off. Got 3 unconditional offers from my unis but rejected them all as I completely changed my mind :P
[disregarding oxbridge applicants and medicine]
I really didn't want to write mine, and my mum and both of the teachers who read it said that it was very 'different' for a law PS, but don't let that put you off. It put me into a strop until I got my first two offers 8 days after it being submitted, and the next 2 a week later. Being different is good.
) I felt really stressed when everybody else was doing theirs and I hadn't (they had to see staff every 2 weeks to do it and mine was busy, so I left it :L), and thinking about it just brought up some suppressed anxiety, but none of it was worth it! 
