English Personal Statement

Hi - have now written two draft personal statements for eng lit and I still believe both focus on completely the wrong thing. Wondering if anybody knows exactly what to include? It's my main paragraph I am most worried about. I focus on Victorian Literature, and take different novels and write about each for a while, but am not sure if it's organised enough and eurgh am just finding it very difficult to know if I am on the right track. Can anybody give me a structure for an eng personal statement, or just any advice would be appreciated! Thanks!

Hey! I'm currently going into my third year of studying English Literature. With my personal statement I found it quite difficult to write my opening line so I went straight into writing the body of the statement and came back to the beginning at the end.

I can give you a loose structure of my personal statement but please don't take this as a definite structure that should be used by every single English student because your personal statement is supposed to reflect you as an individual and thats probably why there isn't a bog standard structure out there!

Intro - What literature as a subject/whole is to me, what i interpret it as and why.
P1 - What skills I have picked up studying literature up until now, I used a recent essay example here (explained it's topic and book subject and how I had used said skills)
P2 - what topics and authors I had explored throughout studying English up until now, I picked out two or three authors who I had studied in class that I had really enjoyed
P3 - I picked out my favourite author and explained why his work really influenced me and gripped me as a reader
P4 - How my other A2 subjects (Sociology and Media Studies) helped me in my literature studies in regards to contemporary media and social context
P5/conc - I outlined any relevant extra-curricular activities I had participated in, any achievements and any experience I had gained

I hope this helps you give some structure to your own statement but as I said before, please don't think that this is a set structure or the only kind of structure you should follow. As long as yours makes sense and outlines what you want to do and why then I don't see why it wouldn't be okay!

Thank you so much - that's very useful! I had already gone down a similar structure, so am now not as worried as I was - seeing it written down is very useful - thanks again! If you don't mind me asking, where do you now study eng lit? Thank you

Hey! Sorry to butt in but I saw this and know Jess so just wanted to say that she studies at the University of Essex now

Hi - have now written two draft personal statements for eng lit and I still believe both focus on completely the wrong thing. Wondering if anybody knows exactly what to include? It's my main paragraph I am most worried about. I focus on Victorian Literature, and take different novels and write about each for a while, but am not sure if it's organised enough and eurgh am just finding it very difficult to know if I am on the right track. Can anybody give me a structure for an eng personal statement, or just any advice would be appreciated! Thanks!

hi what career prospects does a degree in english have? is ti a very employable degree? whats the difference between an english degree and english literature degree?
@Jess194