Swansea University Applicants' Page 2016

I've sent off my UCAS application, I am just waiting for UCAS to send me the letter to track my options Anyone else doing or have done medical engineering?

They send you your personal ID in the welcome email and you just use your same password.

Does anyone know how long they take roughly to get back to you for offers? I've had my confirmation email, I'm just really impatient

Name: Heather
Location: South Wales
Course: Biochemistry
Undergraduate/Postgraduate: Undergrad
AS Level Grades (achieved/predicted): AABD (I'll be resitting some)
A2 Level Grades (achieved/predicted): predicted AAB
Offer made/rejected: TBC

I haven't actually sent off my application yet, I'm being really perfectionist about my personal statement. I hate writing these types of things so much

Welcome to the thread!

Of course, getting your personal statement to sound perfect to you is always a tricky task! I think I cut down the amount of time I had to spend on it by dedicating a lot of time to it during the summer break

I wish I'd done that! I spent some of my summer going to different universities and looking at courses though, so it's not like it completely went to waste haha
How many drafts did you go through for your personal statement?

A lot. I was constantly changing the content, changing around the paragraphs and sent about 9 drafts to my tutor, 1 to my English Lit teacher (not the subject I want to study but he clearly knows how to phrase things properly than the others ) and 3 to my subject teacher. Like it would get to the point that I felt that I was actually bugging them but I'd rather bug them and annoy them about it than sit down and allow them to give

That;s great, as long as you have an idea of which unis and course content you're interested in, it'll make the writing of your personal statement x1000 easier.

A lot. I was constantly changing the content, changing around the paragraphs and sent about 9 drafts to my tutor, 1 to my English Lit teacher (not the subject I want to study but he clearly knows how to phrase things properly than the others ) and 3 to my subject teacher. Like it would get to the point that I felt that I was actually bugging them but I'd rather bug them and annoy them about it than sit down and allow them to give me lousy advice. Worst thing was that my subject teacher is absolutely rubbish at writing or advising on what to write in personal statements so I ended up dismissing all of the "advice" he gave me. At one point he told me to take out my relevant work experience to speak about my other subjects at A level that have completely nothing to do with my degree choice. Like, what?!

How are you coping with yours? Have you got the basics put in? Struggling to think of relevant skills you've gained etc etc?

Oh man, work experience is meant to be fundamental to a personal statement, I can't believe he told you to get rid of it. 9 drafts though?! I admire your perfectionism!
I think I've got the basics down. I might want to mention other areas I'm interested in for my course, but pretty much all the content I need is there. It's mainly the wording I'm struggling with. I feel like parts of it are a bit repetitive and it gets a bit clunky in places. It's really hard to avoid some cliches too

I think writing your personal statement is a lot like writing an essay. e.g say something you''ve done, link it to your subject, explain why you like X and then explain why it makes you a better candidate for the chosen course.

I made it once. Didn't like it. Looked at A LOT of PS's online for my course - took the bits I liked and improved on them and made it really personal to me. Remade my PS. My tutors said it was definetly a really good PS.

Although I'm applying for a mathsy course, I haven't done maths, so had to rely a lot on my PS. Safely though, I've received my first offer (Lancaster) 10 days after sending it off. It took me about 3 days of constant work on my PS, from scratch, to finish. It took me about two weeks in total to find out what I wanted to do, research courses, and apply. Just focus on it and it'll get done real quick. The more you THINK about doing it the LESS time you actually spend writing. Just get down the basis of it and then work at it, and keep working at it until you're happy. I'd always take it to both an Eng Lit person and your subject tutor. Thankfully my tutors were very helpful, one of which wasn't and I had to fully ignore their advice but that can always happen.

My main concern about using other PSs for ideas is that I'm worried I'll end up writing something too similar and it'll be flagged up as plagiarism. Do you have any idea how many PSs you looked at? Did you only look at ones for your course or did you look at a variety?
It's definitely true that you don't get much done from just thinking about it. Times when I've forced myself to sit down and do it have been the only productive bits. Thankfully it's half term next week, so I should have more time to dedicate to it. Fingers crossed

I initially looked at a few general PS to get into the mindset of what a good PS shares across different subjects

I then went onto the TSR personal statement section and opened every single one for my course. I then opened every single one on studential. I looked at about 60-80 and closed off the ones that I couldn't relate to at all and narrowed it down to about 20 and then looked at those more closely and saw what was good about them, the way they phrase things and their structure - how they address key points etc and used it in mine.

To proof check your PS for plagiarism just copy your PS into google, one line at a time. Mine seemed to be very personal as I couldn't find a single line / phrase on the search engines, but even if some of it is vaguely similar and Google finds something similar, it will be dismissed as UCAS knows that over the years some statements will have similar phrases. Obviously if this happens for more than 3 lines I would change it.

Just keep it short and real concise, get to the main points and do it quick. Admissions look over hundreds of these things in a day and they're not looking for flowery language; they're looking for candidates that are capable of their course, with enough passion and desire not to drop out in the first year.

Also my biggest advice is not to worry yourself to death. Just do your thing and ideas will pop into your head, note them down and take it a bit at a time if you have to. Main thing is to write something that you can later amend, even if it's bad to start with.



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Happy to hear that you got an offer from Lancaster man, that's great news!

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Where did you come lurking from? Hahah I'm joking - thanks a lot!

I'll be honest pal, was really setting myself up for another year of six form doing the right A levels, didn't think I would get offers!

Still, don't want to jinx anything, I still have four more responses to await.


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