The Student Room Group

PS for Joint Honours

Aargh, where do I start with one of these?!

Basically, I'm hoping to apply for French & Politics this year. However, I don't know how to go about writing my Personal Statement. Well, I mean I do, but I don't know what to talk about first, if you get what I mean.

What subject should I talk about first in my PS? How should I write about the subjects - should I give each equal space or should I talk about the one I have more experience with rather than the other? :s-smilie:

It's so confusing...
brimstone
Aargh, where do I start with one of these?!

Basically, I'm hoping to apply for French & Politics this year. However, I don't know how to go about writing my Personal Statement. Well, I mean I do, but I don't know what to talk about first, if you get what I mean.

What subject should I talk about first in my PS? How should I write about the subjects - should I give each equal space or should I talk about the one I have more experience with rather than the other? :s-smilie:

It's so confusing...

Well, if you want to give them equal rating, it really doesn't matter. If you want one subject to be with something else, not and, then devote more space to the one you want to major in. However, I would have said that if you were applying for French at one university and French and Politics at the rest, write about French first.

With my PS, I tried to show how each subject could be seen as supporting the other :smile: So you could write French, a paragraph where you show them merging slightly, then Politics, then extra-curricular, then round it all up? (That's what I've been advised to do anyway :smile:)

I'm sure there'll be plenty of people who can offer better advice :smile:
You could say that you are specifically interested in French politics.:biggrin:
Reply 3
brim are all of your choices joint honours?
Mathemagician. Funny?
You could say that you are specifically interested in French politics.:biggrin:


:ditto: That's a nice easy link between them. As others have said, it depends whether all your choices are joint honours, some are major/minor or some are just single honours. That should help you decide how much space to devote to each. I quite like splorgie's idea though- a paragraph on French, a paragraph on politics and a paragraph about how they link.
Reply 5
Link the two together throughout and draw in your itnerests etc that way. I applied for Management with French to the majority of my courses and therefore explained how I thought that a language would help to broaden my horizons, and therefore compliment management in understanding different cultures etc. This could be done for politics too.

Do give them equal weighting though, so do not just talk about politics and then say how french compliments it; you would have to mention french, and then how politics compliments it. This may sound confusing, but when you get down to writing it, it will become strikingly obvious.

Or alternatively you could say that you want to do politics, talk solely about that; then french, and talk solely about that. Then link the two. As someone has said above. This is very very rigid and I should imagine the admissions tutors would have seen this style of writing hundreds of times; you have got to have something about you that they like. Is politics popular? Management is, and therefore I had to get my point across that the combination was right for me!!

You must sell yourself, saying why doing politics with french is better for you than the next person, therefore I would say that writing it in the former manner, linking throughout, would make you PS more unique and therefore stand out more.

Hope this helps; if not feel free to PM me.
brimstone
What subject should I talk about first in my PS?

Whichever you think you can write better/more passionately on.


brimstone
How should I write about the subjects - should I give each equal space or should I talk about the one I have more experience with rather than the other? :s-smilie:


I think you're meant to write 50/50 on both, but if you think you can do a better job by doing 60/40 or 70/30 I don't think they'll care. Personally, I probably did 90/10, but I suppose that's a stupid thing to do. You have to balance it, but it's about writing the best PS you can.
Reply 7
Theres a few statements in the TSR wiki which are on multiple subjects, and theres a few pages on how to write personal statements there too. I haven't seen a sample french and politics one, but theres one on english and politics, and various other joint honours. It may give you an insight into how others join the 2 subjects.

the link to the wiki is: http://thestudentroom.co.uk/wiki/Category:Personal_Statements_by_Subject and if you click on multiple subjects personal statements for the joint honours ones currently there. They might help - but then again may be examples of what not to do - not all the statements on the wiki are good examples, but just examples of how a statement could be written.