Need help for personal statement

Hi!
I'm currently wanting to go into veterinary nursing and I'm starting to write my personal statement and I'm not sure where to start or what to put in there?
Any help will be appreciated.
Thank you :smile:

Reply 1

super_hannah

Personal statements are literally a chance for you to market yourself to unis & be like 'pick me!!.' You need to sell yourself basically, talk about literally every quality & experience related to your course and what you can offer & why it's made you want to study your course. Talk about why your skills & experience will be useful to veterinary medicine. Start with that & then later on do a paragraph or so about your hobbies & other experiences etc. You want to appear as a well-rounded individual but you want to set yourself apart from other applicants. If you go on a website called studential, you can read some example personal statements for ideas of how to structure yours.

Reply 2

nintysixthousand

I found this video really helpful! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcLwTjsDGwU

Reply 3

TheRealBigC

1) What draws you to the course in particular? Try and construct a sort of narrative showing your natural progression of fascination with the subject, and why specifically you think a Uni course is the best choice. This is a good place to start.
2) What makes you unique? Many personal statements become very cookie cutter, so things you've done that you think are exceptional will be very intriguing to tutors.
3) Consider what qualities the course is actually looking for (this can be found on Uni websites); try and present yourself accordingly, but don't make it blatant and always give evidence for your claims
4) Relevancy is key; always tie extra curricular stuff back to the course. Tutors won't care if you play sports, but if you can figure a way to tie the skills you learnt back to the course, it becomes relevant. Avoid being generic however.
5) Try and use a thesaurus for common words so it looks like you have the vocabulary and grammatical skills to write at an academic level. Make sure you're absolutely sure what certain words mean before you use them, and avoid coming off as pretentious by doing it constantly or using archaic language.
6) A concise, focused approach is better than a deluge of superfluous information. Don't worry if you can't cram absolutely everything you've done in.
7) If you're struggling for meaningful content, try reading some academic articles or giving talks related to the subject at your school/college. Don't just namedrop material without saying why it's relevant.
8) Close by reinforcing the benefits of choosing you.
9) When redrafting, get feedback from just one or two highly experienced individuals so you have a consistent vision; "too many cooks spoil the broth". Don't be disheartened if your first few drafts are absolute garbage either, it happens to pretty much everyone.
10) Make sure your actual school/college work doesn't become a sideshow; you will still need the grades regardless of how good your statement is.