personal statement

planning on applying for a history degree at UCL, manchester, leeds, and my personal statement i want to focus on an event that is not really known in different countries for eg India/Afghanistan regarding colonisation, to emphasise the importance of marginalised aspects of history that might be pushed aside because of changes in societal standards. would this be a good topics to write about and does anybody know any books events and extracurriculars that fall within this (i’m thinking of writing about a thousand splendid suns or the kite runner by khaled housseni is this a good choice)? thank you

Hey, I currently have an offer for History from Cambridge, and this is my advice:
- don’t write about A Thousand Splendid Suns or the Kite Runner. They’re nice fiction books but they’re just that - fiction. I’d recommend keeping anything you write about them to a line or two in your hobbies section because it will make it seem as though you don’t grasp the full breadth of historical study. It’s best to put academic books by reputable historians for a History personal statement. They’re perfectly good to mention but definitely don’t base your PS around them.
- I’d recommend ‘Afghanistan - a cultural and political history’ by Thomas Barfield as a starting point - it’s very broad, covers a very wide region of history and I really enjoyed it, and you can read it and see which parts of Afghan history interest you most and then you can focus your reading more around certain topics.
- For India I’d recommend ‘The Last Mughal’ I can’t remember who by but it goes very in depth into the fall of the Mughal Empire and I found it super interesting!

hope this helps!! Feel free to ask anymore questions

omg thank you SO much ur genuinely a star. do you have any social media or anywhere i can private message you (idk if you can on here i can’t seem to figure how to use this 😭) since i do have a few more questions