personal statement for politics

I am not sure what to focus on in my personal statement and need so advise how many topics should i cover maximum.

Reply 1

If we're focusing on politics I would argue contemporary knowledge on political events and topics of interest, anything you can link to yourself as well in terms of personal experience or knowledge. Tie in subjects you've taken at A-Level, e.g. Sociology, Politics and Government, English, History, etc and highlight skills related to studying politics. In mine I chose to specify my personal statement a bit further, as I was looking into International Relations or Sociology combined with Politics, so I chose to specialise my statement in diplomacy, and autocracies.

Parts I added included:
- Contemporary knowledge/personal experience
- Work experience/applied skills/supercurricular activities
- extracurricular and school roles (head boy, student council etc (relate to democracy, and democratic process)
- analysis of personal interest/politics, etc
- Subjects and transferable skills, maybe if you didn't take a subject that directly links to politics, try and show how it may have these transferable skills

Hope this helps.

Reply 2

Liverpool Hope Academic

Official Rep

Original post by loserclubs

I am not sure what to focus on in my personal statement and need so advise how many topics should i cover maximum.

Hi!

Joe posted some really good advice above. An awareness of contemporary issues is good, and then a good mix of academic and extracurricular experience related to your course will fill out the bulk of it. Feel free to talk about why you are passionate about politics! If you enjoy the course you are more likely to succeed on it, so when you can tell a student is passionate about the subject it's always a good sign!

I studied Politics, so if you have any questions then feel free to ask!
Good luck,
Mike

Reply 3

CAB18022

Original post by loserclubs

I am not sure what to focus on in my personal statement and need so advise how many topics should i cover maximum.

The advice above is really good! Since I did Politics for both of my Bachelor's and Master's. here is my two cents -

If you can, ask your college for advice and may be kind and courteous enough to read through your personal statement and help you improve it. None of my A-levels had anything to do with politics, or at least not inherently anyway. So, what I did was pick out anything political from those A-levels, whether that be historical or contemporary and show what I've learned from them and why that made me want to study politics. There are lots of contemporary issues you could mention as advised above, these would be Russia-Ukraine war and Israel-Hamas war as well as Brexit, cost of living crisis if you're picking up domestically political things. Do mention things outside of college that demonstrate your interest in politics, for me, that was participating in debating society where a whole load of political issues were discussed and reading articles and watching youtube videos about current world affairs. Depending on which university you apply to, you won't necessarily have to go into in-depth detail, especially since you have a limited word count and your personal statement should also include things about you as a person!

It was a while ago since I wrote it and I no longer have it, so most of what I said is from memory.

Hope it goes well! :biggrin:

Reply 4

Arden University

Official Rep

Hello!

Here is a great video from UCAS themselves on personal statements that I show my students

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8hFkMAjW-I

Marc
Arden University Student Ambassador