Personal Statement for science courses

hey all
im kinda confused, i want to study natural sciences, or a science like chem or physics in my undergrauate course. If i apply for slightoly varied courses eg nat sci at cambridge, chem and/or physics at ucl and kings etc, would i have to write a personal statement applicable to all?

Reply 1

Maria303

13

Original post by Anonymous #1

hey all
im kinda confused, i want to study natural sciences, or a science like chem or physics in my undergrauate course. If i apply for slightoly varied courses eg nat sci at cambridge, chem and/or physics at ucl and kings etc, would i have to write a personal statement applicable to all?

For Cambridge, you get to write another short personal statement so if you want to focus your other application on purely chemistry for example, you can add in bits about physics in the shorter personal statement for natsci

Reply 2

Anonymous #2

Original post by Anonymous #1

hey all
im kinda confused, i want to study natural sciences, or a science like chem or physics in my undergrauate course. If i apply for slightoly varied courses eg nat sci at cambridge, chem and/or physics at ucl and kings etc, would i have to write a personal statement applicable to all?

The personal statement is a single side of A4 paper where you essentially sell yourself. With the limited space in mind, you must be mindful of what will stand out to an admissions tutor and what you want to mention. Obviously there is great overlap in the courses you have mentioned but just inside NatSci, you have Biological and Physical so I'd first recommend on deciding where your interests align. However, you can still mention achievements that are somewhat indirectly related to your course.

For instance, in my personal statement (I applied to Cambridge(rejection), Imperial (offer), Durham (no news), Edinburgh (offer) and Manchester (offer) for Computer Science 2024 entry), I'd say that 75% of it was about Computer Science, 10% was to do with Maths and the remaining 15% was to do with extracurriculars (though this could be a smaller percentage if you have a lot of subject content to talk about. I did have a lot of subject content but didn't want to to overdo it too much so chose to talk about some extracurricular activities instead and how they will help me with the course). While extracurricular activities aren't of utmost importance to UK universities, they still want to see that you are a well-rounded individual.

Reply 3

artful_lounger

Universities Forum Helper

21

Original post by Anonymous

hey all
im kinda confused, i want to study natural sciences, or a science like chem or physics in my undergrauate course. If i apply for slightoly varied courses eg nat sci at cambridge, chem and/or physics at ucl and kings etc, would i have to write a personal statement applicable to all?

You only get one personal statement for all your choices. So you can write it how you wish, but remember each will be reading the same thing. Having a lot of different subjects included may make it too vague and non-specific for any option. Usually as a result students in the UK just apply to a single subject area.

Cambridge is an exception - in the SAQ there is an optional additional statement option, specifically so students who want to write more about a course they're applying to at Cambridge that is somewhat unique to them can discuss those unique features. It's completely optional though. Very commonly students applying to Cambridge for natsci will apply to a single science course elsewhere, and write their PS for the latter - they can discuss the natsci breadth elements in the SAQ additional PS but don't have to.

I think it would be impractical to apply for two separate single science degrees elsewhere and natsci at Cambridge - I would recommend looking at joint honours courses in that case to apply alongside natsci (or in the case of physics and chemistry, you may also want to look at chemical physics degrees - there aren't too many out there now but there are a few, and it is essentially a combination of specific areas of both fields creating an intellectually coherent degree programme).

Reply 4

Nat4695

13

Thanks all, that was really helpful
So if I apply single science everywhere else and just natsci at Cambridge this is fine and won’t disadvantage me? So with natsci you can just talk about how for example I’d like to later specialise in chem but enjoy the breadth variety etc of the course?

Personal Statement for science courses

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