Oxbridge personal statement- writing a book?

For the last couple of months I have been working on my first attempt at a novel. It’s a Gothic modern mystery, and I am confident in its quality. My intent was to add this as a supercurricular/ extracurricular on my personal statement, as part of the application to Oxford’s English Language and Literature undergraduate course.

I was aiming to finish and submitting it to publishers by May, but recent research has shown me that the response times can be up to several months- beyond when personal statements need to submitted by for Oxbridge.

Is it worth continuing spending time writing it if I can’t put that my book has been signed yet with a publishing house? Or would it be stronger to spend time entering literature essay competitions etc and read more literature (I am already doing the latter too, but I mean spend even more time on this).

Any advice would be highly appreciated!

(P.S. Is writing this book also relevant enough in application to the English Language and Literature course?)

Reply 1

artful_lounger

Universities Forum Helper

Writing a book has little bearing on a degree in literary analysis, which the ELL course at Oxford is. You could mention it briefly in your PS but I would not spend more than 1 sentence max discussing it as it's simply not relevant. Again, the degree is in literary analysis/criticism, not creative writing. Don't confuse the two.

Also be aware the "language" part of the "English Language and Literature" title refers to English philology i.e. the study of Old/Middle English and (potentially, depending on options you take/which version of the course you choose for the final honour school), English historical linguistics. It does not mean "language" in the sense of GCSE English Language (which is a kind of vague all encompassing subject for any kind of English composition and creative writing) nor the A-level English Language (which carries on this from the GCSE although includes a bit of basic linguistics content).

Reply 2

xyz1234567

It won’t really make any difference to an Oxford application, as the poster above said. Carry on writing the book if it brings you satisfaction and joy, but not because it will give you any advantage in an Oxford application.

To get published you really need a literary agent - don’t just send your manuscript direct to publishers as an unsolicited submission as the chances of them taking it seriously are slim. Get in touch with agents and see if you can get one to take you on on the strength of the work so far.