How NOT to start your personal statement
Literature is the art of communicating the thoughts and feelings that lie beneath the surface in a way that makes the reader recognise their universal values. I have always been facinated by books and by reading and that fascination has grown as I have grown; until now I only feel alive when I am in front of a text, reading it, discussing it; Literature is my life.
What is wrong with the start?
- It is pretentious rubbish: the opening sentence sounds good but actually makes no sense.
- The candidate has made the (very common) mistake of thinking that the subject needs to be defined in the opening paragraph. In the case of Literature, many writers (including Jean-Paul Sartre) have offered definitions lasting several volumes. You won’t manage it in a couple of sentences.
- Mis-spelling of the first ‘fascinated’, mis-use of the semi-colon and over-use of the comma near the end. Spelling and punctuation matter regardless of what subject you’re taking.
- NOT SPECIFIC AT ALL. What’s important in your personal statement? You need to do three things:
- Be specific
- Be specific
- Be specific
Here the candidate hasn’t mentioned anything that couldn’t be transferred to a different student.
A better start might be
It was reading ‘Sons and Lovers’ at the age of fourteen that was my literary breakthrough. Before then I had been on a solid diet of Bernard Cornwell and now suddenly I was in a world which was vastly different from my own and yet in which the experience of adolescence was offered in a way I had never encountered before.
Why is this better?
- This is clear, uncluttered and unpretentious statement of how the candidate became fascinated by literature (without using the word ‘fascinated’ which is over-used).
- It is technically correct.
- A great writer is cited but so is a lesser one: we get the sense of a candidate who has read different types of literature and who is not sticking in great writers just to impress.
- A university professor has immediately got a sense of who this candidate is, as well as a couple of specific interview questions to ask him/her (about the writers mentioned).