Hello! Welcome to this week's post. Lately I've been helping a friend with checking her personal statement, and it brought back a lot of memories (some great and some not so great) from my PS writing phase. Then I thought why not share my personal statement writing journey, and also my own PS that got me conditional offers from UCL, KCL, Edinburgh and also Warwick, by the end of this post. If you hadn't known already, I'm a Psychology student, thus my PS will be mostly about this subject. Without further ado, let's begin!
My PS journey actually started way earlier than it should be, which was during Sem 1 of my A-level years. I knew before going into college, I wanted to apply to Oxbridge. With this aim in mind, I realised that I probably needed to put in a lot of extra effort in my academics and also my extracurricular activities, in order to qualify for an offer. Therefore I would try to set aside some time to self-study Psychology (since I didn't take this subject for my A-levels) by reading university level coursebooks, watching lecture videos, and so on. Apart from that, I started to join quite a few volunteering activities too. One of them was FunFest, where I was in charge with serving customers at a gaming booth. This particular experience played quite a huge role in my PS because I was able to write about a certain Psychology theory and applied it to that situation.
Fast forward to a few months later, it's already Sem 2 of college. In terms of PS writing, we mostly just attended talks on how to write one, and also how to choose which universities to apply to. This year was a bit weird because of the whole Covid-19 thing. We were supposed to focus on studying for our AS exams, but since it got cancelled, I decided to take this extra free time to plan what to put in my PS. One of the first things that I thought of was doing an internship or job shadowing with an actual psychologist, to know more on their working life. However, yet again, because of Covid (ugh), this idea seemed not so feasible. So one alternative I came up with was doing informational interviews instead, directly asking them what it was like working as a psychologist. As an introvert, recovering from social anxiety, this idea TERRIFIED me. But my obsession with Cambridge didn't stop me from reaching out to 3 psychologists (one of them is actually really famous now hehe). At the same time, I was also in the process of building "AcadStrive", and the story behind that is for another blog (sorry!). Oh the things I did for Cambridge :')
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| How I planned out the content of my PS |
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| The interview script that I typed out after one of my informational interviews with psychologists |
Sem 3 had finally arrived, and I had a rough draft of what to put in my PS. This seemed early, but I had to do it early because Cambridge deadline was the earliest. Over the Sem 2 break, not only I did what I mentioned in the previous paragraph, I also watched a ton of lecture videos on Psychology, TV shows about mental health, read a ton of books, even watched a lot of psychology related movies and did some analysis on the characters. I probably left a few things out, but, I was doing the absolute MOST, just for the sake of having some PS content to write about. And also for Cambridge. I put all those in my PS, but when I showed to a couple of teachers my PS for their opinions, they said that I probably put in too much extracurriculars. Writing just a few in depth would suffice. Well there goes my effort :') Overall, I wrote 5 drafts before producing a final draft that I was satisfied with. My IELTS teacher, Mr J (hi sir!) really helped me out with compressing my PS content into fewer words. I had to show him my PS a couple of times because I kept making changes, but he was so patient with me regardless. Super thankful for his help <3
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| A preview of my handwritten lecture notes. I had 3 of these notebooks (idk how I managed to be so diligent and disiplined honestly T_T) |
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| After watching the movies, I would do a bit of research on the psychological concepts presented in the movies, as well as the mental conditions that the characters suffer from |
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| My personal space for working on my PS! Without Notion I wouldn't have been able to keep track of everything T_T |
Below is my final PS draft that got me into UCL :
"God gave you a mouth, but you are too dysfunctional to learn to use it!" The hurtful words stayed with me from age 9, when scolded for not answering a simple question. Five years later, after talking to several psychologists, I found I was showing signs of social anxiety. I often wonder whether my condition was a result of nature, or if my parents unintentionally reinforced my avoidant behaviour by letting me escape social situations. Growing up in Borneo, I realised insufficient mental health awareness impacted society's understanding of the need for getting treatment. For this reason, I am driven to pursue Psychology, and later specialise in Clinical Psychology, to increase knowledge and accessibility of mental health awareness.
One takeaway from reading Psychology and Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs: why some people are motivated more so than others. I applied this theory through "AcadStrive", an initiative I founded, where one aim is conversing about mental health among students to reduce stigmas surrounding this issue in my country. Through "AcadStrive", I worked with my team to interview individuals suffering from various issues, to share their stories, and write them into blog articles. From giving compliments to fulfil the team members' esteem needs, to organising bi-weekly meetings for cultivating a sense of belonging to the team, I used this theory as the framework to drive my team towards achieving self-actualisation.
Books like "Made You Up" sparked my interest in abnormal psychology. The depiction of schizophrenia in this book showed how our minds can be concurrently powerful yet vulnerable. Biology class and related lecture videos showcased the brain's powerful ability to control so many intricate bodily processes, without any conscious efforts. Watching "The Stillwell Brain" episode on "Mind Field" made me question the extent of understanding the brain: does it even have the cognitive capacity to comprehend its full capability consciously? Contrary to the mind’s impressive workings, one thing it cannot control is the probability of things going awry. Using my knowledge of chemistry, I noticed some neurotransmitters are akin to one another. The binding of a different neurotransmitter onto the wrong receptors of neurons can disrupt neurotransmissions in the brain. This lends itself to the argument the brain is susceptible to faultiness, showing its vulnerability.
As an alternative to job shadowing local psychologists due to the circumstances of the pandemic, I conducted informational interviews with them instead. It put a brighter outlook on my career choice, and I was inspired to reach the same level of empathy, patience, and passion that they had shown. Recognising the need to overcome my own social anxiety in this field of work, I volunteered for FunFest, which served as exposure therapy. I faced ranges of people from children to the elderly. My encounter with a deaf couple was one of the most memorable, as I wondered how to communicate with them without knowledge of sign language. Now I know social cues play a huge part in communication, and the derivation of the knowledge comes from modelling other people, where Social-Learning Theory comes in.
As a mostly self-taught musician of mixed ethnic background, it would be a great opportunity to add diversity to the University's cultural life by sharing heritage through the common passion of music. I have used music to connect with others, including how to play the piano, guitar, and ukulele (while training my patience in the process). I would be fascinated to research the effect of varied music genres on our behaviours across cultures.
Learning Psychology unlocks a trove of questions I am eager to glean the answers to. This culmination of life experiences has equipped me with the essential skills, and coupled with my passion for creating a better change to our society's mental health, has made me more confident than ever to pursue this field of study.
Tips!
Alright, enough of talking about my experience, here I'm gonna share a few tips to help with your PS writing process (assuming you are applying through UCAS) :
1) Start early! I know this is pretty obvious and intuitive, but sometimes we tend to procrastinate things to the very last minute right? The more time you give yourself to write a PS, the more feedbacks and ideas you can get, and this gives you more time to hone your PS.
2) Have as many people read your PS as possible to gain more feedbacks. But don't show it to too many people, because sometimes different readers have conflicting opinions, then you're left feeling confused which advise to take (I've seen one of my friends went through this confusion). Generally, you should go with your gut feeling on what to put into your PS. It should feel right to YOU, not to everyone else. It is a PERSONAL statement after all :) The more personal it is, the better the chances.
3) Show, not tell. Instead of writing: "I've gained leadership skills through joining this activity", or something like that, elaborate more on your experience, what the obstacles were, and what exactly you learnt from overcoming those obstacles. Show that you can apply the skills you've learned through all those extracurriculars/A-level studies in your daily life. In terms of relating your PS to your A-level courses, try to apply the knowledge that you've gained to certain real life experiences. If you take a look at my PS, I tried applying my Biology, Chemistry, and a lot of Psychology theories. If you can apply knowledge from a not so related subject to your course of choice, that would be great because it shows that you can critically analyse, and realise that in some ways, all fields of studies are in fact connected to each other regardless how unlikely that seems.
4) Use the character limit wisely. Whilst it is good to include a lot of your lifetime achievements in your PS, make sure they're not already in your tutor's reference, or else it would be redundant. Also, don't write sentences that everyone knows for a fact already (especially the admission officers). What do I mean by this? Let me give you an example. In one of my early drafts, I wrote: "Psychology is the study of human mind and behaviour". While this sentence is technically correct, it doesn't really show much. Obviously the officers would know what Psychology is about, so they won't be impressed with this sentence alone, and you just wasted like 40 characters. What a shame! Instead, you can put your own interpretation or opinion on what psychology is about. This would show the officers that you can think critically.
5) Don't forget to put in your hobbies! Admission officers would appreciate to see that you actually have other interests in life and not just a studious nerd. Plus, they would see that you have extracurricular skills which you can contribute to the diversity of talent in their universities.
I hope the tips I've provided could be somewhat helpful to you, and not just things you've heard of before. But most importantly, don't stress yourself too much over it, and have fun! You're only going to do this once, might as well get the most out of it :) All the best to everyone that is applying, and may you be accepted into your dream uni! Feel free to ask me any questions that you may have in the comment section below. See you in my next post!
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