If you’re planning on applying to the universities of Oxford or Cambridge, or to study medicine or dentistry, then you still have several months to write your UCAS application before the deadline on the 15th of October. That includes your personal statement. If you’re planning on applying for any other course, and Oxford and Cambridge aren’t on your list, you’ll have until the 15th of January 2021. And your personal statement is only 4,000 characters or 47 lines long; that’s roughly 500 words, or only a little longer than this blog post. So you may be wondering, with all that time ahead of you, why should you be looking at writing it now?
The answer is that your personal statement is too important to leave until the last minute. Most of the rest of your university application demonstrates to the university admissions tutors that you have the ability to study the subject you’ve chosen. Your personal statement can serve this purpose as well, but it also serves to show why you want to study this subject. Admissions tutors want to see evidence of both, and a great personal statement can even help compensate for lower grades.