Video · Teachers Media
Personal Statements
The UCAS personal statement — soon to be reformed into a structured set of questions from 2026 entry — is a genre most Year 12 and 13 pupils write once, badly, and never think about again. Teachers supporting them tend to underestimate how much of the work is about clarifying what applicants actually know about their subject and why they want to study it, not about polishing prose.
About this video
UCAS has confirmed that from 2026 entry, the free-text personal statement will be replaced by three structured questions covering motivation, preparation, and preferred learning style. That change addresses some longstanding criticisms — the free-text format advantaged pupils with well-connected schools and access to help — but it doesn't change the underlying work: applicants need to articulate what they know about the subject and why they want to pursue it.
For teachers supporting sixth-formers through this, the highest-leverage move is usually earlier than the writing stage. Pupils who read broadly around their subject, attend a couple of relevant lectures or events, and can talk with genuine specificity about one or two ideas that interest them have vastly more to work with when they sit down to write. Pupils who leave super-curricular work until August of Year 13 typically end up with a statement full of generalities.
On the writing itself, the most consistent advice from admissions tutors is: be specific, be honest, and show your thinking. Naming a book you read and what you thought of it beats listing five books you skimmed. Explaining what you found difficult about a topic and how you worked through it beats claiming mastery. Concrete detail beats abstract enthusiasm every time.
What admissions tutors say they look for
- Genuine engagement with the subject. Evidence that the applicant has read, watched, listened to, or done things beyond the curriculum, and can talk about them.
- Specificity. Named books, specific ideas, particular questions the applicant has grappled with.
- Reflection, not just listing. "I read X and it changed how I think about Y" beats "I have read X, Y and Z".
- Authentic voice. The applicant sounds like themselves, not like a polished corporate statement.
Discussion prompts
- What super-curricular work does your school's sixth-form programme genuinely support, and what gets left to individual initiative?
- How do you help pupils who are the first in their family to apply to university navigate the personal-statement process fairly?
- What's the difference between a personal statement you'd be proud to have written at 17, and one that just ticks the boxes?
Try this in your classroom
- Ask Year 12 pupils to keep a subject-reading journal for the year: one short reflection per book, article, podcast, or event. Come UCAS time, they have raw material.
- Run a workshop where sixth-formers exchange draft statements in pairs and ask each other one question: "what's specifically you here that couldn't be in anyone else's?"
- Share good and weak (anonymised) examples of statements from previous years, and ask pupils to identify what makes the strong ones work.