My name is Gurjit Nijjar I'm the Assistant Registrar at the University of Derby
I'm responsible for the Admissions service at the University.
You can apply through UCAS for undergraduate courses which is a national service.
Go to ucas.com and you'll be able to find the steps that you need to go through to apply online
statement is what it says on the tin it's an opportunity for you to tell us about yourself
above and beyond your qualifications. It's a statement to be made about you and you're
expressing yourself in the application on the bits that we won't necessarily get from simply
your qualifications on your school history so it is a very important component of the application
where you are able to sort of tell us more about you and why you're choosing
chosen that course or the University and the line of subject that you want to go into.
We look for lots of things and we're looking for a good writing skill as well as much as
the content of the personal statement so we want to understand why you want to do the course,
what is it that interests you about it, your own experiences and skills; you
need to get yourself across and what's inspired you to do the course right now.
But it's also about writing skills like I said so structure, spelling, punctuation, all those
components are important as part of the written part of the statement. Your introduction needs to
be authentic and if you start authentic it will flow through to the rest of the statement.
Start with why you're choosing that subject tell us genuinely why you want to apply.
Work experience isn't the be all and end all it's a good thing to have if you've got it
especially related to the University course that you're applying for but that's not always the case.
If you haven't got especially under the pandemic where it's not easy to get that experience
think about other things that you're doing that as relevant to what you're applying for so
you could be reading up information that isn't necessarily work experience but you are developing
your interest in that subject area or you're picking up skills that aren't relevant to the
subject area but relevant to University life and those things are important to put through. It
could be that you're doing creative work outside there's lots of social media work going on and
things like that people can do things on YouTube and TikTok and things like that and it's
important to just get all of that across but where it's relevant, do not put irrelevant information in
because you'll build up that personal statement quite quickly and you don't want to waffle.
It is a substantial part of the application form um as well as qualifications etc.
So the first thing will be qualifications, you've got to meet the academic entry criteria or
have the potential to. The personal statement tells us about your interest in the subject area and why
and again your potential to succeed on the course and at the University so it has equal importance
to qualifications but a personal statement without qualifications is imbalanced and
only qualifications about a poor person statement is imbalanced so it's about striking balance.
A good personal statement is well structured, it's well thought out
and it's authentic and it delivers on us understanding you as a person
in terms of your skills, your experiences and its relevancy to what you've applied for. A bad one
is the opposite of all of that. You need to take lots of notes about your skills and experiences.
It's sometimes very difficult to talk about yourself in a statement but you're going to
have to do that for university applications, job applications and apprenticeships no matter what
route you're taking that's a requirement. Think about what you want to do and why you want to
do it. If you do that thinking now that will flow through to every part of the admissions process.
Don't be gimmicky, flashy and don't overdo it and just like I said be authentic and you know what
you're authentic means and it's important to stay true to that. Also don't copy your friends,
don't worry about what they're writing and don't copy anyone else's statement. Research you should
do is about the course and the subject area and even the academics that's the x-factor you're
trying to now put into your statement, if you can lookup your academics and some of the research
work they've done it's all available on Google scholar, all their workpieces, etc those are extra
x-factors, wow factors that you're putting in because you really have gone and looked deep
about the subject and the course and why you want to do that at the University. Yes so most
interview invitations will give you some sort of idea of the structure of the interview, what
you might be asked to do like a group exercise etc so this is about expressing your skills in
line with the exercise that's required, you know the course that you're applying for so a typical
question will be why you apply for the course even though you've covered it in your statement.
There might be some other additional extension questions based on what you've written on your
personal statement so again be authentic in the personal statement you'll be able to follow that
through that interview. If you're struggling with your personal statement and struggling to start
it or even finish it or you're not sure about it and get in touch with your school or college
and your career advisors and even teachers who to assist you and advise you on that; parents, older
brothers and sisters or even other people that you know in your network will be able to help you