Show, Don't Tell: How to Write a Personal (and Successful) UCAS Statement

Have you got to write a UCAS Personal Statement, but don’t know where to start or what to say? This brand new guide might be just what you need.

It will take you through three simple steps – reflection, writing, refining – to a statement that is both personal (i.e. about you) and successful, helping to secure a place at your chosen university or at medical school.

It’s written not by an academic or university insider, but by a professional writer, an experienced Fleet Street journalist who successfully coached his own children through the same potentially baffling process. It shares tricks and techniques commonly used by professionals and borrows skills from the newsroom, too, to help you tell your story in just 47 lines.

For those up against it time-wise, there’s an invaluable “Last Minute Cheat Sheet”. Otherwise, this book shows you how time can do a lot of the hard work for you: allowing your thoughts to gel in the back of your mind and you to come back to your writing with fresh eyes. It doesn't have to be a stressful process.

You’ll also be shown who it is you’re writing for and what it is they want.

Come UCAS deadline day, admissions offices around the country will be deluged by thousands of box-ticking, boring personal statements that are all too often devoid of charm or personality.

Yours doesn’t have to be one of them!