Your UCAS personal statement is your chance to show the university whether you have some of the skills and motivation to be a doctor. Here are some top tips to help you.

Has to be personal. No clichés or poetry.

The personal statement must be in your own words and personal to you. Remain professional. Do not try and attempt humour or include poetic phrases. Your word count is precious, and you cannot afford to waste space on statements that have no value to your application. And honestly was it really your ‘dream’ from nursery school to be a doctor? The number of students we see who include phrases that are factually (and perhaps medically) dubious is astounding.

Be wary of using companies to write the complete statement for you. If they are using generic templates, you run the risk of your statement being flagged up as a copy of someone else’s. How medical schools deal with candidates who are not honest on applications is the topic of another blog but you can assume the outcome is not good. Write the statement in your own words and in your own style.

Make it fun and stand out from the rest. Engage the tutor.

Don’t just wrote long lists of your achievements. Explain why being form prefect will benefit you as a medical student. Explain the skills that you have learnt and what you enjoyed about the activity. Make your response relevant to medical students and doctors. Don’t write long sentences that do not follow You will bore the tutor. The first person that goes through your statement may not be a doctor and not even from a medical background. They may have hundreds of statements to go through and yours needs to stand out.

Your personal statement will likely come up again in interview. Know it inside out.

Don’t include anything that you are not prepared to talk about and reflect on at interview. If you include any hot topics, patient cases or any factual statements in our statement be prepared to talk about them.

If you have any achievements outside academia, make them relevant

Do you have any trophies or awards? Perhaps you have won a prize in a local art competition or excel at sports. Don’t just list them but think how they could help you as a doctor or a medical student. Artists tend to have excellent manual dexterity and if you have played for your school sports team think about leadership and teamworking skills (for example). However, remember you are going to medical school to primarily how to be a doctor and not a sports person and you should limit this section of your personal statement to no more than 20%.

Finish at the end neatly.

Don’t leave any cliff hangers or stop in the middle of nowhere. Your final paragraph should be concluding remarks.

How can Blue Peanut help me with my UCAS personal statement for medicine?

We can check your statement to ensure you have included everything that is relevant for a medical school application. You can even book a session with a medical school tutor to help you write your first draft in your own words.

CLICK TO LEARN MORE ABOUT OUR UCAS PERSONAL STATEMENT SERVICES