Building your skills and experiences
Get relevant talking points and improve your knowledge
When it comes to your UCAS personal statement, you may have plenty of relevant experience to write about. Or perhaps you're looking for more inspiration. Wherever you're at, we've got your back.
Explore the things you can do in your spare time – alongside the online resources you can use to broaden your knowledge and experience. All of which you can talk about on your personal statement.
Preparing for your Personal Statement
How to identify and gain relevant skills and experiences
Writing your personal statement is one of the hardest parts of your application to uni. If you feel like you don’t have enough to talk about, that’s ok too. Let’s run through what you can do to identify and develop your knowledge, so you can feed that into a kick-ass personal statement.
Make a list of everything you’ve done
When it comes to identifying your skills and experiences, a good place to start is by making a list. This can be about some the things you've done in your personal time, that may be related to a course you like, or what you've been involved at school.
Questions to get you going
Have you:
- Completed the Duke of Edinburgh Award?
- Been head boy or head girl?
- Been a prefect, mentor or student ambassador?
- Attended a taster day or academic lecture?
- Done any extracurricular reading around your subject area of interest?
- Learned to play an instrument?
- Been involved in or captained a sports team?
- Had a part-time job or any kind of work experience?
- Planned an event?
Listing these experiences gives you useful notes prior to writing your statement. But above all, it's a nice, reflective starting point.
And remember – these skills and experiences are unique to you and universities love to hear about them. That's because they show your personality, alongside transferrable skills like problem-solving, decision-making, leadership and passion for a course, which are things universities look for in applicants.
Linking your experiences to your subject
Universities will want to know what inspired you to choose their course. Start reflecting on why you're choosing the subject you like by asking yourself the following questions:
- What gives you that spark for your subject?
- How do your skills, including transferable skills, relate to your course and career?
- What specific interests motivate you to study this course?
- What relevant skills have you gained from things like part-time jobs? For example, teamwork? Or time management?
By reflecting on what you've done and linking that to your chosen course at university, you'll have the basis of exciting topic areas to talk about in your personal statement.
If you're still undecided on what course to choose at this stage, don't worry. You can use these notes to figure out your interests. Chat to your teacher or careers adviser about your findings, or head to our help pages on how to pick a course.
And if you're ready to start writing, jump into our Personal Statement Hub to get more tips and send us your draft for exclusive feedback.
Building your skills and experiences
If you think you need a few more things to write about in your personal statement – there’s lots you can do in your spare time. From movies to magazines, to free online courses and podcasts, you can find relevant resources to the courses you're interested in.
Here's a list of things you can do to get you started.
Watch:
Vlogs, performances, films, world cinema, documentaries related to your course of interest
Read
Subject-specific magazines, academic journals, news, blogs
Listen to
Radio programmes, public lecturers, podcasts
Take free online courses
Future Learn, Coursera, iTunes U, Google Digital Garage
Visit
Museums, galleries, summer schools, taster days, sites of interest, local libraries
Podcasts and radio
Spotify, BBC Sounds, BBC Radio 4, Apple Podcasts, Luminary, TED Talk
Magazines, journals and articles
Times Literary Supplement, British Psychological Society, Royal Geographical Society, British Medical Journal, New Scientist, The Economist, Google Scholar
Art, theatre and performance
The MET, Tate Student Resources, National Theatre at Home, Royal Opera House, YouTube, TED, Shakespeare’s Globe, WhatsOnStage
Part-time jobs
Get a part-time job by checking company websites for vacancies – great for your statement and securing graduate employment
Again, write down some of the things that you do from the ideas above, and keep notes of your learnings. Maybe you'll write about them in your personal statement, talk about it in a university interview, or use them when you apply for a job. You never know when they might come handy.
