Writing etiquette precludes me from including an ‘eye-roll’ emoji here, but that was definitely my first reaction when one of my Year 13 Politics class said this to me while they chatted about preparing their UCAS applications.
UCAS’s announcement of Personal Statement reform reached fruition this summer with the final proposals for 2026 entry reform. And my class could perhaps be forgiven for their assertion, given that the Independent headline on 18 July 2024 was ‘UCAS ditching personal statements in drastic change to ‘level the playing field’ for all students‘. This is clearly untrue, albeit the communication of the changes to the wider public has clearly been misinterpreted in some quarters. Nonetheless, it is perhaps underwhelming that these announced ‘reforms’ are actually only a presentational change, given that ‘what students need to cover within the personal statement is mostly unchanged from current guidance‘.
The final reforms are a clear change from the initial proposal, which included easily misconstrued questions such as those about ‘learning styles’ (something I have written about previously). The aims of these reforms are both laudable and necessary; notably trying to ensure that all students have a fair opportunity to attend university. Additionally, UCAS has also noted that 83% of students find the process of writing a Personal Statement ‘stressful’ and 79% said it was ‘difficult without support’. However, it is not clear how these limited reforms will achieve either of these aims in a substantial manner.
The new reforms
Far from ‘ditching’ Personal Statements, they are to be reformed into three questions:
- Why do you want to study this course or subject?
- How have your qualifications and studies helped you to prepare for this course or subject?
- What else have you done to prepare outside of education, and why are these experiences helpful?
These three questions will still be in free-text boxes and still have a total limit of 4,000 characters. It is clear that these questions are supposed to offer support and guidance to students. However, given that these questions are broadly the same as Personal Statement advice and builders that are already used for the 2025 cycle and before, they represent little new either in content or structure. Therefore, while the aim of closing the widening participation gap is crucial, it remains unclear how these reforms will achieve that.
The guidance on the new reforms
Each of the three questions came with guidance on what a student should include in these sections. By breaking the Personal Statement into three boxes there is a potential for students to repeat themselves across boxes and therefore use up valuable characters, a point highlighted by the ‘Top Tip’ that tells students not to do this! But this could actually be made more likely by the guidance for each section as it seems that there is some overlap and grey areas between these questions that could lead to confusion.
Another ‘Top Tip’ on the new reforms says that students ‘shouldn’t agonise over which section to include information in; the important thing is that it’s included as the statement will be reviewed as a whole’. While this is useful advice, the annual advice generally given to students generally about Personal Statements is not to stress over them…and yet they still do!
The guidance for the third question is particularly extensive – it is the longest guidance of the three questions. Yet, this is routinely the area we want students to focus least on within the Personal Statement. For those who have read many many Personal Statements, clichéd lines such as ‘I completed my Duke of Edinburgh Award, which shows that I have communication and teamwork skills’ often add limited value and are rarely unpacked usefully even when they might be relevant. Notably, widening participation students may have had the least access to these sorts of activities and therefore may feel more stressed by the focus on this area, not less.
The importance of the Personal Statement
Personal Statements are a perennial moment of ‘stress’ for students, parents / carers, teachers and more, but they do have an incredibly useful role. While it is relatively well-documented that the use of them is varied across the HE sector, they are useful for students themselves.
The Personal Statement is one of the few times in the entire UCAS process that we get to see the voice of the student, relatively unencumbered by pressure from parents, peers, schools / colleges and similar. That isn’t to say these groups of supporters may not have tried to help with the Personal Statement. However, it is the process of encouraging a student to reflect on why they really want to apply for a specific course that is invaluable, as is the opportunity to begin to learn how to sell themselves as they will have to do for job applications in later life.
This week, a student who planned to apply for History came to me in some distress after a meeting with their History teacher to review their Personal Statement. The teacher had noted that most of the draft was actually about Politics and discussed with the student where their academic interests really lay. This caused the student a moment of panic, having thought they were certain about their choice. But after careful reflection, and chatting with his form tutor and me, he realised he actually wanted to study Politics, and he changed his application. It was only through the process of trying to write his Personal Statement for what he thought he wanted to study – History – it became absolutely apparent that his passion lay elsewhere.
The Personal Statement is therefore crucial for students themselves, placing them at the heart of the decision-making process and allowing us a unique opportunity to view the application through their lens. Therefore, while the value for external actors may be varied and, in some cases, limited, the value for the student alone is extensive.
Going Forwards
For students going through the process of making post-18 choices, an element of ‘stress’ is perhaps inevitable. These are, in many cases, the first major life decisions these young people will have taken. Ensuring that the opportunity to attend higher education is as wide as possible is imperative and, if reforming the application process will help, that then it is very welcome.
So, what could perhaps be done to help students within the current reforms?
- The guidance perhaps could include recommended (rather than minimum) character counts for each section, to help students focus better on which of the three sections need more or less development.
- The guidance could include clearer boundaries between the sections to avoid the potential for students to repeat themselves and have clarity over what should be included where. For example, work experience (when relevant to the course choice) and super-curricular activities like MOOCs and TED talks would potentially fit better in the second question than the third.
- The guidance could help students to show their academic journey, showing how one moment in a class led to a book which led to a lecture series, and what surprised them at each juncture. This could help students show their passion, rather than creating just a broad reading list as so many Personal Statements start out.
- It would also be useful for the guidance to include aspects of self-reflection and how best to do this. Too often, students are willing to produce a list of things that have read / watched / achieved, without reflecting on their academic skills through these actions. Rather than just the inclusion of essay competitions, encouraging students to reflect on how they reached their conclusions in these essays would be more useful. This avoids the trap of students writing what are effectively CVs – which is often what first drafts can look like – rather than Personal Statements.
- Some sections, like Question 3, may have benefitted from a more bulleted-point approach, or even being included in an expansion of the ‘extra activities’ section of the UCAS form, rather than students trying to pack all their extra-curricular activities into their personal statement but without really advancing their application meaningfully. Additionally, having a minimum character count for Question 3 could cause stress for disadvantaged groups who may have had less access or availability of such activities, so this could be removed.
- The ‘future plans’ guidance in Question 1 could also be a cause of stress. With a dearth of careers advisers nationally and a quickly evolving labour market, students are often intimidated by the prospect of picking a ‘career’ at the age of 16/17 while completing their UCAS application. While this is one of the areas in the guidance that does encourage self-reflection, it isn’t necessarily something students have access to the guidance and support to answer well, nor is it always entirely relevant to their higher education choices.
To be clear, anything that widens opportunity to attend higher education and makes the process of applying to university better for students (and all of those who support stressed students!) has to be a positive. It just remains to be seen whether these ‘reforms’ will achieve those aims when they represent little change from what went before.
