Getting Started Social Work Degree

The Personal Statement

The personal statement is often the weakest section of the UCAS application. The main weaknesses are: (a) poor structure, (b) poor grammar and spelling, (c) too much waffle (d) not being taken seriously enough.

One of the most important parts of your application is the personal statement. Use it as a selling opportunity.

You can enter 4,000 characters, including spaces, for your personal statement. You can use up to 47 lines of text. When you save text, the system will automatically tell you how many more characters are still available or if you have used too many characters. Unfortunately, you cannot use italics, bold type, underlining or foreign characters, such as accents, in your personal statement.

You should prepare your personal statement offline as a word-processed document and paste in the text by clicking in the box and holding down Ctrl +V.

Keep your style clear and simple but remember you are not e mailing a friend so use a formal style. Your form has to serve as evidence of your writing ability and admissions tutors are likely to take poor spelling and sentence construction as evidence of carelessness.

Your personal statement should show enthusiasm for your chosen course. Some applicants often focus too much on extra-curricular activities and not enough on academic issues or choice of course.

Most importantly you should explain why you have applied for a social work degree. An outline of how your qualifications and / or work experience are relevant to social work training should be given. For instance, you could comment on topics you have studied and books you have read that have given you an insight into social issues.

Don’t just describe what work experience you have done, give examples of skills and qualities you have gained as a result and why you think you would make a good social worker. What evidence can you provide that you are patient, tolerant, open minded, non judgemental and can work as part of a team? Explain how your experience has given you an understanding of the role of a social worker.

Remember that any points written in your personal statement may be discussed during an interview, so make sure that all your points are genuine.