In a world increasingly rooted in a gig economy, you won’t be surprised that the number of freelancers offering personal statement support is growing. From recent graduates looking to make a few bucks to professional support services with glowing reviews, the options can appear confusing. It can be difficult to understand what kind of support you need and whether or not having help is even ethical.
Here’s why having help with your personal statement is so vital…
Personal statement support has never been more necessary or valuable. Your application needs to be competitive, detailed, polished and compelling; you have one opportunity to make an outstanding impression. Effective guidance, whether from school, college, friends or a professional, is essential.
Making sure that you find the right support, and that you do not put yourself at a disadvantage regardless of the subject, course or institution you are applying to, will ensure that your application is in with a fighting chance.
It is important to clarify that you should always write your personal statement yourself. Hiring someone else to write it for you is unethical and will damage your chances of success in the long term. The kind of support discussed in this post will help you generate a rounded piece of writing and develop a killer final draft.
Do not simply hand the entire job over to someone else. That’s fraud.
Get Expert Help with Research and Course Choices
According to UCAS, there are around 50,000 undergraduate degree courses in the UK and in the USA, over 2,000 colleges and universities offer bachelor’s degree courses. Add to this foundation courses, apprenticeships, master’s degree courses and a wide variety of comparable courses, internships and other placements, and you can see why the need for support can be so obvious.
You should be able to get most of the help you need to choose a course from your school or college. In the UK, it is likely that they will have access to a copy of a book commonly referred to as ‘Heap’, which is published yearly and has detailed listings of all the courses available to you, along with notes on module content, results and accommodation. If you can’t access this, and 1-1 help from your academic advisors is not available, then in the UK you can use theuniguide or check out the Times Higher Education guide.
If you plan to study in the USA and need some support, then this is a great place to start.
Naturally, you should think deeply about the subject you want to study, but in reality, you also need to research some other factors too. You should think about the way the course is structured; what are the core modules and which modules can you choose from? Do the mandatory modules relate to your abilities and ambitions? Do the optional ones give you enough scope to build a bespoke learning experience? Look at the range of options below as an example of just how complex the choice can be.
You should also consider learning style. Is most of the learning on a particular course online, live lecture, tutorial or collaborative? Is there a mix of practical learning alongside the more academic? How is each module assessed? If your strengths are in the physical demonstration of your understanding rather than a written explanation, make sure you take this into account when you apply for a particular course.
Not all courses with the same title have the same content. Make sure you do your research, find the right courses for you, and set yourself up to succeed.
Your Personal Statement Support
Get Support when Choosing the Right Place to Study
The second type of support that will be of value when you need to make the right decisions about which university, campus or college to pick is likely to come from your friends and family.
Choosing where to study is often a harder decision for applicants to make than the type of course they want to apply to. There are three rules for making a successful choice; visit the site in person and spend some time exploring, talk to alumni in real life or online, and read informed reviews.
If you are studying in the US, you can find a helpful launchpad here.
Presuming that you have completed this process, you should be able to make an informed and positive choice about whether the institution is right for you. However, there are also several other factors involved, and this is where your friends and family will be the best guide:
- How far is the campus from your home? (Sometimes applicants want to be as far away from home as possible, sometimes they want to stay close).
- What practical facilities are available on site?
- What is the accommodation like, how expensive is it and how much help does the university give you to find it?
- What is the local environment like? (Is it a big city or a small town? Is the campus in the middle of a country park or split across a wide urban geographical area? What are the advantages and disadvantages in relation to what you need?)
- How effective are the travel links?
- What co-curricular activities are available on campus?
- What opportunities are there for appropriate student employment?
- How effective are the student support services?
- How well does the institution cater for students who are neuro-divergent or benefit from learning support services?
- What is the cost of living like in that location?
Get Expert Guidance with Feedback and Proofreading
Writing your personal statement is one of the most important things you’ll do when applying to university
UCAS
Once you have picked a subject and a course, you’ll need to begin working on your personal statement. You can hit the link here to read my post on getting started in the right way.
Once you have gone through the process of researching material for your personal statement, you should consider working with an expert to develop it to the highest possible standard. Remember the very first thing I wrote; your application needs to be competitive, detailed, polished and compelling. Working with an expert will help you achieve these goals.
A good personal statement expert will offer you the following services, which are all worth considering, if you want your application to remain competitive:
| Proofreading for errors in punctuation, spelling and grammar | Feedback on the quality of your content | Suggestions for additional content relating more closely to the demands of the application | Techniques for further academic research |
| Collaborative rewriting of content to better express your ambitions and experience | Restructuring of your content to develop its compelling quality | Feedback on changes and improvements based on mutual discussion | Checking of your application for inaccuracies, word count and formatting |
A personal statement professional will not write your content, and nor should you hire a less ethically minded freelancer to do so. It must come from you. Working in collaboration with an expert who can help you realise the value and relevancy of your application is what you should be aiming for.
If you’d like to find out how I can help you develop your personal statement to an outstanding standard, I’d be delighted to work with you. You can follow this link to my gig on Fiverr, or find out more about my 1-1 support, and how I help applicants reach their higher education goals here.
If you’d rather follow the free guidance available on this site, then you can check out the most powerful personal statement success strategies here. Additionally, using free software like Grammarly is a great way to ensure that your personal statement is error-free and well developed. You can check out the free options here or hit the banner.
Good luck with your personal statement, and don’t forget to contact me if you’d like some 1-1 support. You’ve got this! D
Research and content verified by Personal Statement Planet.
