Again, I find myself saying “put yourself in the shoes of the admissions tutor”. If he or she has many more personal statements received than places to offer, then he or she is going to be looking for reasons to reject applicants first and foremost, not reasons to make an offer. The easiest, most straightforward way of doing this is to eliminate the candidates with unacceptable levels of spelling and grammatical errors. Even if the statement has good content it is going to scream out “this is a careless and rushed attempt”. They will be given every reason to think that your approach to work whilst at university will be exactly the same.
If you are anything like me, the more you read a document of your own, the more blind you become to the errors it contains, and this is why I advocate proof-reading by at least 3 different people. Spellcheck is a good start but it is by no means fool proof. So read your finished statement through with a fine-toothed comb before forwarding it to 2 other people to do the same.
Oh, and absolutely no text-speak, please!
Don’t forget that Momentum Careers Advice offer a personal statement review service for just £60. Email info@momentumcareersadvice.com if interested or read my blog post What is involved in a UCAS personal statement review?
If you want to browse through the other blog posts that I’ve written on the subject of UCAS applications then please click on this link.