Our personal statement samples have many uses, many of which will be obvious when you receive your copies. However, we hope this recommended use policy helps you get the most out of our personal statement samples.

You will, or you should have, chosen a personal statement sample or personal statement package that reflects the subject you wish to study at university. You should have read the rules and requirements from UCAS on the maximum length for your personal statement. We believe this to be 4,000 characters (not words) or 47 lines. However you should check this.

You should read the statement through first, getting an overall feel for the structure and the tone of it. Some may start quite seriously, with a quote or a saying. Others may start with a light-hearted story, or even a joke of some description.

Once you have read it through the first time, begin reading it again but this time try and think of examples from your own experiences that you could slot into your statement. Our sample personal statements are likely to conjure up things you had forgotten about, or thought would not be relevant to your application.

When you look at the statement for a third time, start making notes in the margin on what you could include for your own statement. Look at the structure of the personal statement and the tone again. Have a think about what matches your personality or your feelings about the course you wish to study, and note these down in the margin. You may also want to read it out loud, so you get a sense of how it flows together.

Split the statement into three parts – the introduction, the body and the conclusion. See what information has been given in each section and think about what information you want to convey in each section of your personal statement.

If you want to start with a quote, search for one related to your subject and related to what you feel about it. If you want to show what the subject you want to study means to you, then remember back to when you first became interested in it.

Look at the skills that are needed to follow a career in your chosen area of study and see how the personal statement sample has highlighted these skills for that person in question. Now see what activities, actions or experiences you have had convey similar skills.

The personal statement samples will also give you something to compare yours to when it is finished. Obviously your statement should not have any of the same lines or phrases as our sample personal statement, but you can check the flow of yours, the size of the paragraphs and the length of the statement against our sample.

UCAS has a thorough system in place to check for plagiarism on personal statements, and uses it to check against information on the Internet and against personal statements that have been submitted in previous years. If personal statements are found to contain any plagiarised work, then the usual course of action is to inform all of the universities you have applied for, meaning the chances of you getting a place are virtually zero.