even if they don’t. “With the profusion of companies and Web sites offering to help draft applicants’ personal statements for a fee, no admissions tutor believes them to be the sole work of the applicant anymore,” Geoff Parks was quoted as saying in both The Times and The Guardian. “We certainly don’t assign any marks to personal statements,” Mr. Parks added in The Times.
Apparently we all misundertood Mr. Parks causing Cambridge to post on their website:
Recent media reports about the use of personal statements and their value in the admissions process have created a number of misleading impressions which we want to rectify.
We would like to assure all applicants and their advisers that, when making our admissions decisions, we do take into account all the information available to us, including that contained in personal statements and references.
Moreover, the University recognises that the process of writing a personal statement can help a student to better understand and express their own interests and motivations. This in itself is an important element in the preparation for an interview.
Similarly, teachers’ references are of significant value to us because they express the opinion of a person who knows the student’s academic ability.
Cambridge interviews a very large proportion of our applicants, and we use personal statements to inform the interview process. It is the personal statement, not the academic record that tells us something about the applicant’s personality, their passion for their chosen subject and how well they may adapt to university life.
Our Supplementary Application Questionnaire includes specific questions that allow students to expand on or fill in gaps in their personal statements. In this way we try to ensure that we have consistent, salient information about all our applicants, making our selection process as fair as possible.
Apparently the proliferation of services to help write the personal stateent has caused tutors to doubt their veracity.
“Personal statements have become less than meaningless in many cases, as they are clearly not the work of the student,” the tutor commented.
“Indeed, it’s often the case that the less eloquently and persuasively written they are, the more believable they become.”
From my experience: Admission essays do matter, but they matter differently to different tutors. The problem, of course, is you do not know who will get your application, so you may as well take it seriously.
