Help me with Personal Statement Dilemma (UCL)
Hi everyone,
I am interested in breaking into banking/consulting (undecided) & will be applying for target IB universities in the 2024 UCAS intake.
I have done some prior reading on this site and come to understand that LSE is highly stringent in their analysis of personal statements & they hold large weighting in one's application, so it has to be highly relevant to the subject to be accepted.
I was wondering what the case may be for UCL? I was interested in applying to their:
- Geography Bsc programme.
- & History Politics & Economics programme (I don't have A-Level Maths so chose this instead of Geog+Econ)
However my personal statement will be split between Economics, History, & Geography as these are my main fields of interest. So far I'd say my statement mentions Econ+History 50%, and the other 50% geography.
Economics & History I have interlinked in my personal statement (by referencing case studies related to where my family is from + relating it to historic events & how they shaped current-day economic climate) & have also tried to link Geography (via similar stream of thinking, but related more to human development;economic development).
Would this be fine for an application to UCL, or would they require a more focused personal statement that tailors to perhaps just one of the programmes i'm interested in.
Would you also have any additional advice for my current approach, or ideas to improve my statement?
Thank you!
It's a very difficult question to answer without seeing your actual statement, plus the fact that few on this forum are academic institution experts, but for what it's worth I'm a UCL graduate who applied to Economics and also Economics + Japanese at another university, so my application to UCL had these random references to Japan which must have been a bit bizarre, but I still got it.
It sounds like your statement is thoughtful and links the two topics well, and professors get the joke that sometimes applicants have a few programs in mind. From my (admittedly very limited) knowledge of geography, I'd make the core pillar of your statement maybe around an interest in human development (which you mention), and lean into the economic / geographic aspects of that, and throw in some books which are relevant to both (e.g. Gunpowder, Germs, and Steel).
Good luck, and say hi to Bentham for me when you get there!
Hi,
Thank you for your detailed response, I appreciate it a lot. From what I briefly covered in my post, I've tried to ensure there is a somewhat smooth link between subjects, or even intertwining (in the case of Econ + History). Thank you for the suggestion of books, will have a look at the one you recommended. :)
Considering Econ History & Geography at LSE?
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