What do Oxbridge tutors want to see in a personal statement?

You should not be intimidated when it comes to writing your personal statement: it is simply a chance for you to bring together the best of what you have read on the subject that you (hopefully) love. What Oxbridge tutors want to see in a personal statement are signs that you are a person who they would want to teach. And they want to teach people who love their subject as much as they do. So how do you show this? Not just by telling them that you have read certain books, but by showing that you have thought about what you have read, and that you keep having new thoughts as you read more and more. It is fine to use what you study at school as a springboard. For example, if you read some Seamus Heaney at A Level, you might want to see how reading W.B. Yeats informs your understanding of Heaney's depiction of The Troubles, or even how Heaney's poetry relates to the potential threat posed by Brexit in Ireland. By showing the links between your ideas, you show tutors that you are constantly thinking about your subject - which is what they are doing too. The main focus of an Oxbridge personal statement must be academic: you might be proud of your Duke of Edinburgh's Award, or of your role as a Prefect, but tutors would much rather hear about how reading, for example, Niall Ferguson's 'The Pity of War', changed your mind about the inevitability of the First World War. The thing to remember about an Oxbridge personal statement is that everything you write is potential interview fodder. My tutor told me that all she really wants to see from a personal statement is a few ideas on around ten texts that you'd be happy to talk about for twenty minutes in an interview. Though this might sound limiting, including more ideas on which you can be questioned will always be a better bet than including simply the fact that you are very good at swimming (and anyway, there's room for your teachers to show how well-rounded you are in your reference!). There's a good chance that you'll end up talking face-to-face with the academic to whom your personal statement is indirectly addressed, so don't shy away from doing a bit of research on the tutors at the college to which you apply. If there's something in your personal statement that relates to their field of interest, they'll probably want to ask you a bit about it, so it's good to know who you're talking to. A final tip is to make use of all the different media that are available to you: 'In Our Time' podcasts, 'iqsquared' debates - they're all relevant, and will help you make the links between your ideas that are key to a good personal statement. So don't be daunted. What Oxbridge tutors really want to see in a personal statement is someone who seems a bit like them.