How should I structure my personal statement?

The structuring of a personal statement is one of the hardest steps in the process, and it's important to remember how many of them one university staff member will read at one time. To make their lives easier, I would recommend using the ABC (Action, Benefit and Course) structure for the main body of your statement. This entails writing first about the activity , then the skills and qualities you have derived from it and finally how that links directly to whatever course you are applying for. I think a rarely mentioned subtle addition that could really make your personal statement stand out is to connect the end of one paragraph to the beginning of the next paragraph in some way to make the whole document flow nicely. For example, in my personal statement I finished talking about a new development in cancer research and started the next paragraph explaining how interacting with cancer patients in a hospice helped me to hone my communication skills. This lets the reader know how carefully you have structured your thoughts and feels more like a speech.