Personal Statements Editing and Proofreading Services

The first two hundred words are about a childhood moment that sparked a lifelong fascination. The next hundred are about the applicant's qualities. Somewhere in the last third, briefly, the subject itself appears. An admissions reader with nine hundred of these has learned that the proportion of space given to the subject is the most reliable signal in the document.

We edit personal statements for admission and selection — undergraduate and postgraduate statements, statements for competitive courses, conversion and mature applicant statements, statements for professional and vocational programmes, and the reapplication versions written after an unsuccessful cycle. Our editors work on a document where almost everybody spends the space in the wrong place.

The proportion of the statement given to the subject rather than to the applicant is what separates a strong one, and its failure is an autobiography with a course attached. Readers are selecting people who will engage with the material, and the statement is the only evidence of engagement they have. We work through these so the majority of the space is spent on the subject — something read, something argued with, something the applicant does not yet understand — since the discipline is what they will be doing for three years and the reader is assessing appetite for it; so the opening anecdote is either cut or reduced to a clause, because the childhood spark is the single most common opening and consumes the space where evidence should be; so anything read beyond the syllabus is named specifically and something is said about it, given that a list of titles proves purchase rather than reading; so a disagreement is expressed where the applicant has one, as a reader remembers the statement that took a position; so the applicant's qualities are demonstrated by the account rather than asserted in a paragraph; so extracurricular material is kept only where it does work the subject material cannot; so the statement is written for the course rather than the institution, since most courses share statements and the flattery is visible; and so the last line is not a promise about the future. Statements written this way get offers from readers who have stopped reading everybody else's.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including applications, predicted grades and unsuccessful attempts. We are editors rather than admissions readers or advisers, and we offer no view on your prospects, any course or any decision. What we can do is spend the space on the subject.