The value of personal statements

Students applying to university courses in the UK through the University and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) submit a 4000-character personal statement, intended to enable students to demonstrate their suitability and motivation for the course(s). From 2026, UCAS is replacing the personal statement with three shorter questions, with the aim of promoting diversity and inclusion by providing clearer guidance about what is required, benefiting (for example) prospective students with less experience with essay writing.

A pilot project will develop a text analysis code, using the open-source software Python, that will summarise features of personal statements submitted to one UK university. We will describe how these features differ by applicants’ demographic and educational backgrounds, and whether these differences became smaller under the post-2026 system. This text analysis code, when passed to UCAS to run on the national population of university applicants, will provide the foundation for a larger research project on inequalities in university application outcomes.

Privacy Notice: Personal Statements submitted to University of Essex