Undergraduate applications to UK universities via UCAS are changing in 2025: the Personal Statement is replaced with the Three Questions. Read on, for my best tips and advice for how to deal with this 😃
Background
Traditionally, UCAS applications have required a Personal Statement - a blank space of 4000 characters. That's changing in 2025.
Now, UCAS will ask you Three Questions in place of a personal statement. You still have 4000 available characters, but will split them across the Three Questions, with each question taking a minimum of 350 characters.
Your answers will be sent to all the universities that you apply to via UCAS.
The Three Questions
According to the UCAS website, the three questions in 2025 for 2026 entry to university will be:
- Why do you want to study this course or subject?
- How have your qualifications and studies helped you to prepare for this course or subject?
- What else have you done to prepare outside of education, and why are these experiences useful?
Taking Advice
Be aware that sometimes teachers, schools, universities and even UCAS itself (a commercial organisation) may not give the best advice for you to succeed.
Personally, I view the Personal Statement as an exercise in communicating with the Admissions Officer of the University. And, the Admissions Officer wants to read about you as a potentially good student for this university course.
So my advice is to stick, as much as you can, to what the Admissions Officer is looking for - focus on what makes you a good and dedicated student.
What Your Goals Are
Your main goal (your only goal!) is to please the Admissions Officer who is going to read your Personal Statement.
An Admissions Officer wants to read:
- that you are a good student
- that you are a good student for this course
- that you are a good student for this course, who has started preparing for this course outside of school
In order to tackle these goals, it's best to have your one favourite course in mind (even if you are applying for five courses). This will help you to structure your essay questions. Find out as much as you can about this one course: especially, what topics are studied in the first year.
How to meet the Goals
- Talk about yourself
Use "I"-statements to say directly what you have done - "I worked..., I tried..., I learned...". The word "I" can appear in most or all sentences - this is how you make the Personal Statement personal to you.
- Talk about your process of learning
If you want to learn more about something - what do you do? Do you like to read a book, watch a long-form video, read a journal? Which ones have you enjoyed recently? How do you test and challenge your skills?
- Talk about your knowledge of the course
Search for a course you are applying to and look up what modules they study First Year. Can you use the same words that you see on the course description, sharing your personal knowledge and how you learned about it? Do you have any recent experience or knowledge of this that an average A-Level student wouldn't know, or that you learned from somewhere that isn't a teacher? That's golden!
How NOT to meet the Goals
There are some mistakes that students commonly make - most of which are things that Admissions Officers will find boring or repetitive
- Don't use poetry or clichéd language.
Writing "From a young age,..." will immediately make the Admissions Officer groan (and this is bad). This is not helpful to your application. The Admissions Officer typically wants to know about you as a student in the last year or two max.
- Don't teach us about the subject. Instead, teach us about yourself and your process of studying.
If you say "In Computer Science, the topic of complexity is about...", the worst case is that you the Admissions Officer (an expert in Computer Science) will find some point that they disagree with.
Even if the Admissions Officer agrees with you, this probably won't help them to make a positive decision. By teaching us about the subject, you've missed your chance to teach us about YOU.
A better option: "I learned about complexity when I was trying to write a program..."
- Don't write anything negative.
"I want to study Computer Science because I had a bad teacher for Maths" is obviously not going to go down well and doesn't meet your goals here. Being negative about anything (or anyone) could just put you in a bad light. Try to make sure that you focus on positive experiences and talk about your positive outcomes.
How to Answer the Three Questions
You should aim to directly answer the questions (don't avoid the questions), but also try to answer them in a way to meet the goals above.
Why do you want to study this course or subject?
The words "I enjoy" could be useful here - what do you like about the subject? This is best in the present tense, as we want to hear what you enjoy today.
If you have knowledge of a career path that makes sense in this field, that would be highly valued here! Although, it's not expected that you will have firm plans after graduation.
How have your qualifications and studies helped you to prepare for this course or subject?
It helps (a lot!) if you know what the course will involve. Showing that you are working towards topics in the first year of university will help.
Here is a good place to talk about books from university reading lists, your Olympiads, your programming projects, or relevant courses that you have taken outside of school.
What else have you done to prepare outside of education, and why are these experiences useful?
This is an opportunity for you to show "transferable skills" - things which show your determination and commitment but might not be directly relevant to the course. This is likely to include sports or clubs, and likely to include any work experience you have. Present these with a positive spin - it's good to give us real evidence that you have "leadership" and "teamwork" skills.
It's not necessary to spend one-third of your characters on this question, and so you should considering making this a shorter answer. The main goal is to present yourself as a "good student", and you may find that easier to do in the other questions.
More writing advice
All of my old advice about Personal Statements (before 2025) still applies and is still useful, to get an idea about what to write. I don't change my advice at all - the goals are still the same and the best way to write about yourself is still the same, although you now also have to fit this around the new questions.
So, my earlier blog posts are still good. For example:
Taking advice from other people
As a sixth form student (maybe especially in sciences and maths), it can be hard to navigate conflicting and contradicting advice on writing. Everybody will have an opinion, and not every opinion makes great advice. Sometimes, you'll hear a well-intentioned piece of advice that's not right for you, and you'll want to reject this advice - you should.
As you get close to a finished draft, aim to get a few people you trust to check over what you've written, and pay attention if two people independently say the same thing. Two people saying the same things is probably a good guide that you should change something.
Do write I
You might have previously heard advice about writing that doesn't make sense here. For example, students are often taught not to write "I" in science reports. Here, in a Personal Statement, you must write "I" to make it personal.
George Orwell's Six Rules
Some of the best and simplest advice for writing comes from George Orwell:
- Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing.
- Never us a long word where a short one will do.
- If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
- Never use the passive where you can use the active.
- Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
- Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
Good luck with your UCAS Personal Statements and good luck with building your profile as a good student :)