For teachers: Giving feedback on personal statements

Giving feedback on a personal statement can be as challenging as writing one in the first place! Here are eight tips to help make giving feedback a breeze.

Personal statements are often the only opportunity students have to communicate with their chosen universities directly, and to express their interest in the subject they’re applying for.

Your role in giving feedback is to help them make the most out of this opportunity. You can do this by making sure their writing meets the standard that admissions teams expect, and by checking it for typos and basic grammatical errors.

NB: this guidance is for all UK UCAS applications from 2026-entry onwards.

A brief introduction

The new three-question structure is here, and it’s going to make your students’ applications so much easier to tackle.

The most important thing to remember is that students won’t be penalised for writing something in the ‘wrong’ section, so they don’t need to worry too much about which section they put their information in; so long as it’s all in there, it’s fine. 

The three questions and what they should write in each one are below – Unifrog’s UK personal statement tool mirrors this structure to help them on their way.

• Question 1: why do you want to study this course or subject? 
  This is about their motivation for applying, why the subject interests them, and how studying this subject fits into their big plans for the future.
   
• Question 2: how have your qualifications and studies helped you to prepare for this course or subject?
  This is about their studies – both in school and courses they’ve completed outside of school – and the skills they’ve developed from doing them. They can also mention academic awards and other accomplishments they’ve received here.
   
• Question 3: what else have you done to prepare outside of education, and why are these experiences useful? 
  This is about everything else that has led them to being a fantastic student on this course. They don’t have to write about everything, but they can reference work experience, volunteering, hobbies, extracurricular activities, and things in their personal life.

They have to write at least 350 characters for each question, but they can write more for one question than another, providing they don’t go over the total 4,000-character limit.

Bear in mind that some degree programmes might place more importance on one particular question. For example, vocational degrees (like nursing) may place more importance on question three to make sure applicants have built up some experience in the field.

1. Know your stuff

In 2016, the Sutton Trust found that

‘teachers’ views about what makes a good personal statement are far from consistent with admissions tutors’ views’ (full report linked below).

Whether you’ve been a part of the UCAS process before or not, before you give feedback, make sure that you understand what universities want to see from a personal statement. Admissions teams often change what they’re looking for, especially as the quality of candidates gets better each year.

Start off by reading our guide on personal statement writing for students: How to write your personal statement like a boss. We’ve written this using expert guidance from Causeway Education for both students and teachers to get a good grasp on what universities are looking for.

You should also be aware that some courses and universities – like medicine or Oxbridge, for example – expect something different from a personal statement or use them in a different way. Both you and your students should check if this applies to them. You can find out more about supporting your Oxbridge candidates in our guide ‘How to support your students with their Oxford or Cambridge application’.

2. Encourage details

It’s tempting to make sweeping statements in a personal statement, like ‘I’ve always dreamt of becoming a geoscientist’ or ‘I have strong leadership skills’, or even to define the subject itself. Research by the Sutton Trust, however, found 

‘admissions tutors tend to value focused and sustained analysis of a specific topic of interest or case study rather than broad statements about a subject, or attempts to make the statement more ‘personal’’.

Therefore, students should use detailed examples to show that they’re suitable for the subject they’re applying for, using their experiences and wider/deeper reading and what they’ve learnt from them.

Admissions tutors are particularly impressed by students who are able to interpret information and form their own opinions. Instead of listing all of their wider reading, students should draw links between them, mention a detail that they found especially interesting, or write about how something they read, watched, or listened to led them to explore something new.

Check out How to write your personal statement like a boss for examples. 

3. Be positive

Always include something positive in your comments on a personal statement, no matter how much improvement it needs. While you should be honest, make sure your feedback is constructive and not off-putting.

Example:

Instead of: You haven’t really written anything of substance. While you’ve made it clear that you love literature, it’s quite vague and needs more detail.

Try: You’ve made a great start of telling the admissions team how much you love literature, now you need to boost this by proving it – use lots of examples of the books you’ve read, what you learnt from them, how they compared to books on similar themes, and specific literary elements that interested you.

Don’t worry if your student needs to make drastic changes – it’s normal for personal statements to need redrafting multiple times before they’re ready to send off. Start by giving students one or two big things to work on, then circle back to the smaller issues that require less work on the second round of feedback.

Remind students that Unifrog saves every version of their work, so they can go back to a previous version at any time if they change their minds.

4. Avoid focusing on the word count

When giving feedback on early drafts of personal statements, don’t put too much emphasis on how long it is. Focus on the content, then encourage the editing process. Commenting on character count at an early stage may discourage your students, and may cause them to delete large chunks of good-quality writing.

For the first draft, get your students to write down everything they want to write about, ignoring the word count completely. This will prevent them from holding back in case they go over the 4,000 characters. Once they’ve developed their ideas to their full potential, then they can go back and cut excess words.

5. Keep everything manageable

Break up the writing process into bite-size chunks to make it easier for your students to manage, and to break up the feedback process for you. The new structure and our UK personal statement tool will be a great help here; you can get your students to work on one section at a time, and use the teacher side of the tool to leave comments as they draft each one. Find out how to use the Personal statement tool in our How-to guide here, or by watching this video.

Give your students specific deadlines for completing the first, second, and third questions to give them time to write each section, and to give you time to make comments.

You can track students’ personal statement progress and set deadlines (using the ‘interactions’ tool) from the Advanced or Basic tools on your Unifrog homepage.

For a ready-made personal statement-writing course, keep an eye on our Courses tool for a brand new programme. Or, try using the stages below:

1. Get students to research their chosen subject on the Subjects library, and get them to read the course page for their chosen universities. They should make notes on specific content they’re interested in and on the common skills they’ll need to be successful.
2. Get them using the Read, Watch, Listen tool to find some interesting wider reading material. Give them deadlines to help them commit to their reading, and encourage them to make notes on what they’ve learnt and found interesting.
3. Teach them how to write about their experiences and wider reading (you can use our Know-how guide to help you).
4. Use our ‘Drafting your personal statement’ to get your students started on their draft.
5. Set a deadline for a first draft of each question.
6. Set a deadline for a second draft of each question after you’ve provided feedback.

6. Fine-tune your editing process

The Unifrog Personal statement editing tool allows teachers to give feedback in three ways:

1. Use the ‘add note’ function for comments that need to be tied closely to particular words or passages, like wording suggestions.
2. Use the comment box at the bottom of each section for more drastic proposals to give students the chance to think about the problem and alter it themselves.
   Don’t be tempted to make these bigger changes yourself through the editing tool; this should be written in the student’s own words.
3. Use the edit function to make changes to the text directly. This is particularly helpful when correcting small errors in wording, spelling and grammar, or when working on a personal statement with the student.

Don’t worry about making changes that may have to be undone – Unifrog saves every version, so you’ll never lose any work.

7. Meet with your students face-to-face

The Unifrog editing tools should be used in conjunction with regular face-to-face meetings. Students are likely to respond better to feedback if they’re given personal guidance along the way. If they need more information about a particular comment or correction, they should speak to you directly.

8. Discourage multiple readers

Students should really only have one trusted reader to support them, to avoid conflicting feedback. You might want to involve a subject specialist to support you with subject-specific terminology and accuracy, and you’ll be able to see any comments they make on the Unifrog Personal statement editing tool.

Students will probably share their work with someone at home as well – be aware that some parents and carers may give feedback that conflicts with your own, and you may have to step in to help keep the student on track.

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