Management Activities for Personal Statements

This article is intended for students applying to study Management at undergraduate courses in the UK through the UCAS system.

For UK universities, supercurricular activities should make up the vast majority of the personal statement. Supercurricular activities are activities, undertaken outside of school lessons, that directly relate to the course you wish to study at university.

Management for UK universities tends to be a broad course. It can feature not only management modules, but also economics, finance, quantitative modules and marketing.

With that in mind, here are some different supercurricular activity suggestions for management, split into sections.

Economics

See my separate lists for economics here and here.

In particular, economics activities with links to management could include:

• Relevant economics essay competition questions (RES, John Locke or other essay competitions)
• Book: Coopetition by Brandenburger and Nalebuff – business applications of game theory.
• Book: Thinking Strategically: Competitive Edge in Business, Politics and Everyday Life by Dixit and Nalebuff.

Game theory books that overlap with business and management tend to fit in well with management personal statements.

A higher level personal statement can also include academic papers on topics you find interesting. Some economics papers can be relatively accessible, while others may be more challenging.

To find accessible economics papers, you can use journals such as the Journal of Economic Literature or the Journal of Economic Perspectives. Some of these papers can be technical so you may have to be selective.

You can also find summaries of academic economics papers on sites such as CEPR Voxeu.

The papers tend to be too difficult for the majority of students. So another option is to search for academic authors in Youtube for their academic lectures on the same topic. These lectures are often more accessible.

While several topics within economics can be discussed, a few topics within economics that are particularly relevant to management include:

• The principal agent problem: shareholders versus managers and managers versus workers. This includes how to incentivise managers and workers, as well as corporate governance more broadly.
• Whether firms are being managed well and the role for government intervention in improving management. For example, reasons behind suggestions of poor management as a cause of slow productivity growth in the UK and possible interventions.
• The response of management to changing consumer or business trends, such as the move towards sustainable consumption or ESG objectives.
• Why famous companies succeed or fail and the role of management in their success or failure.

Management

To target management itself, here are a few suggestions:

• Academic papers:
  • You can find academic papers on management by looking up management journals or publishers. This includes journals such as The Academy of Management Journal as well as reviews such as the Harvard Business Review or the Sloan Management Review.
  • Alternatively you can find reading lists of academic papers for university modules, such as LSE modules.
  • Here are some examples:
    • Sadun, Bloom and Van Reenen (2017), “Why do we undervalue competent management? Neither great leadership nor brilliant strategy matters without operational excellence”. Harvard Business Review.
    • Cappelli (2015), “Why We Hate HR and What HR Can Do About It”. Harvard Business Review.
  • You can also look for authors and papers that are highly cited in management, meaning many other authors have referred back to that paper.
• Academic talks
  • As an alternative to reading papers, you can often look up the author of a paper in YouTube. You may be able to find a long talk (about an hour or more in length) where the academic talks about their ideas. This can be a more accessible way into understanding management.
• Experience relevant to management:
  • Experience of working in a company and observing management practices.
  • Entrepreneurial activity, including Young Enterprise and or your own ventures.
• Articles:
  • You can find relevant articles or columns on management in Forbes, The Economist or other magazines.
• Research projects related to management:
  • This can include the EPQ.
• Books
  • A good list of management books can be found here.

Quantitative methods and finance

• There are several options for books but a few examples include:
  • The Drunkard’s Walk by Mlodinow.
  • The Subprime Solution by Shiller.
• Any mathematics competitions you have entered and in which you have scored highly, for instance UKMT, Kangaroos, Olympiads.
• Academic videos, articles or papers relating to financial markets, including on topics such as diversification, stock market bubbles and crashes, whether markets are efficient, or other topics within finance.
• Lectures on finance on Youtube for example from Jake Xia or Patrick Boyle. Look for long lectures about an hour or longer.
• Lectures on econometrics by academics such as Angrist, Pischke or Imbens. You can also find podcast episodes where these economists speak about research.

Marketing

Please see this link to my page on marketing activities.

Final thoughts

This is just a sample of the types of activities you can include in your personal statement. I will likely add a small number of extra activities to this page in the coming years.

I strongly suggest look for additional activities beyond this list – this list is meant as inspiration, not for you just to copy the activities.

Moreover, make use of your interests within management. You can do this by finding activities that align with your interests.

Hope this helps and best of luck luck with your university application!

For more university application resources, mostly relating to economics, click the blue button below: