7 Economics Personal Statement Examples | With Analysis

What makes a great personal statement?

How do you improve your chances of achieving a university offer in economics?

In this post I will give some personal statement examples and discuss what the best economics personal statements do well.

Contents

Key features that great personal statements share

This diagram shows my summary of what makes a great economics personal statement. Based on my experience as an economics tutor and economics personal statement examples, here are four qualities that make personal statements stand out.

I explore these categories further below and in my ultimate economics personal statement guide.

For my ultimate economics personal statement guide, check out the link below:

Examples

Firstly, here is a list of ten economics personal statement examples available online.

Also below, there is analysis of what makes a great economics personal statement.

Personal Statement – Details and Claimed Offers	Comments	Link
Cambridge interview; offers from LSE, Warwick, UCL and St Andrews	+ Good evidence of independent study. + Great supercurricular activities discussed. + Good personal takeaways. Note work experience is not necessary for your application. Here the work experience has been used very well though. Yet if you do not have work experience, you can do equally as well through other activities such as reading books.	Here
Offers from LSE, UCL, Bristol, Queen Mary, Warwick	+ Solid supercurriculars mentioned. + Great use of personal experience. ~ Sometimes supercurricular discussions could be more detailed. ~ Introduction or conclusion may benefit from an anchor activity.	Here
Offer from Cambridge	+ Great supercurriculars mentioned. + Strong maths related supercurriculars ~ Introduction and conclusion could be more specific.	Here
Offers from Cambridge, LSE, UCL, Warwick and Bath	+ Evidence of mathematics related supercurriculars + Great use of personal experience. + Interesting personal takeaways from many of the activities.	Here
Offer from Cambridge	+ Good economics related supercurriculars, touching on various different areas in economics + Good attempts at personal takeaways + Good use of personal experience. ~ Personal takeaways could be more varied and sometimes deeper.	Here
Offer from Oxford (Economics and Management)	+ Student’s motivations for applying for the course are clear. ~ Books and articles should be discussed, not only name-dropped. Personal takeaways are important. ~ The language often sounds contrived and not natural.	Here
Offer from Oxford (Economics and Management)	+ A lot of great supercurriculars mentioned. + Interesting extracurriculars too. ~ Often the personal takeaways could be more detailed and less surface-level. ~ Second paragraph lacks details about the supercurricular activities. ~ Conclusion and introduction are ok but at least one could be anchored in details.	Here

To learn how to improve your economics personal statement, check out the link below by clicking the blue button:

Disclaimers

I cannot guarantee that the personal statements linked above achieved the university offers claimed on those pages. Nor can I claim that each statement is 100% perfect.

By linking to these sites, I do not endorse any of the sites linked above.

You should not copy any part of the personal statements above. Doing so is plagiarism and can lead to the disqualification of your university application. Instead learn from the techniques and kinds of things mentioned in their statements. See specifically the rest of this article for what we can learn from these personal statements.

Evolution of Economics Personal Statements

A proportion of the samples above are relatively old (five to ten years ago or more).

For some universities the personal statement is more important for applications. Consider for example LSE and UCL, top universities where there are no admissions tests or interviews.

We can look at more recently written and publicly available personal statements.

Based on these, here are some observable trends in recent years among the best performing economics personal statements:

• More supercurriculars relative to the above personal statements.
• More reference to undergraduate-level economic theory. This can show further reading and an ability to potentially do well in the undergraduate course.

What Makes a Great Economics Personal Statement

In this section I am drawing on my experience as a tutor about what makes a great personal statement. I am also using the available online examples of economics personal statements and the criteria listed by the top UK universities.

Such statements are by no means always perfect, yet they show the qualities and skills that allow students to attend the best universities.

These examples allow us to analyse what makes a great personal statement and also where students often go wrong with personal statements.

Key features that great personal statements share: a reminder

As a reminder, here are the four features of great economics personal statements mentioned above:

• Lots of supercurriculars
• Highlighting key skills
• Personal takeaways
• A well written essay

Here is a breakdown of these categories:

Lots of supercurricular activities

What activities have you completed, outside of class, that relate to economics? Have you read a book, entered an economics-related competition, or watched an economics lecture? These are examples of supercurricular activities. I consider these a key focus for the best personal statements and I discuss these further in my economics personal statement ebook. These show your motivation to study economics which will be critical if you want to study the subject for three years at university.

For more on supercurricular activities, click the link here:

Personal insights about such activities

These are what I refer to as “personal takeaways” later in this guide. What did you learn from the supercurricular activity? Detail is very important, both for showing a high level of understanding and also to convince the person reading your statement that you actually completed the activity. This should go beyond just recalling the activity – maybe there is something you learnt from this activity or something you read that you disagreed with. We discuss how to write about personal takeaways in the ebook.

For more information about how to use supercurricular activities in your statement, including how to generate personal insights, click this button below:

Demonstrate key skills

Obviously you should try to show academic ability in economics and motivation to study economics. But what other skills are useful to show in a personal statement? 

While there are many skills that could potentially be useful, I draw your attention for now to two key skills: Ability in mathematics and independent study (including research). Evidence from supercurricular activities that you have these skills will help convince admissions staff. Moreover these skills will help you in the economics course.

A well written essay

What constitutes a “well written essay”? 

Your personal statement should be well structured, with effective links between ideas and paragraphs. The grammar should be completely correct, that is  there should be no mistakes. 

Finally consider your vocabulary – can you embed economics-related terminology into your personal statement? You can use a thesaurus but do so with caution – sometimes it is obvious where a thesaurus has been used (and often the new word used does not make sense in that context!).

More Economics Personal Statement Advice

For more economics personal statement tips or for economics university application advice, check out the link below:

For A-level Economics resources, click the link here:

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