How to write a comprehensive Economics Personal Statement

This was a general 4,000-character essay when we applied but it has now changed to include three questions:

1. Why do you want to study this course or subject?
2. How have your qualifications and studies helped you to prepare for this course of subject?
3. What else have you done to prepare outside of education, and why are these experiences useful?

From our experiences, the components of a strong PS were:

1. Show by doing AND go into depth! When addressing this idea, I had one line at the start of my statement explaining this and I went straight into how I had been applying my interest thereafter (Danny). Exploring topics in a large amount of depth – going into really niche specifics of a particular topic is much stronger than generally covering several topics – you can go into depth through reading BUT anyone can state they read books. Therefore, try to do active projects, such as essay competitions or extended projects, which relate to these focus areas. The outcome of these projects does not matter (I entered three essay comps and did not win anything)…what matters is how you bring these experiences into your PS. That said, you can still directly link your experiences to your motivation as universities need to see that you are interested as well as being good enough! I would recommend beginning paragraphs about topics with e.g. ‘I am especially curious about...’ to reinforce your interest.
2. Choice of topics / mathematics – this is important. You need a good balance and mentioning maths and/or stats is essential since economics is nowadays so mathematical. I talked about macro, development, and a bit of maths (Danny). In general, macro and maths is a solid combo and gives you room to branch off into something else as a third topic if you choose to do this (e.g. development, trade, behavioural, micro is strong aswell).
3. Weighing things up – economics’ beauty partly lies in its ambiguity. There are so many different views on particular events (for example, economists still fight over what has caused the UK’s poor productivity growth since the Great Recession) – you must take into account two sides of an argument and ultimately concisely bring in your own opinion – a classic sentence would be ‘I initially argued…in essay comp x…however…upon reading about theory y in book z alongside its empirical justification in…, I questioned the assumption w that I made in essay comp…overall I think…’
4. Following a journey – when you are first exposed to some content that is interesting and think you may like to write on your personal statement, start thinking of/finding something else to further your understanding. This is the best way of showing them that you are inquisitive about a particular topic, as developing your opinion step-by-step on a topic shows consistent development and interest in the subject. Essentially, you want to find/create the link between your super-/extra-curricular activities and use it to show your love for economics.
5. Focus on academics – Danny wrote one sentence about his ‘extra-curriculars’ – most top universities are not looking for wonderful debaters, pianists, or rugby players – THEY WANT THE SMARTEST AND MOST CURIOUS STUDENTS. Although the 20% number is often suggested as the optimal amount of text you should devote to non-academics, we would really advise to keeping extra-curriculars to a minimum from our experience. That said, the format has changed and there is more ambiguity…question 3 isn’t entirely clear about whether they are looking for extra-curriculars or super curriculars. We believe that while UCAS criteria may have changed, admissions tutors have not at the top unis and the criteria they are looking for likely hasn’t. So, try to bring in more super-curriculars here! As always, consult your teachers for advice about the new format too!

We would really recommend viewing our PS walkthrough videos (subscribe to our newsletter to be notified when Sam and I release ours) to break down a strong PS. We both also used the PS tab on the LSE’s website quite a lot in the early stages of writing mine to clearly understand what they (the most rigorous PS inspectors) were looking for.

Reading:

• The key here is targeting certain topics and planning. The last thing you want to do in the heat of the application process is read books you don’t end up mentioning in your PS because they lack relevance. We would recommend finding 2-3 key areas of Economics to base your PS on and then plan your reading according to that plan.
• Avoid the ‘classic’ economics books, like Freakonomics and The Undercover Economist as these will not stand out. Use the Economics reading list on the Cambridge website as a primary source for ideas – you will want to read 1-3 books on each topic you write about so clearly plan out your reading. It may be effective to initially read quite a broad book and then read a book which is more specific to a particular topic after this (a classic PS sentence would involve “I initially read book x…I was particular interested in…which I then explored further through book y…”!

Essay competitions (HUGE):

• A non-exhaustive list: RES Young Economists of the Year, LSE SU, IEA (Danny did the Monetary Policy Essay Prize), John Locke, ISRF, Marshall Society, FCDO Next Generation Economics Competition.
• These are vital to ‘showing by doing’ and are the best way to apply some theory or perspective you learned about in a book. We would recommend doing at least two competitions. However, different competitions have different word limits – it may be wise to do three competitions with world limits in the 1000-1500 range as opposed to the competitions which expect more writing (e.g. John Locke). If you do an essay competition with a word limit>3,000 words, it is wise to focus entirely on this and not do another – bear in mind you will have admissions test prep and A-Levels at the same time.
• Try to plan your essay competitions and reading in advance! There’s nothing worse than doing an essay and reading a book which have a weak relation and so cannot be combined to create a solid PS paragraph – make sure you are sticking to a couple topics and tailor your essay comps and reading to this.

Work experience:

Now this is a classic point to consider. Economics is after-all full of aspiring financiers who have been on the hunt for work experience since year 7!

Overall, work experience is not too important as universities realise that it can be hard to find and that a large bulk of pre-university work experience comes via parents and thus is derived from an inequality of opportunity. That said, it is still useful and what we would really advise is TAILORING YOUR WORK EXPERIENCE TO YOUR STATEMENT.

Simply stating you spent several days at firm x is pretty useless BUT stating that you are fascinated in ecological economics (which you have explored in an essay comp and two books) and took the opportunity of a work experience programme to ask a financier about his company’s approach to ESG is much stronger (see Danny’s personal statement).

Even trying to strike a conversation about a particular topic relevant to your PS during work experience could really emphasise your interest (especially as Cambridge are looking for people who enjoy discussing Economic topics with others!). The value of work experience really depends on what you turn it into and how you seize the opportunity. However, in the grand scheme of things, unless you have secured a one-month placement at the Bank of England, work experience is relatively less important than books and essay competitions.

The Trackr website provides useful information about most of the open work experience programmes.