In defence of the personal statement

Ucas, the organisation in charge of university admissions, has announced that it’s bidding bye-bye to a crucial teen rite of passage. It is killing the personal statement. No longer will admissions tutors beetle their brows over flowing paragraphs about when you built an orphanage in Malawi using only a spoon, or how really, really passionate you are about late medieval poetry. Instead, it has decreed that wannabe grads must now answer three dour questions. This move is designed to help those from disadvantaged backgrounds, who do not, in the eyes of a Ucas spokesperson, have access to teachers and family members able to help: and who could argue with that?

Well, I think it’s not only a shame, but another sign of the creeping hand of cold and normalising bureaucracy. You could see it in the arrival of mark schemes for essays when I was in sixth form: one minute, we were scribbling essays that could bring in anything you wanted; the next, we had to ensure we put in historical context and critical quotes, even if they had no direct relevance, just to make sure we hit the spot.