How to write an Oxford Biochemistry personal statement
Updated: 3 days ago
A strong Oxford Biochemistry personal statement should demonstrate three things: genuine interest in specific topics within biochemistry, evidence that you've explored the subject beyond A-Level/IB, and your own interpretation of what you've learned.
The biggest mistake is listing books, work experience and scientific facts without explaining what you actually thought about them.
In this guide, I'll show you the 5-step process I use to turn your reading, EPQ, work experience and other supercurriculars into a focused Biochemistry personal statement.
If you need a quick reminder on the structure of the UCAS personal statement, you can find it here.
How to write an Oxford Biochemistry Personal Statement
The 5-STEP development process
Step 1 - Pick 1-3 topics within biochemistry that geniunely interest you:
Think of 1-3 major issues that are of interest to you within biochemistry: ageing & longevity; cancer; neurodegenerative disease; bioinformatics; personalised medicine; antibiotic resistance.
Within each of these topics, read deeper until you find further subtopics. Use scientific journals - especially review articles - to supplement your learning.
Here's what this might look like.
Topic | Go Deeper | Go one level further |
Cancer | Immune evasion | Personalised Cancer Vaccines in Phase 3 clinical trials |
Microbiology | Antibiotic resistance | Phages and Nanoparticle delivery methods for CRISPR-Cas9 anti-resistance editing |
Neurodegenerative diseases | Blood-brain barrier architecture | Drug testing on organ-on-a-chip models |
Respiration | Mitochondrial genome | Gene transfer to protect against reactive oxidative species |
Action:
For each wider reading within your broader topic of interests, write down:
Something new you learned
Something that surprised you
A question it raised
What you read into next
For example, a part of your paragraph might look like: Learning how tumours evade immune surveillance led me to question whether cancer treatment could exploit tumour-specific antigens. Reading about personalised mRNA cancer vaccines particularly interested me because...
How to write about your wider reading.
Bad
I read Power, Sex, Suicide by Nick Lane and learned about mitochondria.
Better
Reading Nick Lane's Power, Sex, Suicide introduced me to the evolutionary origins of mitochondria and endosymbiosis.
Excellent
Reading Nick Lane's Power, Sex, Suicide made me particularly interested in the tension between mitochondrial and nuclear genomes. I was fascinated by the insights that could be gained from nuclear translocation of genes and how they could be applied to make a synthetic organism with the minimum number of genes. This led me to...
The last version shows deep interpretation and a chain of thought much more unique to you, as well as linking nicely to new topics, demonstrating a journey of continuous academic exploration.
Step 2 - Turn your supercurriculars into evidence of academic interest
Action:
Write down all the extra/supercurricular activities you've done. EPQs, lab placements, summer schools, online courses.
Three bullet points for each - what it was, what you did, and what you gained from it.
You will look at these carefully and decide which ones are your strongest. The closer to medicine and biological sciences the better, but activities in chemistry, physics, maths or programming still have plenty of value if you use them to talk about the skills you gained.
We now have enough content for Q1 and Q2.
Action: You can start to write a first-draft essay combining everything from Q1 and Q2 at this stage. Don't worry about splitting it into paragraphs or making it really beautifully well written. Just have all the text in one place so you can get a feel for what you like and dislike about your essay. Aim for about 4500-5000 characters. It's always very easy to delete things.
Step 3 - Choose only your strongest non-academic activities
Think of all your non-subject-specific activities that show leadership, creativity, creation, competition and excellence. Ultimately, volunteering at a local youth centre is unlikely to have much of an impact. Think regional/national competitions, social media content creation, launching your own club/podcast/service/newsletter.
Action: Write about how they prepare you for life as a scientist/university & college life. Aim for about 1000 characters here.
Step 4 - Draft, prioritise and cut to 4,000 characters
Prioritise cutting text from Q3 to make space for Q1 and Q2.
It's better to have fewer things talked about in greater detail than skimming through multiple topics without going into sufficient detail.
Step 5 - Review every sentence for depth and specificity
If stuck, seek help from a friend, teacher or better, an Oxbridge admissions counsellor. It makes sense to you, because you wrote it, and you know what you mean, and you know all the hours you spent reading about your niche interest - but is it clear to the reader? Have you missed an opportunity to go deeper? Sometimes you can't answer those questions yourself.
General tips:
Make sure your Q1 and Q2 are longer than your Q3. Oxford don't care that much about non-subject-specific activities. Aim for something like 1600, 1600, 800 characters.
If you think any other student could reasonably write a similar sentence as you, you can probably get rid of it.
Your extra/super curriculars should always change your perspective on the subject / open lead you to a new topic or be used to justify a skill relevant to the course e.g EPQs as an example of independent research; learning Python as being relevant to bioinformatics.
Scrutinise every word like it owes you money - if it adds clarity, detail or value - keep it in. Is it just filler to make your writing fancy? Remove. We don't need rules of three nor rhetorical questions; it is not a political speech.
Tips on eliminating characters:
I read X by FULL NAME where I learnt about Y, which is Z
Reading X (F.NAME), I learnt about Y
PCR, NMR, ATP etc. are well-established acronyms; they require no definition at first use; and many acronyms can be guessed from the context of the sentence.
"If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter" - Blaise Pascal. You have plenty of time, between July and October 15. Use it well.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Now you have all the tools to make a great personal statement - but if you're still struggling on picking a theme within biochemistry, going deeper into the scientific literature, or meeting the character count, then there is always time to make a change. Book a free consultation, and at the very least, I'll send you closer to the right direction. But we can do a full surgery if needed.
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