We use the personal statement to help distinguish between applications for our most selective courses. This may change each cycle, however in recent years the personal statement has been of particular importance for applications to the following areas of study (including joint honours courses):

• Accounting and Finance
• Classics & Ancient History
• Economics
• English Literature
• Finance
• History
• Law
• Liberal Arts
• Philosophy
• Politics and International Relations

The structure of the UCAS Personal Statement has been revised for 2026 entry onwards and is based around the following three questions:

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

The personal statement can be a maximum of 4000 characters in length (including spaces), and each question will require a minimum of 350 characters. But if you've got more to say in one section than another then you've got flexibility within the remaining characters to choose where you use these.

Our guidance below about each of the sections is to give you an idea of what to include in each section, however we won't score each question separately. This means if you see different advice about what to include and where, then don't worry as we'll look for what we need in your statement as a whole.

This is your chance to demonstrate your enthusiasm for your course. Tell us why you're interested in studying it, and identify one or two stand out areas to talk about in detail.

We want to hear what your thoughts are about your subject and not just a description of something you've read - we want to hear what you think and not just what you've been told or read. You might want to think about the following questions when writing this section:

• Why do you like the subject?
• What books or articles have you read that have stood out? 
• Has it prompted you to do more research? If so, what did you find out?
• Do you agree or disagree with particular viewpoints?
• Is there evidence to support your views? etc

If you're applying for a joint honours or combined honours course, you'll need to ensure you talk about at least two of the subjects you're interested in studying through the course. A feature of these courses is taking modules from different academic departments, so you'll need to show your interest in studying a multidisciplinary course.

We're interested in finding out what relevant or 'transferrable skills' you're bringing with you from your academic qualifications or studies. You won't need to list all your qualifications as we'll have this in the qualifications section of your UCAS application, so you will need to identify which areas have helped prepare you for the specific course you're applying to.

Think about, for example:

• What skills might you need for your chosen course(s)?
• What have you done that evidences you have these skills?
• Have you taken part in any educational challenges or competitions? And what does this demonstrate?
• Have you done any additional reading or research and what did you learn from this?

In this section you'll be able to talk about other experiences you've had outside of your education and how the ways in which they've prepared you for your course. We know that not everyone will have had the same opportunities, so we won't have a list of particular activities we'll expect you've done. We're also not looking for a list of activities, but the detail of why these make you perfect for our course. We're interested in how the rest of your life outside of education has influenced you and what transferrable skills you've gained. 

This could be through:

• Personal life experiences or responsibilities
• Work experience, employment, or volunteering
• Hobbies, clubs, or outreach activities
• Achievements outside of school
• Post-education activities (if you're no longer in full-time education)

Your referee also has a section in your reference to write about extenuating circumstances, so we can understand your individual context - but if you want to talk about how your circumstances have shaped you then you can also do so in this section.

UCAS checks all personal statements with their Similarity Detection software (CopyCatch) to ensure your work doesn’t contain the same or similar text to websites, another applicant's personal statement, or other documents. When a personal statement is detected as having similarity to one of these sources, UCAS provides us with a report highlighting the similarity and an indication of what the text in the statement is similar to. 

Once we are notified that an application contains text similar to elsewhere, we will use information from UCAS and from the applicant to determine the seriousness of the similarity found in the personal statement and departments will then make an academic decision which is communicated to applicants through UCAS as normal. 

Each applicant whose personal statement is flagged to us by the UCAS Similarity Detection Service will be contacted by the UG Admissions Team to offer the opportunity to explain how the similarity occurred. 

For those admitted as a student, Durham University takes all forms of Academic Misconduct, including 'plagiarism' or 'copying' very seriously and submitting work which is not entirely a student's own can lead to expulsion from the University. We also operate a fair and transparent admissions process and as such, need to ensure that all information provided to us is honest and accurate. 

If you have submitted an application to us and you have been notified that UCAS has detected similarity in your personal statement, you can contact us directly to explain the similarity though.

It is not necessary to write an additional personal statement, however we have a tool just for Durham applicants which allows you to submit a substitute personal statement if the Durham course you’re applying to is very different to the one in your UCAS personal statement. 

For example, if you applied to four Chemistry courses but you also applied to our Natural Sciences course (even including Chemistry, but with other subjects too), or perhaps you have applied to Medicine at four other universities but chose Anthropology as your fifth choice with us.

We ask that you: 

• Use no more than 4000 characters (including spaces) to match the UCAS personal statement length 
• Use plain text – don't use bold, italics, underlining 
• Submit it within three days of your application to Durham being acknowledged.  
• This is because until we have your application from UCAS we won’t be able to match the statement (and the system won’t let you upload this); it can take UCAS a few days to process all the applications they’ve received.  
• If you reach three days without acknowledgement, you can still try to upload the personal statement – if it works then we have your application and the statement will be matched to it. 
• Read the guidance for writing a personal statement on this page 
• Use one of the following browsers when uploading the statement: Safari, Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer 10 (some users of Internet Explorer 11 have had difficulties uploading their statement).

Submit a substitute personal statement