writing a personal statement for physics

Personal statement advice: physics

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Motivation and honesty

Try to give tutors evidence in your personal statement that demonstrates why you are genuinely inspired by physics. What is it that motivates you about the subject personally? Write about this in an interesting and reflective way – and be honest, too. Our guide to studying physics at university may offer some useful pointers .

As an admissions tutor from Lancaster University puts it, 'if the Big Bang theory sparked your interest in physics, explain why.' Likewise, guidance on the University of St Andrews website says: 'we do expect you to know clearly why you wish to follow a degree programme in physics (and astronomy)… use your personal statement to tell us.'

Remember, if you’re invited to an interview, your statement is sure to form the basis of at least one or two of the questions. This could also be the case if you're invited to an applicants’ open day, where your personal statement may act as an ice-breaker in an informal interview or discussion with staff. Keep this in mind, and don’t write anything that you wouldn’t be happy to talk about in more detail if you were asked.

Wider reading

What will always go down well is if you give an example of an interest in physics you've explored for yourself, outside your school or college syllabus, and especially any wider reading you’ve done.

Be selective in your choice – admissions tutors often tell us that they read about the same books over and over again in personal statements. So either choose something that’s slightly more unusual or obscure or, if it’s one of the more popular science books, then make sure you give your own personal take on it, or write about it in a reflective way that reveals something about what it was that inspired you specifically.

Whatever you do, don’t just say 'I read New Scientist.’ All the other applicants probably read it too. So either be specific, like picking out one article and explaining how it impacted on you, or choose something you’ve read that’s a little more obscure.

Roddy Vann, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Physics at University of York, went a step further when he told us that he is unimpressed by applicants who just say things like ‘I have read A Brief History of Time.’ He would prefer you to express your opinion on a contemporary issue, like your views on whether we should build more nuclear power stations. It’s not so much what you read, it’s what you think that matters.

More physics personal statement pointers

Individual university websites are a great resource for advice. Durham University says it looks for 'a genuine interest in science and technology,’ so here’s where your evidence needs to come in. If you designed a water bottle rocket-launcher, and subsequently learned it was Newton’s second and third laws that made it work, then selectors will probably be very interested to read a short, reflective paragraph about this. They’ll remember you for it too. Tutors at the University of Bath, meanwhile, want to see something that:

• is honest, original, to the point, grammatically sound, and not too quirky
• gives them some evidence of your interest, motivation, and commitment to the subject, including your wider reading or any events you’ve attended, and your extra-curricular activities and interests

They also say that they 'rarely reject a student because of a personal statement' but that 'in the case of a student who has narrowly missed their offer grades, we may look to the statement for signs of something special.' The University of Bristol is looking for evidence that you appreciate the importance of maths in a physics degree, as well as explaining why you want to pursue a degree in physics.

Don't forget your other extra-curricular interests and perhaps devote a short paragraph to these – whether it’s sport, the creative arts, a part-time job, or something you do that helps others. For more advice on drafting your personal statement, see our article on how to get writing your personal statement .

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Your Personal Statement for Graduate School

Starting from scratch.

The personal statement is your opportunity to speak directly to the admissions committee about why they should accept you. This means you need to brag. Not be humble, not humblebrag, but brag. Tell everybody why you are great and why you’ll make a fantastic physicist (just, try not to come off as a jerk).

There are three main points you need to hit in your essay:

• Your experience in physics.  Direct discussion of your background in physics and your qualifications for graduate studies should comprise the bulk of your essay. What research did you do, and did you discover anything? Did you take inspiring coursework or go to a cool seminar? What do you want to do in graduate school? There’s a ton to discuss.
• Your personal characteristics.  What makes you stand out? You’ve probably done a lot in college that’s not physics research or coursework. You need to mention the most impressive or meaningful of these commitments and accomplishments, and you need to demonstrate how they will eventually make you a better physicist. Are you a leader? A fundraiser? A teacher? A competitive mathematician? A team player? An activist for social change?  All of these not-physics experiences may translate over to skills that will help you as a physics professor or researcher someday, and you can point this out!
• Context for your accomplishments.  Is there anything else about your personal history or college experience that an admissions committee needs to know? The application form itself may only have space for you to list raw scores and awards, but graduate schools evaluate applications holistically. Thus they ask for the  essay  so you have a chance to tell your story and bring forth any personal details (including obstacles you overcame) to help the committee understand how great you truly are. Your application readers want to help you, and they’re giving you the chance to show how hard you’ve worked and how far you’ve come. But it’s up to you to connect the dots.

This type of essay is a lot more serious and a lot less creative than a college essay, a law school essay, or an essay for admission to a humanities PhD program. You’re basically trying to list a lot of facts about yourself in as small a space as possible. This is the place to tell everyone why you’re great. Do not hold back on pertinent information.

The following is going to be a general guide about how to write a first draft of your main graduate school essay. By no means think this is the only way to do it — there are plenty of possibilities for essay-writing! However, see this as a good way to get started or brainstorm.

If you’re completely stuck, a good way to start writing your essay is to compose each of the five main components separately.

• Your research experience
• Your outside activities or work experience
• Personal circumstances
• A story about you that can serve as a hook 
• Your future goals + why you chose to apply to each school

At the end, we’ll piece these five different disjoint pieces together into one coherent essay.

1. Your research experience (and scientific industry employment)

This is the most important part of your essay, so it’s the place that we’ll start. We’ll pretend we’re structuring each research experience as its own paragraph (you can go longer or shorter, depending on how much time you spent in each lab or how much progress you made). Let’s see how it might work:

• .Simple overview of research: what you worked on, the name of your primary supervisor (professor or boss), and the location (university + department or company + division). The first time you mention a professor, you call them by their first and last name: “I worked for Emmett ‘Doc’ Brown in Hill Valley.” All subsequent times, you address them by their title and last name: “Dr. Brown and I worked on time travel.”
• “My research group was trying to build a time machine. My specific project was to improve the flux capacitor needed to make the machine work. I was able to make the capacitor exceed the 1.21 gigawatts needed for it to work. In addition, I helped do minor mechanical repairs on the DeLorean in which we built it.”
• “When I came back, I decided to take two additional graduate-level courses on time travel, and I found a similar internship the following summer.”

Then you just jam it all together into a semi-coherent paragraph:

In 1985, I worked for Emmett ‘Doc’ Brown in Hill Valley. Dr. Brown’s research group was trying to build a time machine. My specific project was to improve the flux capacitor needed to make the machine work. I was able to make the capacitor exceed the 1.21 gigawatts needed for it to work. In addition, I helped do minor mechanical repairs on the DeLorean in which we built it. When I came back, I decided to take two additional graduate-level courses on time travel, and I found a similar internship the following summer .

You’re not a character from  Back to the Future , and it’s not beautiful prose, but you have to start somewhere. It’s more important to get all the facts you need down on the page before you work too hard on editing. Save that for after you have a well-structured and mostly-written essay.

2. (A) Your primary extracurricular activities or (B) your primary life experiences

(A) Tell the committee about any other major honors or experiences you’ve had in physics. Also write a paragraph or two about your interests outside of physics class and science research. Use this space to highlight the really impressive features of your activities:

• a second major or minor
• leadership positions in clubs, student representative to department/university committees, elected position in student government
• science clubs: Society of Physics Students, Math Club, engineering organizations, societies for students underrepresented in the sciences, etc.
• teaching activities: TA positions, tutoring, volunteer teaching commitments in any field of study, coaching a team, etc.
• other regular volunteering activities
• science advocacy and activism: political issues (government funding, global warming, nuclear policy, etc), improving diversity and inclusion in the sciences, science outreach on campus or in the local community
• a significant time commitment: varsity sports, heavy school-year employment, etc.
• other relevant skills: writing/publishing experience, public speaking, proficiency in other languages
• major fellowships, scholarships, honors, prizes, or awards you’ve won and if needed, an explanation of their significance/meaning
• attendance of physics conferences, symposia, summer schools, etc. that you haven’t already been able to mention in conjunction with the description of your research

If you have done many extracurricular activities, focus your 1-2 paragraphs on leadership positions, teaching, and service, particularly in the sciences.

(B) If you came to college a few years after you left high school, or if you are coming to graduate school a few years after you left college, then you need to write a few paragraphs discussing those life experiences. What did you do during that time? What experiences led you to choose physics graduate school as your next step? If you applied earlier but your application was rejected, how have you become more qualified since the last time you applied? You can feel free to ignore some of the advice we give later about how much of the essay you should focus on discussing physics experiences — structure the essay however you need to, to get the pertinent information across. Also, use Google extensively to find advice from other people who were in a situation similar to yours.

3. Personal circumstances

Now, look back at the various disjoint pieces of your essay that you need to fit together. What else might be relevant about you that you haven’t been able to mention yet?

Are there any major shortcomings in your application package? You need to address these, but do so INDIRECTLY. If you point your own flaws out to the committee directly, you are setting yourself up for failure. However, it is possible to leave pointed explanations for them in plain sight in your essay.  For example, if you have a GPA that might seem low by normal graduate school standards, you could explain the significant amount of time you devoted to other major activities or a job, or describe any obstacles you have had to overcome (with the implication that you did so while still maintaining a GPA and completing your degree).

Even if your raw scores are perfect and your research excellent, you need to make your application stand out by letting the reader know who you are as a person. More specifically, you need to give some indication of how you will contribute to the diversity in background, experience, perspective, talents, and interests of students in the program.

• To quote a CommonApp essay prompt, “Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story.”
• What makes you  you ? What makes you interesting/fun/cool? What makes you stand out that won’t already be visible from your transcripts, recommendation letters, and application forms? How might you contribute to the diversity in background, experience, perspective, talents, and interests of students in a graduate program?
• How did you end up in physics? Why do you want to pursue physics? Is there some event, course, experience, or activity that was particularly meaningful for your life or that guided you into this path?
• Was there an extenuating circumstance that affected your performance in college? Think carefully about how and where you will discuss it. For example, you could frame it in a positive light so that you come off as resilient. An example might be “Despite [this factor], I was still able to [accomplish that].” You can also ask a trusted professor to mention it in their reference letter.

4. The hook

The final major piece of writing we’re going to do is a hook to open your essay. Do you have some anecdote, story, or achievement that will really grab the reader’s attention right away? They’re reading through nearly a thousand applications in hopes of narrowing down the pile to under a hundred, so what will make you be among those who stand out? Think about this as you assemble the rest of your essay.

5. Your future goals and why you’re interested in each graduate school

For every school you’re applying to, you need to write 1-2 paragraphs (~10% of the essay) about why you’re applying to that school.

Now this can be tricky. You need to gather some information via the Google about each individual school beforehand:

• What would you be interested in researching at that school? Are there particular professors who stand out?
• Does the school prefer if you have a fairly defined idea of the 2-3 people you’d want to work for ahead of time, or do they favor applicants who aren’t certain yet?
• Does the school evaluate all applications at the same time, or do they send your application to separate committees for the research subfield(s) you indicate on the application form?
• Why are you going to graduate school and/or what do you want to do afterwards? How will your five to seven year experience doing a PhD at a certain place prepare you for that path?

Even if you definitely know what you want to do or even if you’re completely sure you need to explore a few areas of physics, you need to write this section of your essay to cater towards each school. This involves a few hours of research on each school’s website, looking up the research fields in which the department focuses and learning about the specialization of each professor.

Here’s a good way of compiling your first draft of this section:

• I [am interested in/want to] work on [one or two research fields you might be interested in]. Specific professors whom I would want to work for are [three to four professors].
• My life experiences that led me to pick these choices are [something].
• I am especially excited about [university name]’s [resource/opportunity] in [something to do with physics].

6. Compiling your final essay

By now, you should have written (most of) the disjoint individual pieces of the puzzle. You might be under the expected word count, you might be over the expected word count, or you might be right on track. You can forget about all that for now — it’s more important to get something together, and we’ll fix all those details later.

Because you’re probably submitting about a dozen distinct essays, let’s ignore the “Future plans” piece of the essay and try to just get one main body of the essay put together with the other paragraphs. For each school, you’ll tack the “future plans” part of the essay either onto the end of the essay or in some spot you’ve chosen in the middle that helps everything flow. For now, ignore word count and just get words on the page. You can go back through and slice out sections of the main essay to meet smaller word counts for certain schools.

Look at the pieces of your life. How do they logically fit together? Is your story best told chronologically, with one research experience or activity falling logically after the other? Or is there something that makes you so unique and special that it belongs right at the very beginning of the essay? Sort the pieces so that they assemble in a good order.

Next, we need to check on the size of these pieces. At the very least, discussion of research activities/STEM work experience and your future goals in research should make up 75-80% of your essay. If you wrote many long, elaborate paragraphs about your time in your fraternity or on the women’s tennis team, now is the time to scale that back to only a sentence. Remember that the admissions committees truly only care about your potential to succeed in the future as a physicist. If you couldn’t give a clear explanation to your major advisor about how a tangential experience shows your potential to succeed in physics, you shouldn’t include it. (Note that “I got straight A’s in graduate courses while also involved in [major time commitment]”  is   an acceptable reason to include something and is beneficial to state.)

Did you talk about anything that happened in your childhood? (“I was interested in physics since in the womb”) Get rid of it. The only things that happened before college that are appropriate to mention are: (1)  some significant aspect of your personal background that your application would be incomplete without, or (2)  major college-level achievements: research leading to a publication, getting a medal in the International Physics/Math Olympiad, or dual-enrollment programs. However, mention items from (2) sparingly. You want to show that you’ve made major strides in the past four years; do not focus on your glory days in the past.

Do your paragraphs transition neatly from one to the next, or does your essay still feel off-kilter? A simple one sentence transition between paragraphs – either at the end of one or at the start of the next – can do wonders for your essay. Make sure it would make sense to someone who doesn’t know your background as well as you. Use the transition sentences to make your essay more interesting. Tell a story.

Congratulations. Now you have your first real draft of facts. Before you joyously run to your computer to submit your graduate application or run to your professor to give it a look over, go to one of your friends first.

The biggest danger with a graduate admissions essay is that you come off as really self-centered or boring. Nobody wants to read a thousand essays that merely list every single fact about a person’s life; they want to read a story. We helped you put together the bare bones of a graduate admissions essay, but did you tell a story? Did your personality shine through?

It’s a lot easier to go back and do an overhaul of an essay if you have something down on the piece of paper. Your friends might be able to help point out places that you can make your essay flow better or seem more interesting. They can tell you where to add more pizzazz in an otherwise boring research statement (“I worked on computational models of astrophysics during the month of July.” versus “I was so stoked when I found out I’d be modeling exploding stars that summer! That was the moment I knew I wanted to be a physicist.”). Take a day off, walk around, and then go back to your draft ready to show the world how excited you are to be a physicist and what an exciting physicist you are.

Our next section gives general tips for editing your personal statement, no matter whether you took our advice on how to start writing.  Go through these steps very carefully to make sure you have an essay you’re proud of to send off to the admissions committee. 

By the end of this process, you should have an impressive, interesting, factual draft of your qualifications that you’re ready to show a couple of trusted professors. You’ve worked super hard, and you’ve done a good job, we’re sure. However, professors are always critical, so don’t be upset if they tell you quite a few things to change. A young student reads an essay a lot differently than the older professors who are on the admissions committee, so it’s really important to get their perspective. Listen to what they say and truly consider making those changes. Edit once more, and repeat as many times as you need to.

At some point, you’ll finally be done with this long, difficult process and can proudly press “submit!”

General Tips for Editing

First things first: a step-by-step method for proofing your essay:.

Here’s what to do step-by-step once  you’ve followed our advice and have created a full first draft .

• Read your essay aloud to yourself.  Is it interesting? Would everything make sense to someone who doesn’t know you? Probably not…  See our advice below for making your draft better . You’ll probably need to repeat step 1 many times before you get to something you think has pretty good content and is pretty interesting.
• Check your grammar, spelling, and style. We have a guide to doing that at the very bottom of this page.  Also, pay attention to your word processor: if there are any bright red or bright green underlines, that should be your first warning sign!
• Have a trusted friend (or two)   in the sciences  read the essay  for style and voice. Do you have a good opening hook? Are there any passages that make you come off as arrogant, whining, or annoying? (You absolutely have to brag about yourself, but don’t say it in a way that makes you come off as a jerk — scroll down for advice on that.) Have them proof your rewrite for any final errors.
• Once you’ve gone through steps 1-3 and are completely certain that this is a nearly-perfect draft,  have a PHYSICS PROFESSOR or two read your nearly-final essay.  (D on’t send them an incomplete draft; they’ll get peeved. They’ll probably also only look over it once, so use your one shot wisely. They have a lot of students, you know. ) A graduate admissions essay is very different from a college essay. The physicists reading your application aren’t looking for the student with the most well-rounded course choices, the head of the most clubs, or the person who can write the most creative statement. They’re looking for evidence of the specific attributes that show you have the capability of being a future physicist. This is why you need to ask a  professor  in the field of  physics . Not just a biology professor, not just a physicist in industry; make sure you ask a  physics professor . Have we made this clear?
• Listen to what you’re proofreaders say and amend your essay, but you don’t have to follow every last bit of advice. If your gut tells you to ignore one or two of their suggested changes, that’s okay. That is,  it’s fine to make sure your essay sounds like you and says everything you want it to say. 
• Rinse and repeat. (redo steps 2-5)
• At some point, you’ll either get right up close to the deadline or have a draft you think is final. READ IT ALOUD before you press submit.

General Content Advice

You’re applying to a physics program!

Don’t forget this! The people reading your application care most about your background in, preparation for, and involvement in activities related to physics research. You should be spending almost all of your essay demonstrating your interests and ability to do physics.

It’s okay to mention substantial time commitments and achievements outside physics; however, pay attention to how you do so.  Your capacity and potential to perform scientific research are what you are mainly being judged on,  so description of physics-related research, coursework, and goals should make up most of your main essay (you should aim for 75%+). If an application allows you to write separate research and personal statements, then the former statement needs to be 100% focused on physics, and the latter should frame your physics experiences/goals within the context of your personal life.

• Absolutely mention  teaching and outreach experiences  if you have any. Grad schools  really do care  about these! It’s great too if some of your teaching experience is in a STEM field.
• Also, don’t be shy about mentioning participation in  activism , particularly related to  diversity and inclusion  in STEM or higher education.  These are generally not seen as minuses on a physics application, and there are fellowships/ programs related to diversity at some graduate schools.
• Mention of activities tangential/irrelevant to the sciences should only make up a small portion of your essay, and you should mainly highlight your biggest achievements/time commitments. For example, you shouldn’t make a long list of every one of the dozen intramural sports teams you participated on in college. However, it would be great to mention that you captained the club soccer team or that your volleyball team won a local championship.
• You need to make sure it doesn’t seem like you would prefer to pursue one of these activities as a full-time career instead of physics research. Remember, you’re applying to a  physics  program! (Perhaps you could frame non-physics activities as demonstrating good aspects of your character: you’re hardworking, a leader, work well on a team, can balance multiple commitments, etc.)

Your essay isn’t meant to be a restatement of your CV. 

The essay illuminates the how and why of what’s on your CV, and connects the dots between experiences.

• You need to describe your research experiences in depth. What did each of the labs you worked in generally do, and what were your specific contributions? What did you learn about physics in each lab or what new physics did you observe/discover/create? What skills did you develop that will be useful in graduate studies? What did you learn about your own interests and talents in each lab? Did you write any reports or publish any papers? Did you present the work anywhere? Were you listed as an author on someone else’s presentation? Do you have any papers in preparation for publication, or do you plan to in the near future?
• Second of all, the essay should connect the dots. How did you choose to do what you did in college? How did you choose the research experiences in which you participated? What do you want to do in your graduate studies and further in the future? Why?

Make sure you’ve included information specific to the graduate school you’re writing about. 

Why are you applying to this specific program? What general research area are you leaning towards, and are there any specific professors you would be interested in?  This isn’t a binding commitment. But don’t make yourself seem too narrow: if you say you only would want to go to a certain school if you could work for one or two people, that will severely hurt your chances of getting in.

Have you addressed your shortcomings adequately?

Are there any major shortcomings in your application package? You need to address these, but do so INDIRECTLY. If you point your own flaws out to the committee directly, you are setting yourself up for failure. However, it is possible to leave pointed explanations for them in plain sight in your essay. For example, if you have a GPA that might seem low by normal graduate school standards, you could explain the significant amount of time you devoted to other major activities (with the implication that you did so while still maintaining a respectable GPA and completing your degree)…

Have you fully explained your personal background?

…but even if your raw scores are perfect and your research excellent, you need to make your application stand out by letting the reader know who you are as a person. More specifically, you need to give some indication of how you will contribute to the diversity in background, experience, perspective, talents, and interests of students in the program.

Your essay should contain the highlights of your college career: your experiences, your activities, your awards. But an essay shouldn’t be just a two-page-long list: a good essay conveys a sense of who you are as a person, your personality, and why you are unique or a unique fit for the program.

The application essay is your chance to explain any aspect of your background that is not reflected elsewhere, but that your application would be incomplete without. This is up to you: only you can fully explain your own story.

Along the same line, graduate school admissions committees don’t just admit the set of 22-year-olds who attended the top high schools, then the top-ranked colleges, where they got the top GPA in the toughest classes and were SPS president. Admissions committees consider all criteria in light of where each individual student started out and any circumstances he/she faced along the way.

Students who followed nontraditional paths, came from disadvantaged backgrounds, or faced other extenuating circumstances during college might wish to either mention these in their essay or ask a trusted advisor to write about it in their letter. Some topics you may wish to address are:

• Factors from before WashU.  Normally, you’re supposed to mention your pre-college experiences only sparingly (or not at all) in an admissions essay. However, there are circumstances in which it may be beneficial. Do you come from an under-resourced background, and you started out college in pre-calculus, which set back your study of physics to sophomore year? Were you hyper-accelerated in math or science, which makes your transcript look very strange and uneven? Did you transfer from a community college? From another college? Does a high school research experience relate to your future interests? Are you graduating early, and why? Anything else? If it’s important, mention it and explain how it affected you!
• You’re not 22!  Did you take a few gap years to find yourself, work off loans, get married and have kids, or serve in the military? Are you super young? What exactly is your background? What would you want the committee to know to help them evaluate if you’re a good candidate for graduate school? What life experiences have you had that made you want to go to – and that will help you succeed in – graduate school? It would be  abnormal  if  everyone entering a PhD program were 22! If you came from a nontraditional background, explain it, and don’t take our advice too seriously. A different essay style/structure may be more suitable.
• Personal circumstances.  A parent lost their job mid-college, which impacted your enrollment. You or a family member faced a major health problem. Your hometown suffered a natural disaster. You worked a full-time job while still in school. Another major event in your life. Tips we’ve seen online? You only need to mention the pertinent details, don’t make it the focus of your essay, and be positive — phrase it as what you were able to accomplish in light of a circumstance (instead of describing it in a way that might come off as a complaint).   Another option is to ask a close professor to mention the situation in their reference letter instead. 
• You made a mistake.  You had trouble adjusting your freshman year of college, but things went up from there. You made bad choices on what to spend your time on a couple semesters. You faced university disciplinary action or committed a non-traffic crime. Talk to your four-year advisor, major advisor, or a trusted professor about what appears on your record, what you have to report on your application, and how to mitigate its negative effects on your future to the greatest extent possible through your personal statement and other minor essays on the application. Always be honest, but always be positive: show how you’ve moved forward and grown since then.
• Anything else.  The list above was by no means comprehensive! If there is something an admissions committee needs to know in order to understand how great of a fit you are for their program, then mention it. If you have any questions about your essay and it’s contents, please ask a trusted professor.

Make your essay interesting!

The science graduate school application essay may not seem nearly as freeform or fun as your undergraduate CommonApp essay, the paper your roommate’s submitting to an MFA program, or a law school essay. However, the physics professors spending hours reading literally hundreds of essays will appreciate if you make yours more interesting than a list of your achievements. Make your essay stand out as one they’ll remember.

Showcase your personality.  Once you’ve gotten all the necessary facts together in your essay in some sort of coherent order, it’s time to make sure the essay is actually interesting to read. Read it aloud, and have a friend read it aloud. Does the essay convey who you really are, or does it sound like you’re reading some really dry, boring report? Most likely it’s the latter at this point.

Pull out another piece of paper or a new window on your computer screen, and start writing a new version of each paragraph that sounds a bit more interesting, enthusiastic about physics, and fun. It’ll take time, but you can do this without going over the word count. See how different these two sentences sound, even though they’re about the same length and convey the same content:

• Boring phrasing:  In my sophomore spring, I worked in the theoretical kinematics laboratory of Sir Isaac Newton at Cambridge. We studied the manner in which balls roll down hills.
• Better phrasing:  Sophomore spring, I enjoyed the opportunity to study the fascinating theoretical nature of how balls roll down hills with Sir Isaac Newton at Cambridge.

Both students convey the necessary facts the graduate committees are looking for: (1) the student worked abroad in a famous person’s lab, (2) the student did theoretical research, and (3) the specific project regarded how balls roll down hills. The first example sounds like a true but boring listing of facts. The second example not only tells what the student did, but also shows the student’s appreciation for the opportunity, as well as that the enthusiastic student found that they enjoyed work of a theoretical nature in this specific subject area.  Instead of directly writing “I love and care about physics,” show it through the way you phrase your essay. 

Don’t come off as unlikable

By now, you have probably been advised a thousand times about what not to write in an application like this one – insults, complaints, or bigoted remarks; opinions on polarized topics distant from physics; any trouble you got into in college that you wouldn’t want your parents to know about; etc.

But sometimes we still say things in personal statements that are meant with entirely good intentions but that other people read the completely wrong way. Your friends and professors should be able to pick some of these out in your essay, but here’s a simple guide to help yourself too.

(1) Don’t name-drop unless it has to do directly with your accomplishments in physics.  Look out for areas of your personal statement that may turn off a reader because you come off as arrogant, spoiled, or out of touch with reality. Also remember that life is not a complete meritocracy. It is much easier to get ahead if you have lots of connections that help you along the way — but despite this, you should not overtly use your personal statement to pull connections that are not directly physics-related.

Here are some exaggerated examples:

Bad:  The summer after junior year, my best friend’s father, Albert Einstein, hooked me up with an internship at Princeton with Eugene Wigner. Better:  The summer after junior year, I took a research internship at Princeton with Eugene Wigner. You don’t have to tell someone you got the internship because you happened to have a great connection (nobody will care that you’re friends with a famous person). It’s better to just say that you did the internship. They will, however, care about the name of the famous person you worked for.

Bad:  I did not do as well on the GRE as I hoped because I crashed my Lamborghini on the way to the test. Better:  I did not do as well on the GRE as I hoped because I got into a car accident on the way to the test. It might be easier to have a friend read for subtle (or not-so-subtle) phrasing and word choices that might read the wrong way to a reader. Here, the mention of the luxury car brand makes it look like the student is trying to show off (and probably doesn’t realize that the car costs more than they’ll earn from graduate school all five years total). 

Bad:  Your university’s biggest donor is a family friend, and five generations of my family have attended your physics graduate program. Better:  When I visited my physics PhD brother at your campus, I enjoyed seeing X, Y, and Z facilities, which I think will be greatly beneficial to my physics education. Also good:  I spent a summer in the laboratory of Professor — at your university, and I would love to continue working for her in graduate school. If you have a connection to the university, don’t just state it. Find a way to phrase it to make you seem more like a better fit for their graduate program.

(2) Please remember that the admissions committee does not owe you anything for any reason.  So, please don’t claim that you deserve admission, honor and recognition, or anything else from them. Do not even make the mistake of phrasing something badly so that it seems like you think that way. It will only make them dislike your application.

Bad:  Given the fact that I won a Fields Medal, a Wolf Prize in Physics, and the Nobel Peace Prize, I am clearly the best applicant out there. Better:  Some of the highlights of my college experience include a Fields Medal, the Nobel Peace Prize, and a Wolf Prize in Physics.

Bad:  I worked so hard in college that I clearly deserve the opportunity to attend your university. Better:  I found the time and effort I put into physics very worthwhile and fun, and I hope to keep working in this field in the future.

Bad:  I am a great fit for your program. Better:  Your program would be a great fit for me.

(3) You got where you are because of hard work, not just raw intelligence.  Or at least, frame it this way. Nobody wants to hear how naturally intelligent you think you are — instead, your personal statement should demonstrate the achievements that your intelligence has earned you. Leave it to your reference writers to provide an external evaluation of your mental capabilities. Just trust us on this one.  Using the same reasoning, don’t tell everyone about qualities of your character. Show them.  Graduate admissions committees are smart. They can infer these things.

Bad:  Because of my natural intelligence and talent for physics, I won the “Best Physicist” prize. Better:  Because of my research efforts, I won the “Best Physicist” prize.

Bad:  I am a super nice person because I help people with physics all the time with volunteer stuff. Better:  Every weekend for two hours, I enjoy showing small children the wonders of physics at the Volunteer Science Thing.

Bad:  I am super smart because I have published three papers. Better:  I have published three papers.

(4) Claim credit for your accomplishments, but give credit to others too where it’s due.  We’re sure you did a ton of hard work in college, and that’s great. However, you need to recognize that it wasn’t just you. Your research advisers, graduate student mentors, classroom professors, and many others helped you get where you are today.  Acknowledge your own successes, but give credit where it is due.

Bad:  Last summer I built the first-ever time travel machine. Better:  Last summer I worked at a secret government agency with a team of twenty scientists under the guidance of Aristotle to build the 21st century’s first-ever time machine.

Bad:  I wrote and published a particle physics paper myself, even though there are three authors. Better:  Professor — guided me through the process of writing and publishing my first-author particle physics paper.

(5)  Don’t be overly negative  or critical of any of your physics experiences.  That is, be yourself, and don’t give opinions that are completely untrue.   If you didn’t like doing theory research, then you don’t have to say you did. But it’s not a good idea to express extreme distaste for any area of physics in your essay — try to find something good about every experience and phrase it in a positive light. Here’s an example of a fib, the way you might be tempted to fix it, and an even better way of doing so:

• Your original attempt to seem happy:  I worked on computational and analytical aspects of string theory at the Institute of Advanced Study. It was one of the most fascinating experiences of my life and I could see myself doing the exact same thing in graduate school at your great string theory program. I like experimental work too.
• The way you actually feel about things:  I worked on a project about string theory at the Institute for Advanced Study. My research advisor had me split my time between computational work and pen-and-paper problems. I absolutely hated doing pen-and-paper math. It sucked!
• A more positive way of phrasing the truth:  I loved the computational aspects of my string theory work at the Institute for Advanced Study. However, the next summer, I discovered that I more enjoyed applying my computational skills in a laboratory setting.

The mechanics of your writing: sentence and word choices

You can make a drastic difference in the quality of your essay just by checking on a few more mechanical aspects of your writing: sentence structures, phrasing, and even grammar. As you work on your drafts, continually try to improve these things. Here are a few of the many aspects to which you might want to pay attention…

Are all of your sentences good sentences?  Are all of your sentences complete? Do any of the sentences run on? Do all the sentences logically follow one another? Does your story make basic sense? Make sure that nothing you wrote sounds or seems awkward!

Make sure your sentence structures aren’t repetitive.  It’s very easy to get caught into the habit of writing, “I did this. I did that. I did the other thing.” Your essay is going to use the first-person pronouns “I” and “we” more than you’re probably used to, but that’s okay and not self-centered. You are writing about yourself, you know! However, there are ways to do it that seem less obnoxious or monotonous. Let’s look at a few examples of how we can rephrase or rearrange sentences so that we don’t get stuck in the same patterns too often.

• I did research about nuclear reactors under the supervision of Enrico Fermi at the University of Chicago last summer.
• This past summer, I researched nuclear reactors with Enrico Fermi at the University of Chicago.
• Enrico Fermi taught me about building nuclear reactors last summer at the University of Chicago.
• Nuclear reactors captivated me during my summer internship with Enrico Fermi at the University of Chicago.
• My first exposure to nuclear reactors was last summer, when I worked for Enrico Fermi at the University of Chicago.
• At the University of Chicago, I studied nuclear reactors with Enrico Fermi.
• When I was at the University of Chicago last summer, I studied nuclear reactors with Enrico Fermi.
• I want to study theoretical physics in graduate school.
• At graduate school, I want to study theoretical physics.
• My preferred area of graduate research would be theoretical physics.
• My graduate research interests are in theoretical physics.
• The theoretical physics research opportunities at [insert university here] excite me.
• Theoretical research most attracts my interests for graduate studies.

As you can see, there are seemingly endless choices for rearranging the words in your sentences or finding ways you can rewrite them that carry across the same (or more!) information.

Make sure your word choices aren’t boring or repetitive.  You might find yourself using only commonplace adjectives over and over again (good, bad, happy, sad, etc.). Or perhaps you do the opposite — you have a plethora of repetitions of the same unusual adjective (like plethora) used multiple times in the same paragraph, one after the other.

Pull out a thesaurus and find some good synonyms! Or better yet, be more accurate about what you want to say. For example, consider word replacements in the overused phrases:

Professor Bender’s least favorite word: interesting. As in, “That research is/was/seems  interesting .”

• intriguing, fascinating, inspiring, delightful
• appealing, enticing, exciting, fun
• novel, cutting-edge, exhilarating
• challenging, thought-provoking, stimulating

The verb around which your essay is centered: research. “With Arthur Holly Compton, I  researched …”

• worked on, studied, learned
• examined, analyzed, investigated, probed, observed, experimented, tested
• found [a result], discovered, came up with [an idea], unraveled, explained
• calculated, computed, solved, answered, evaluated
• formulated, designed, fabricated, planned, developed, created, invented, built, prepared

Be clear and concise.  Most graduate schools only give you two pages to tell your story, even if you think it would be easier to hand in a novel. If you find yourself sitting at your computer with an incredibly long draft, you’re going to need to take out some material.

Start with irrelevant details: you don’t need to tell us that last spring, you worked on a laptop with exactly 16 gigabytes of RAM, 2 terabytes of storage, manufactured by a small company from your homestate, that has exactly 6 bumper stickers decorating its case. Get rid of that paragraph!

Next, look at your research and activity descriptions. Only include the most relevant information. If you got second place in an international physics competition and fourth place in the local math contest, you can remove the latter from the main body of your essay. If you worked on four projects with your biophysics group, two of which led to a paper and two of which mainly consisted of cleaning your mentor’s Petri dishes, then it should be obvious which should deserve most (or all) of your essay’s attention. Don’t be afraid to be vicious with your red pen.

Once you’ve gotten rid of things that are very obviously unnecessary and have cut your essay down to a couple of paragraphs above the required word count, it’s time to start modifying the lengths of your sentences and paragraphs themselves. While it may seem like you’ve done everything right, and that every single thing in your essay is utterly necessary, think again! Remember the paragraph in which we discussed the many ways in which you could rewrite a sentence? (scroll up…) Time to use that same strategy to shorten sentences or combine two short sentences into one long, complex one. Also, if you’re trying to make your essay meet a page count, make sure that none of your paragraphs end with a single word on a line — try to fill up each line with as many characters as possible by changing word choices or phrasing. The best way to do this is to look at some examples.

Example 1 – using abbreviations

• Old essay.  I worked in the Compton Group at Washington University my freshman summer…The next summer, I went to Fermilab to work on particle physics…In junior year, I worked in an optics laboratory at Washington University…As a senior, I worked on biophysics at Washington University.
• New essay.   I worked in the Compton Group at Washington University (WU) my freshman summer…The next summer, I went to Fermilab to work on particle physics…In junior year, I worked in a WU optics lab..As a senior, I worked on biophysics at WU.

Example 2 – combining sentences

• Old.  At graduate school, I would like to study particle physics. I am deeply interested in this topic because of my experience working in Professor Compton’s research group.
• New.  My past work with Professor Compton has motivated me to study particle physics in graduate school.

Example 3 – choosing shorter words or phrases, even if you think they sound less fancy (scientists prefer clarity and conciseness over clunky phrasing)

• Old.  My research provides incontrovertible evidence for this.
• New.  My research proves this.
• New.  My research demonstrates this.

Example 4 – condensing information that can be grouped together

• Old.  Team experiences comprised a large and enjoyable part of my college years, both in the laboratory and outside.   My junior year, our math team was in the top ten in the Putnam competition. My senior year, my physics team got a gold medal in the University Physics Competition. I am also on the varsity underwater basket weaving team, which won the University Athletic Association title.
• New.  During college I enjoyed working with teams both in and out of the lab. Some of my notable team achievements include a top-ten finish in the Putnam math contest, a gold medal in the University Physics Competition, and winning the division title in underwater basket weaving.

There are many other creative ways you can cut down on space in your essay. It may be difficult and time-consuming to cut down your composition to an appropriate length, so be sure to budget enough days before your essays are due!

Look out for silly mistakes!  Make sure you didn’t type something careless like “form” instead of “from.” Double-check that you didn’t confuse your/you’re or there/their/they’re. Are all your commas in the right places? Carefully and slowly read through your essay. If you accidentally had one mistake when you submitted, it probably won’t be a big deal. But if you have multiple careless errors in your essay, the admissions committees might get the wrong impression that you didn’t care enough to write your essay properly.

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• Physics Personal Statement Examples

When applying to Physics you need to prepare yourself for the three key segments: PAT test , personal statement and interview. However, learning from the examples can be very beneficial and inspiring. Below you can find successful Physics personal statement examples . Both personal statements are highly accepted by Physics tutors at major UK universities. 

Physics Personal Statement Example

From the vast expanse of the cosmos to the microscopic world of particle interactions, physics seeks to understand the fundamental workings of nature across all scales. This breadth draws me to physics, along with the many mysteries that still exist. I plan to expand my knowledge through university study, equipping me to participate in modern research that shapes our understanding and technological capabilities.

Visiting CERN with my school, based on an essay competition on dark matter and energy, gave me invaluable exposure to particle physics research. I attended lectures detailing experiments like LHCb and explored the facilities, getting a behind-the-scenes look at one of the world’s leading research organisations. A highlight was working hands-on with real LHC data during a coding activity organised by Bristol University. Using decays of kaons, we applied cuts to improve signal efficiency and purity – gaining practical insight into the analysis work of particle physicists. This inspiring experience affirmed my interest in pursuing physics at university.

Expanding my studies, I have independently taken GCSE Astronomy . Learning about the cosmos on both large and small scales – from stars and galaxies to exoplanets – has deepened my appreciation for the stunning complexity of our universe. I find great joy in gaining knowledge that allows me to understand more of what I observe in the night sky.

My strong mathematical skills will aid me in tackling university-level physics. I achieved 100% on the AS Mechanics module, which reflects my aptitude for the quantitative side of physics. Studying A-Level Chemistry has also provided useful background in nuclear processes and other relevant areas.

Last year, I spent a year in America as an AFS exchange student. Adapting to a completely new environment improved my independence, problem-solving abilities, and cultural awareness. My English fluency increased dramatically as I made friends from around the world. This experience taught me to approach challenges from diverse perspectives – a skill that will help me thrive in university physics.

Physics underlies all natural phenomena and has led to technological innovations that transform society. I am compelled to further my physics education not just to satisfy my curiosity, but to meaningfully contribute to this enterprise for the benefit of all. I am eager to join a university community passionate about pushing the frontiers of human knowledge and look forward to the challenging, rewarding work ahead.

This personal statement for the Physics course was sent to Bristol University, Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial and Manchester University. It was accepted by all. 

Personal Statement Example for Physics

My innate curiosity about how things work has led me towards a deep interest in Physics , something I hope to pursue at the university level and beyond. I believe Physics plays a fundamental role in understanding ourselves and our universe and equips us to tackle pressing challenges facing society.

My passion for Physics began in childhood when I became transfixed by documentaries on quantum mechanics, space exploration and great scientists like Einstein . This early inspiration developed as I began studying Newtonian mechanics , electromagnetism, thermodynamics and more in school. I was always drawn to go beyond textbook examples, reading around subjects to satisfy my curiosity about real-world applications like semiconductors, medical imaging and green energy solutions. Academically, I have consistently excelled in Physics and Maths , achieving top marks. This reflects my diligence, determination and ability to tackle complex concepts.

Beyond the classroom, I have sought opportunities to expand my Physics knowledge. I attended lectures at nearby Durham University , broadening my understanding of astrophysics and particle physics. During my work experience at a materials science company, I used physics principles to test the characteristics of nanomaterials. I also represented my school in the UK Physics Olympiad, reaching the national finals and honing my problem-solving skills. As an avid reader of New Scientist, I have developed a holistic perspective on how physics relates to other scientific fields.

With excellent teachers encouraging me, I have cultivated a collaborative approach to learning. I worked closely with peers on practical experiments, data analysis and A-level assignments. As treasurer of the school Science Society, I organised rewarding trips to CERN and the Science Museum. Through these experiences, I have learned to communicate complex scientific ideas.

In the future, I hope to research to push the frontiers of human knowledge. Your Physics programme appeals due to the access to specialist facilities like laser laboratories and the chance to join a vibrant, intellectually stimulating community. With my academic abilities, passion for the subject and determination to succeed, I believe I would thrive here. Studying at your university would be an invaluable step towards realising my aspiration to become a pioneering Physicist.

This Physics personal statement was sent to Oxford (rejected), Cambridge (rejected), UCL (offer), Durham University (offer) and University of Bristol (offer).

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• FindAMasters
• Physics Masters Personal Statement Sample

Written by Hannah Slack

This is an example personal statement for a Masters degree application in Physics. See our guide for advice on writing your own postgraduate personal statement .

Physics has long been a fascinating subject for me. I have always been interested in how things work in the world around us. Ever since a school trip to CERN in 2014, Physics became a passion. I was inspired by the work that went into creating both the CMS and ATLAS detectors. The talk we received on the LHC was equally interesting and sparked my curiosity in Particle Physics. Now, eight years later, I am applying for this Masters course with the intention to progress to a PhD afterwards. I then hope to go on to work as a researcher on a large-scale experiment, such as those conducted at CERN or Fermilab.

I am currently in the final year of my undergraduate degree, where I have had the opportunity take some specialist modules on Particle Physics. These modules greatly appealed to my need to understand the world and I have enjoyed learning more about the intricacies involved with the Standard Model. The possibility of finding new particles is also a large contributor to my fascination. Since my school visit, I have continued to follow the work conducted at CERN and other major Particle Physics research centres.

In addition to the numerical and data analyst skills gained throughout my undergraduate degree, I partook a summer project to help develop my skillset and explore other areas of research. The project was with a teaching laboratory where I worked towards developing a laser experiment for a spectroscopy study. This opportunity allowed me to gain more experience working in a lab environment as a researcher, which I can continue to build upon throughout the Masters.

In my free time I enjoy creating open-source flash games. This hobby has enabled me to build upon my programming ability, particularly in ActionScript 3.0. In addition, my GCSE in Computing introduced me to Python which I have also continued to learn and practice. Although I do not yet have a strong grasp on C++ coding, I believe my background in these other languages will help me pick up the basics quickly.

Aside from dedicating much of my life to physics, I am an avid runner. Having now completed the London Marathon twice, running has taught me that dedication and hard work pay off, even if there are bumps along the road.

My passion and skillset would make me an excellent fit for the Masters programme. As I am projected to graduate with a first, I believe that my undergraduate degree and summer project work has introduced me to the knowledge and research skills needed to perform will in a Masters. Additionally, the dedication that I have gained through running and the enjoyment I get through coding has given me a drive to succeed.

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How to write the PERFECT Oxford & Cambridge Physics Personal Statement with example personal statement from successful applicant

How to write the perfect oxford & cambridge physics personal statement, an example personal statement with annotations from a successful applicant.

The first scientific question I encountered was why one can sometimes see a reflection of a car driving in the distance on the road. Only in 8th grade did I finally understand the physics behind the phenomenon when we learnt Snell's law. However, an answer alone never satisfied me, I wanted proof and always sought to perceive the concept. Physics was one of the first subjects to fulfil this desire.

[1] The personal statement begins with a personal anecdote about the applicant's early curiosity and desire for proof, showcasing their scientific curiosity and analytical thinking skills.

In middle school, physics answered many basic questions, but I wanted to go further and learn the fundamentals. To deepen my knowledge, I enrolled in Vilnius Lyceum which provides students with extra and more intense curriculum. As seniors, my friends and I took over the tradition of teaching lower grade students advanced physics and new methods of solving problems needed to succeed in national Olympiads. This way we learn through teaching others. Also, I was admitted to an advanced mathematics class where we had lessons that contained material outside the syllabus supporting my interest in physics. Learning calculus let me derive generalised equations, for example, the current's dependency on time in an RC circuit.

[2] The mention of enrolling in Vilnius Lyceum and teaching lower grade students advanced physics highlights the applicant's dedication to deepening their knowledge and their passion for sharing their understanding with others.

[3] The participation in an advanced mathematics class and the ability to derive generalized equations demonstrates the applicant's proficiency in applying mathematical concepts to solve complex physics problems.

An extracurricular school 'Fizikos Olimpas' at Vilnius University consolidated my appetite for physics even further. There we are taught topics, such as mechanics, hydrodynamics, oscillations, thermodynamics and electrostatics by university professors. Learning at a university level enhanced my advanced problem-solving skills. Testing theory in practice is essential to understand the material. In 'Fizikos Olimpas' we conducted many experiments including finding air molar thermal capacity or water surface tension coefficient. In addition, I use my physics knowledge to construct things, for instance, I made a metal foundry and the temperatures I managed to reach were high enough to melt iron. Experimental work let me realise how many factors we neglect while solving problems in theory. So, I wanted to immerse myself in all the details and started doing research on my own. In the beginning, I asked simple questions: how planes fly or why objects with mass cannot reach the speed of light. Later, the questions I raised got increasingly more theoretical and fundamental: what mass is or what symmetries are. Recently, I have been learning from 'University Physics' written by Hugh D.Young and Roger Freedman. The book gives a strong mathematical and theoretical base from which I can go deeper and lately, I have been most interested in quantum field theory because it neatly explains the interactions between fundamental particles.

[4] The involvement in an extracurricular physics program at Vilnius University reflects the applicant's commitment to exploring physics at a university level and honing their problem-solving skills through hands-on experiments.

[5] The mention of conducting experiments and constructing things, such as a metal foundry, showcases the applicant's practical application of physics knowledge and their understanding of the importance of experimental work.

[6] The pursuit of independent research and the exploration of theoretical and fundamental questions highlight the applicant's intellectual curiosity and their willingness to delve into the deeper complexities of physics.

To challenge myself I participate in Physics Olympiads and other related contests. I got first place (2017 and 2018) in Vilnius city Physics Olympiad. In national Olympiads, I got an honourable mention certificate (2017) and a third place (2018). As a result of my latest achievement, I was invited to Lithuania's International Physics Olympiad preparation camp. During my free time, I do sports. I have trained in a football team and represented my school in Vilnius city football tournament. One of my hobbies, diving, is quite relevant to physics. Calculating the time for decompression was confusing until I started learning thermodynamics. Besides sports, I like creative pastime. With a group of friends, we competed in a film festival organised by AISV and won several awards. Doing various activities boosted my confidence and gave me the motivation to work consistently and persistently.

[7] The participation in Physics Olympiads and related contests, including notable achievements, demonstrates the applicant's commitment to challenging themselves and their ability to perform well in competitive academic settings.

[8] The mention of participation in sports, such as football and diving, showcases the applicant's ability to balance academic pursuits with physical activities and their understanding of the application of physics principles in real-world contexts.

[9] The engagement in creative pursuits, such as participating in a film festival and winning awards, demonstrates the applicant's well-roundedness and their ability to think creatively outside the realm of science.

[10] The applicant's expressed interest in quantum physics and their aspiration to pursue research in this field showcases their specific career path and their enthusiasm for delving into the fundamental aspects of the universe.

I chose this course because it would let me concentrate on the field that explores the very fundamentals of the Universe, letting me get closer to its secrets. In particular, I would like to do research in quantum physics as my career path. I believe that university education in the UK can offer the most modern facilities, thus allowing me to employ my knowledge to discover the unknown. Studying here would let me develop and thrive as a person in a circle of interesting and motivated people.

[11] The desire to study in the UK and the belief in the modern facilities and educational opportunities offered by UK universities reflect the applicant's motivation for seeking a high-quality education to further their knowledge and discoveries.

[12] The mention of personal development and the desire to thrive among like-minded individuals highlights the applicant's enthusiasm for personal growth and the collaborative nature of studying at the university level.

Why is this a good Oxbridge Physics personal statement?

This personal statement showcases the applicant's passion for physics, academic achievements, dedication to teaching, practical engagement, research aspirations, and extracurricular involvements.

Their commitment to academic excellence is evident through their enrollment in advanced physics programs and participation in teaching initiatives.

Their practical experiments and research projects demonstrate their ability to apply theoretical concepts and explore the unknown.

Additionally, their involvement in Physics Olympiads highlights their competitive spirit and commitment to personal growth.

Overall, their exceptional qualities and accomplishments make them a strong candidate for an interview at Oxford.

Struggling to write the perfect personal statement? Our expert team is here to help! With our professional guidance, you can create a compelling statement that highlights your strengths and impresses admissions committees.

Don't miss out on this opportunity to make a strong impression. Reach out to us now for personalized assistance with your personal statement.

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Interesting Guide on Physics Personal Statement Examples

Table of Contents

Physics is a fascinating and essential field of study that encompasses the fundamental laws of nature and the physical properties of matter. Some people’s passion for physics begins in childhood, while others pick up interest as they learn about the subject. Whether a physics enthusiast or curious about the world and its workings, applying to a university to study physics gives you more knowledge. A personal statement gives the admission committee insight into your passion for physics. Check out the physics personal statement examples below to learn how to write an excellent one! 

Writing a personal statement is a crucial step in any university application process. It’s an excellent opportunity to demonstrate to the admissions’ committee that you’re suitable for their program. In this article, you’ll learn how to write a unique physics statement. We’ve included some fantastic examples generated with Hey INK that you can learn from. 

What Is A Personal Statement?

A personal statement highlights one’s educational background and experiences . It helps the admission committee understand how your background and experiences have prepared you for the program you are applying for. 

One of the major requirements for a physics university application is a personal statement. It is an opportunity for you to provide information about your academic and personal background. And demonstrate your motivations and goals for pursuing admission in physics.

In your statement, explain why you are interested in studying physics. Highlight your past experiences, skills, and relevant extracurricular activities or projects that demonstrate your passion and make you a suitable candidate for the program. 

How to Write a Physics Personal Statement

Tailoring your statement clearly and directly portrays your passion and potential as a physics student.

Here are some steps to guide you:

• Start by introducing yourself and explaining your interest in physics. 
• Write about your academic background and any physics-related coursework or research experience you have had. 
• Highlight any extracurricular activities or hobbies that demonstrate your passion for physics.
• Discuss any challenges or setbacks you have faced in your academic or personal life and how you overcame them. 
• Write about why you are interested in attending the university or college you are applying to. And how you believe the physics program will help you achieve your goals.
• Conclude by summarizing your strengths and achievements as they relate to physics. And explain how you hope to contribute to the field in the future.
• Proofread your statement carefully to ensure that it is free of errors.

Physics Personal Statement Examples

Upon completing my A-levels, I knew I wanted to study physics at university. Despite the challenging nature of the subject, it has always held a unique appeal for me, and I am passionate about understanding its complexities. In addition to studying physics, I have also taken an interest in mathematics and computing, both of which are essential components of modern physics. 

I believe that I can achieve great things in this field through hard work and dedication. My aim is to obtain a good degree and use my knowledge to benefit society. 

By pursuing a career in physics, I want to impact the world we live in positively.

I have always been interested in learning about how the world works. When I was younger, my parents often found me reading science textbooks for fun. As I got older, I started to become interested in physics specifically. Mechanics and electromagnetism are two of my favorite topics to learn about.

I know that studying physics at the university level will be a challenge, but it is one that I am excited to take on. I did well in all my math and science classes in high school, including AP Physics. This has shown me that I have what it takes academically to pursue a degree in physics.

Apart from academic ability, another essential trait for someone pursuing a career in physics is being able to think critically and solve problems independently. When doing labs or working on assignments, there is usually more than one correct answer possible, so choosing the most logical solution is key. Creativity also comes into play sometimes when thinking up new ways to test hypotheses or theories experimentally. I possess what it takes to study physics and excel in it.

I have always been interested in the physical world and how it works. From a young age, I loved exploring everything from the inner workings of clocks to the way energy moves through different materials. This interest developed into a passion for physics during my high school years. 

Physics has opened up many opportunities; I have enjoyed designing experiments in the lab, working on theoretical projects, and participating in international competitions. My experiences have shown me that physics is not just about understanding how things work. But also about using that knowledge to solve problems and make discoveries. 

I am excited to continue studying physics at university and one day become a researcher myself, sharing my love of science with others.

My name is [Your name], and I am a high school student interested in studying physics at the university. Ever since I was young, I have been fascinated by how the world works and what makes physical phenomena occur. My love of physics has grown over the years as I have learned about its many applications to understanding natural phenomena. From predicting weather patterns to discovering new particles in subatomic research.

In addition to my academic interests, I also enjoy playing sports and spending time outdoors with friends. If given the opportunity, I would like to study physics at the university level. This is to continue learning about one of my favorite subjects while preparing for a future career. 

Ultimately, I aspire to be a physicist who uses their knowledge to help make significant contributions towards solving some of society’s problems.

I developed a love of physics early on in my schooling, and it has been the main focus of my studies ever since. My goal is to pursue a career in this field, and studying at university will be instrumental in helping me reach this goal. In addition to having good grades, I have taken several courses related to physics and have done well in them. For example, I earned an A grade for mechanics & waves during my A-level year. 

Participating in the sciences fairs at school also allowed me to share my passion for physics with others. Coming first place twice as part of our school’s team was especially rewarding. Most recently, I participated in the UK Physics Olympiad, where I achieved silver medal status – indicating my ability and dedication to the subject matter. 

All these experiences have helped affirm that pursuing further education within the field of physics is what I truly want. There is no other area that intrigues or excites me more than it does now!

I have always been interested in physics. Only during my A-level studies did I realize how much I enjoy learning and applying physical principles to understand the natural world. My favorite subjects are mechanics and thermodynamics. Through exploring these topics, I have seen physics as a tool for understanding how things work – from individual particles to substantial celestial bodies. 

What excites me most about studying physics is the potential for uncovering profound truths about reality. Every discovery in physics seems to reveal hitherto unseen connections between different aspects of our Universe. This incredible intellectual thrill never fails to fascinate me. In addition, solving complex problems and working out intricate solutions truly appeal to my analytical side. 

A university degree in Physics will equip me with the theoretical knowledge and practical skills required for a career in research or teaching. With hard work and dedication, I hope to eventually become an acknowledged expert in this fascinating field. One who can continue unraveling nature’s secrets while inspiring others with my love of learning.

Wrapping Up

Physics is an exciting field of study, and your interest in it will make you excel in it. Gaining admission is impossible without presenting a great personal statement communicating your interest and passion for physics.

We have guided you to write a catchy and brilliant statement. Go through the physics personal statement examples above, and use Hey INK to generate yours! Be assured you’re one step toward gaining that physics admission.

Abir Ghenaiet

Abir is a data analyst and researcher. Among her interests are artificial intelligence, machine learning, and natural language processing. As a humanitarian and educator, she actively supports women in tech and promotes diversity.

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Personal Statement

Introduction.

As part of your UCAS application , you will be required to write a personal statement with a maximum of 4,000 characters. This is sent to each of your chosen universities, who use it – along with the other parts of your application, such as exam grades – to assess your suitability for their course and whether to make you an offer.

Your personal statement allows you to demonstrate to the admissions tutors why you are applying for their course; what interests you about the subject and why they should accept you – showing that you have the achievements, qualities and skills they are looking for. For more competitive courses, there will often be little difference between your grades and the grades of other applicants, so it is essential to make your personal statement effective by devoting appropriate time to its preparation.

It can be tough getting started on your personal statement – however, the earlier you begin drafting it, the more time you’ll have to finalise it before the UCAS deadlines for submission of your application (15 October 2017 for Oxbridge and Medicine/Dentistry/Veterinary Science, and 15 January 2018 for most other courses). Although there is no definite formula for writing a personal statement, and different subjects require different styles, the following advice breaks down the process and offers guidance for each step of completing a science-based personal statement.

Aims of the Personal Statement

Ultimately, the aim of your personal statement is to show the university’s admissions tutors that you are a good fit for their course, bearing in mind that different universities may be looking for slightly different attributes in their students. Some universities offer specific guidance on what they are looking for in personal statements through their website or course prospectus – use these to research and make notes of any specific admissions advice for the courses you are applying to, as this will allow you to tailor your personal statement to your preferred universities.

In order to produce an effective personal statement, you will need to address a number of key points that the admissions tutor will be looking for, and cover these in a well thought-out and well written manner. To achieve this, your personal statement should demonstrate:

• your interest, enthusiasm and passion for the subject, giving evidence and examples of specific areas of interest
• the relevant skills you have learnt from your studies, extracurricular activities and employment, and how these have prepared you for a degree course in your chosen subject
• your ability to articulate your enthusiasm for, and knowledge of, the subject by writing long prose in a clear, confident and structured manner, using a wide range of vocabulary
• the ways in which you have been following up your interest and furthering your understanding in the subject at a higher level, outside the syllabus (i.e., projects, further reading)
• that you are well informed about what is involved in taking your subject at degree-level
• that you are a well-rounded individual with hobbies outside of your subject
• that you have a general idea of what you want to do after university

The most effective personal statements cover the above points implicitly, backing up claims through discussions and experiences which show the admissions tutor your passion for the subject, rather than vague generalisations and statements such as “I am passionate about physics” – they will already assume this. Isolate a reason as to why you personally engage with your subject and then discuss specific examples to substantiate this, eg. through a reflective discussion of further reading you have done. Write with quality, not quantity, in mind – the admissions tutor will be more impressed to read in detail what you learnt from one or two specific experiences or books, as opposed to a section which brushes over four or five. At the same time, don’t let the personal statement become a mini essay trying to simply demonstrate your knowledge of a topic you found through further reading – keep the discussion personal, showing what you got out of reading or learning it and why you found it interesting – for example did it relate to another subject you’ve studied?

For competitive courses and courses for which applicants are interviewed, another key aim of your personal statement is to persuade the admissions tutor to make you an offer or invite you to interview, as opposed to another applicant with equal grades. Your personal statement should illustrate and highlight your abilities, written with an intellectual flair that will impress the admissions tutor, all whilst being interesting, relatable and personal to you – it is a personal statement, after all. Quiet confidence is an effective style – avoid appearing overly modest and avoid being overly arrogant .

The next step is to think about what you’re going to include in your personal statement to meet these aims. This topic is discussed in the following section. Later, once you have completed the first draft of your personal statement, refer back to these aims and remove any content that is not contributing to them, as it doesn’t belong in your personal statement.

What to Include

Below is a list of points students tend to talk about in science-based personal statements, divided into two main sections: academics and non-academics. By dedicating some time to brainstorm answers to these, you will be significantly closer to getting started on your personal statement. At this stage, don’t worry about sentence length, order, connectives or how much space you will devote to each point in the final version – structuring will come later. Jot things down that you consider minor – you’re not committed to actually include any of these things in your statement once you start writing it. The only limitation is do not lie.

Reasons for choosing the course:

• Why does the subject interest you? This leads on to why you have chosen the course, a key factor that the admissions tutor will want to know.
• Why do you want to study the subject at a higher level? Answer this in terms of the new skills and knowledge you will gain, show you understand what is required of you in studying the subject at degree level and that you have the potential to succeed.
• Which aspects or areas of your studies have you enjoyed most so far? For example, any particular content, experiment, project, or an approach to learning – convey your understanding of how this relates to work you would do on a degree course, eg. how you displayed teamwork in undertaking a project, or how it increased your interest in the subject.

Demonstrating interest in the subject outside of the curriculum:

• Demonstrate any further reading you have done around the subject – eg. from books, respected newspapers, scientific journals, documentaries, websites, blogs, podcasts, radio programmes, lectures attended – explain the content of the further reading briefly and then focus on how you, personally, engaged with it, by reflecting on why it made an impression on you, and by giving your critical views on it.
• Mention any trips you attended to relevant institutions, through school or on own initiative – eg. university residentials or taster days, summer schools, work experience, volunteering, trips to industry/research institutions such as JET or CERN – as with further reading, reflect on your experiences, relate them to the course or your current studies, and explain what you’ve learned from them and how they’ve helped develop your interest in the subject.
• Describe skills you developed, used and improved through doing extracurricular activities, competitions, awards – eg. relevant clubs, societies, CREST projects/awards, Olympiads, maths challenges – these will often demonstrate skills such as problem-solving, teamwork, leadership, critical thinking, initiative, creativity and independent research skills. Don’t just mention them for the sake of it – explain how they have increased your interest and understanding of your chosen subject.
• Summarise any mentoring, work experience or shadowing you may have done – these can demonstrate that you have initiative; and for work experience or shadowing, describe what you enjoyed about experiencing what it’s like in a higher-level research/industry environment. Mentoring shows your interest in engaging younger pupils – explain why you enjoyed this, and how it helped your own studies.
• If you have done (or are doing) an Extended Project Qualification (EPQ), explain how it relates to your interest in the subject and how the skills you gained from it will prepare you for university – the EPQ shows you are able to think analytically and independently and demonstrates transferable skills such as independent study, effective research, public speaking, time-management, recognising bias, organisation, motivation, planning and monitoring own progress.

Future plans:

• Outline any potential long-term career plans you have – explain why you are attracted to the career and how you would use the experiences, skills and knowledge you would gain from the degree course.
• If you don’t currently know what want to do after university, discuss what aspect of university you are most looking forward to and what you want to gain from the course and university life.
• If you are planning to defer your university entry, briefly outline any gap year plans you have – focussing on any potential academic or subject-related plans (eg. work experience in industry), or explain what you will learn from travelling or employment, and why it will benefit you at university.

Non-Academics

Transferable skills and knowledge:

• Write about the relevant skills you have learnt from any jobs, placements, work experience or volunteering you have done – for example, useful skills for university include the ability to work independently, teamwork, organisational skills, good time management, problem-solving, listening, critical thinking, etc.
• Mention also any positions of responsibility you’ve held, both in or out of school – for example, if you’ve been a member of a club or society (in your community or at school), or led important team projects – this shows good leadership skills.

Other relevant interests, hobbies and achievements:

• To help show you are a well-rounded individual, list any non-subject related activities, hobbies and spare-time interests you have, no matter how minor – for example, do you take part in any sports teams, music rehearsals, drama schools, travelling or reading?
• Also discuss any non-academic accomplishments such as a Duke of Edinburgh award. These wider interests are valuable as they demonstrate your talents, and can indicate characteristics whose transferable skills will be useful for succeeding at university, even if they don’t directly relate to your subject.

Once you have brainstormed and thought carefully about your answers to the above questions, you need to choose which points you feel you should include in your personal statement. If your list involves too many similar things, for example, a large number of books that you’ve read, select just two or three which you enjoyed the most, or which made the biggest impression on you. This way, you can elaborate in more detail on your experience of reading them – the admissions tutors would prefer to see this than simply seeing a list of books. Always try to avoid making generic statements – make sure you give a personal take on everything you mention in your statement – talk about the details in the book that you found most inspiring. In terms of which experiences to include in your statement, more recent ones are more valuable than older ones, as the admissions tutors want to know you as you are now, and how you will be at their university. Show the admissions tutors you know your own strengths and make sure you understand topics and details in your personal statement well enough to talk confidently about them at interview, if your university uses interviews as part of their selection process.

If you have worked through the above list and feel you don’t have enough exciting experiences or exotic excursions to write about, compared to other people’s statements you may have read, there is no need to worry. By spending some productive time researching through books and science news websites and publications, and reflecting on what you have learned, you should still be able to collect sufficient material to write a very good statement for a science-based subject. The admissions tutor will not be judging you based on the fact you might not have had the same opportunities as other people.

Note, there is no need to list your qualifications (eg. “I am currently taking A-Level Maths, Physics and Chemistry and achieved … grades at AS”) in your personal statement – this is already covered in the Qualifications section of your UCAS form, which the admissions tutors will see on the same page as your personal statement – you will be wasting valuable characters in your statement if you were to list these here, too.

Although there is no set structure for science-based personal statements, the following can be used as a guide:

• A punchy opening paragraph about your general interest in the subject and why you want to study it.
• A couple of mainly academic paragraphs as the body of the statement – these are more flexible – discussing your experiences of the subject in more detail.
• The penultimate paragraph in which non-subject related content such as extra-curricular activities and hobbies are discussed.
• A punchy closing paragraph about your aspirations, commitment and what makes you look forward to the course.

Universities typically recommend that you focus around 75% on academic subject-related discussion, and 25% on non-subject related extra-curriculars.

Organise your material and use a sensible order that will make your text flow – the key is to make your statement easily readable for the admissions tutor. Keep sentences short, as overly-long sentences can be difficult to follow and make your statement cumbersome. Clearly defined paragraphs can help with this but, on UCAS Apply, you can’t indent lines and, if you leave lines between paragraphs, these empty lines will count towards the 47 lines you are allowed, leaving you with fewer characters to use.

Extra Additions

There are a number of additional matters to include in your personal statement if you are an international student, a mature student, or are planning to take a year out before going to university (a gap year):

Gap year students

Briefly explain, in a few sentences before the conclusion of your personal statement, why you want to take a gap year and outline any plans you have, focussing on potential academic plans (eg. work experience in industry). If you don’t have any academic-related plans, explain what skills you will learn from travelling or employment, and how they may relate to your course.

Mature students

Use the personal statement additionally to explain what you’ve been doing since leaving formal education, why you want to return to study, and demonstrate how you will cope with the rigours of academic work – using experiences in employment to evidence this. To provide more details of current or previous employment, send a copy of your CV directly to the universities you are applying to (don’t send it to UCAS). If your degree will result in a change of career, explain why you have decided to follow a new direction.

International students

Your personal statement should also explain why you want to study in the UK and demonstrate that your English language skills are sufficiently advanced to allow you to successfully complete a degree course taught in English. You can show this by giving examples of any English courses or tests you’ve taken, saying if any of your previous studies have been taught or examined in English, and describing any activities where you have used English outside of your studies. You should also discuss why you want to be an international student in the UK, rather than study in your own county. Read UCAS’ International Undergraduate Guide for Students for more information.

More than one subject

If you are applying for courses in more than one subject area, you have to try to make your personal statement fit with the different courses you are applying for across your chosen universities, since you can only submit one personal statement through UCAS. You can either choose to emphasise the subject you prefer (or the one which is more competitive) – while, at the same time, explaining that you also have an interest in the other subject – or you can take a thematic approach by focussing on ideas, topics and skills which are applicable to both courses.

Your personal statement is a formal piece of writing and the style in which you write it should reflect this. It should sound natural – but not chatty – and use diverse vocabulary – but not overly complex words with which you’re not familiar; everyday formal language is fine . Spelling, grammar and punctuation should all be correct, and avoid contractions and abbreviations (such as “I’d” and “didn’t”). Addressing the reader (the admissions tutor) directly using “you” is not usual practise in personal statements. Assume the reader already has a level of knowledge – for example, there is no need to explain what Duke of Edinburgh awards are, or to describe what a well-known book is about. Avoid making lists or using repetitive language (“I enjoy…”, “I enjoy…”) in your statement.

Although you want to make your personal statement stand out from other applicants’, there is a line between standing out to the admissions tutor in the right way and in the wrong way. Originality is a key part in making your statement personal – and although it might be tempting to include (or even start) your statement with a quotation by an important figure in your subject, this is very commonly done by many applicants, and can come across as clichéd. Quotations are someone else’s words, and the admissions tutors want to hear your own! The use of jokes – no matter how well intentioned – is also discouraged as they can be misinterpreted by the reader, who may not have the same sense of humour as you. Re-evaluate any use of the words “love”, “adore” or “ignited” (in fact, any fire-related metaphors) as these have a tendency to sound cheesy and their use is rarely justified, given how many synonyms exist for these words. Avoid clichés along with intellectual pretensions and overly hyperbolic phrases, as these can sound tacky when reading the personal statement in a formal environment.

Before you start to write each sentence, consult the planning sheet you made from the questions under “ What To Include ”. Using these notes, you will be able to incorporate more effectively which ideas and statements you want to convey in each sentence. Try to use connectives to link sentences in order to improve the flow of the text; but avoid using filler sentences or vague and generic statements which add nothing to your statement. Write succinctly and remove anything that doesn’t contribute to its aims (laid out in “ Aims of the Personal Statement ”). There is no need to state repeatedly in different words how passionate you are about your subject – this should be shown implicitly through your evidence of wider reading and subject-related experiences. When discussing further reading, be specific and give brief examples from the book to provide insight in your own thinking in relation to what you have read – show you have formulated an opinion on the book, how it has made an impression on you, and what you got out of reading it.

You should do more than simply describe the subject-related experiences in which you have been involved: elaborate on and emphasise what you took away from them, how they increased your interest in the subject and, show evidence of useful and relevant skills you gained or improved through the experiences. You will often not even need to state the skills themselves – and if you do, avoid listing too many. Fully utilise each experience – show through your discussion of it that you enjoyed it and really engaged in it – in turn, this will help your style be enthusiastic and positive to the admissions tutor.

When entered into UCAS Apply, your personal statement will lose any formatting within it – bold, italic or underlined words are not allowed, and many types of special characters and symbols will be removed – including accented characters (à, é, ù), € and special quote and bracket characters (eg. “ ‘ ’ ”, {}, \ – though the characters “, ‘, () and / are allowed). Tabs and multiple spaces will be condensed to a single space, so you are not able to indent lines. You can leave an empty line between paragraphs to more clearly define these, but this will reduce your character amount.

Never lie, embellish or exaggerate any statements in your personal statement – apart from anything else, you may be asked to expand on them at interview and find yourself caught out. Of course, there’s no need to be an expert in quantum mechanics if you mention your interest in the field, but be prepared for questions in the interview that will show you know at least the basics of it to reassure the interviewer that you have done sufficient research in to it. Don’t make unsupported claims for yourself, either – always back yourself up with evidence or examples. Most important, never, ever plagiarise anyone else’s work in your statement, or pay for someone to do it for you. UCAS uses a similarity detection system to scan your personal statement against every other applicants’ (including previous year’s) – and if plagiarism is detected in your statement, your chosen universities will be told.

Feedback and Finalising

Once you have completed your first draft of your personal statement and are reasonably happy with it, it is time to show it to teachers, advisors and family and ask for their constructive feedback and comments on it. Some advice will likely be simple – correcting any accidental spelling, grammatical or punctuation mistakes (ensure the corrections are right!), and suggesting rephrasing of unclear sentences – but some suggestions might be more substantial and require more consideration. Don’t take any criticism personally – people are genuinely trying to help by offering their opinions. If you seriously disagree with any suggestions in particular, you can choose to ignore them – it is your personal statement and you have to be happy with the final version you submit. Redraft as necessary, let a range of (trusted) people have a look at your new version and repeat this re-drafting process as long as you think the feedback you are getting is useful. It is generally not a good idea to post your personal statement online on forums or discussion boards, as anyone is then able to copy it and pass it off as their own.

If you have have gone over the 4000 character limit and there is still academic content you are adamant on keeping in your personal statement, ask your referee – usually a teacher or admissions/senior tutor at your school/college – if they can mention it in your reference, as an alternative approach.

Once you are happy with the final version of your personal statement, paste it into UCAS Apply before your school or college’s internal deadline, pay UCAS the £24 fee, and submit your application to your chosen universities. Good luck!

Helpful Links

• Official UCAS personal statement page
• The Student Room’s personal statement advice
• Subject specific guides to personal statements  from The Student Room

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Physics personal statement example 12.

From investigating the properties of subatomic particles to predicting the behavior of the planets, Physics fascinates me. Partly, it's the logical aspect of the subject which seems to sum up the workings of the entire universe in a series of simple statements. Partly, it's the bizarre way of thinking in which the cat can be both dead and alive. Overall, I think it's the insights about reality that really motivate me into choosing this subject to study at university, and the possibility that at some point in the future, I will be able to shed some light on the questions still unanswered. My interest in mathematics is also a factor in my choice, as I enjoy solving complex problems.

My interest in science extends outside the classroom. In order to extend my knowledge and keep up to date with current ideas I have subscribed to "Physics Today". I have also watched lectures about Quantum Mechanics from Oxford University on Itunes. This gave me an idea of the challenges and problems I would be solving in university and it also showed me the extent of knowledge I've yet to understand. Recently, I have attended a lecture in Merchiston Castle School that celebrated the 50th anniversary of the invention of the laser and I found it really captivating, particularly because it showed just how many everyday applications physics has.

In school, I'm a Physics departmental prefect and a member of the charity committee. Both of these have taught me the importance of teamwork, which I believe I can apply to other areas. I've also participated in the second stage of British Physics Olympiad having obtained a merit award in the first paper an experience which helped me to apply my limited knowledge to complicated questions I haven't ever tried before. It was a particularly challenging test but I enjoyed it nonetheless. I also participate in the Scottish Baccalaureate in Science which requires a lot of planning, confidence and generic skills. Although my project is not exactly completely related to Physics global warming being my main concern it still gives me an insight into university research methods.

I'm keen on learning new languages. Already bilingual, I'm also learning Japanese. I've got a certain passion for all things Japanese and I intend to visit Japan in the future. At the moment, I'm in the process of completing my TEFL (teaching English as a foreign language) course. Both of these demonstrate my communication and independent learning skills which I'm continuously developing and which will be helpful to me when I pursue a career in Physics. My other areas of interest are web designing, reading and painting.

I'm looking forward to learning more about Physics in university and to continue my education in an environment where others share similar interests and passions. My ambition is, one day, to lead my own scientific research and hopefully, make a difference.

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This personal statement was written by Master of Puppies for application in 2010.

Master of Puppies's Comments

Just a little something I thought I would share with the world. Not really many physics statements here so I might as well add my five cents. Hopefully, it'll help if you're stuck or looking for an example.

Related Personal Statements

I loved it, the start was.

Fri, 30/09/2011 - 10:54

I loved it, the start was brilliant and i personally rate this better than other statements rated at 5stars. It isn't too pretencious or too vague, spot on.

Loved it. Thanks for sharing.

Mon, 03/10/2011 - 18:02

Loved it. Thanks for sharing. It is very motivating, not at all a surprise u got offers from these great unis. Well done! ;-)

I enjoyed the dead cat

Fri, 30/12/2011 - 12:50

I enjoyed the dead cat allegory. I wouldn't have thought to include that.

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Physics personal statements

Scroll down this page to find a collection of real personal statements written by students applying to study economics and related courses at university.

Plus, over on The Uni Guide, we've also got advice from universities on what they want to see in a physics personal statement . 

Among the tips shared by these admissions experts: how to craft an introduction that stands out; why you need to make your statement easy to read; why you should really shout about your achievements; how to show off a genuine interest in physics.

Examples of real physics personal statements

These physics personal statements are written by real students. Among them you will find personal statements that have formed part of successful applications to universities such as Leeds, Cambridge and Nottingham.

Bear in mind, these personal statements are presented in exactly the way they were originally submitted to Ucas. Don't expect them all to be perfect! But by reading through a few of these samples, you'll be able to get some ideas and inspiration for your own personal statement. 

More help with your personal statement

You can find personal statement examples for other courses by using this subject list, or by returning to our personal statements by subject page.

Other useful links

• Applying to university

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Applying to Graduate School

Applying to graduate school can be confusing and overwhelming (and no one ever tells you how damn expensive it all is). SPS is here to help deobfuscate the messy application process.

Disclaimer : A lot of this advice is based on personal experience from a limited set of perspectives. If something in here doesn’t resonate with you, that’s absolutely fine and you should follow your own path. If you flat out disagree with what’s written here, you can bring up your issue here and we can change the content of this page to reflect what advice is most agreed upon.

What does an application consist of?

Pretty much any application to a physics PhD program will consist of four things: a statement of purpose (frequently called the personal statement), a resume or curriculum vitae (CV), letters of recommendation, transcripts, standardized test scores, and for some applications a diversity statement (sometimes confusingly also called a personal statement). Unforuntunately there is no “Common App” for physics gradaute schools (although please make one), so each physics department has its own application and process, requiring you to submit essentially the same biograpihcal information and documents to each and every program. What follows is some advice on tackling each part of the application.

Statement of Purpose / Personal Statement

The Statement of Purpose (SoP) is a 1 - 2 page essay written by you that outlines your intentions in applying to a certain graduate program. You usually discuss your prior research experience and the specific research interests you wish to pursue in graduate school. This is also a place for you to write about any parts of your application that you’d like to clarify for the admissions committee (e.g. a few bad grades in one semester, low physics GRE scores, etc.). Many dismiss the SoP as having little use, as people generally don’t really know what they’re going to study in graduate school, and people in STEM tend to not be the most eloquent writers (i.e. most SoPs are trash). However, the SoP really is the ONLY portion of your application that you have complete control over , and this is what makes it important. If you are a good writer (or you put enough time into your SoP), you have an opportunity to really impress admission committees with your ability to professionally present yourself. When reviewing applications, faculty are looking for future colleagues , which they would prefer would be mature and able to present themselves. A well-written SoP can get this exact message across, which is why it is an important part of your application.

The SoP needs to be contrasted and separated from the Personal Statement (or diversity statement). The Personal Statement is a 1 - 2 page essay that clarifies your personal history and provides you with a space to discuss challenges that you’ve faced in reaching the current stage of your career. The Personal Statement is really the only area of an application where you as a person enters into play. These statements exist because physics graduate admissions tends to favor those with an abundance of opportunities (i.e. rich kids at prestigious universities), and the statement allows admission committees to place your application in the context of your own life. If you’ve found yourself pretty advantaged throughout your life, you might be at a loss to talk about disadvantages you’ve faced. However, this doesn’t mean you can’t write anything. In these statements, admission committees are also looking for you to show how you can improve the state of their own community . For example, do you have a passion for teaching or outreach? You can discuss those passions in your statement and talk about how you focus on bringing opportunities to communities other than your own.

In general, both your SoP and Personal Statement will be different for each school you apply to. A SoP needs to provide specific detail about why you are applying to each program, and is thus inherently unique for each application. As discussed earlier, you generally want to emphasize how you can enhance a program’s community in your Personal Statement, so each statement needs to be customized for each application as well. Further, schools may request specific information in your SoP or Personal Statement that other schools do not require, which further complicates the writing process. However, this does not mean you need to write a new statement from scratch for each program you apply to.

A SoP will generally have the following structure:

• Paragraph 1: Introduce who you are and talk about your interests. Not like your name, but talk about your specific work interests, what your skills are, and what your interests in physics are. Make it interesting and make yourself sound appealing. You can talk about the specific parts of physics that fascinate you as they apply to the program you are applying to (e.g. it’s fine to talk about how dark matter fascinates if you want to work on cosmology projects in the program, but not if you’re interested in condensed matter theory). You can also use this space to quickly in 1 - 2 sentences explain away parts of your application that are weak (e.g. a semester of bad grades). In these sentences, try to take responsibility for the parts of your application that are weak and emphasize your growth as a student. For example, someone might say to explain away a low GPA, “Despite my rough start in the beginning of my academic career, resulting in a 3.0 total GPA, I was able to maintain a 3.7 GPA in my last two years of study in my physics and math courses, reflecting my commitment to obtaining a physics degree and continuing my studies.
• Paragraph 2: Now is when you start name dropping. Name at least 3 specific professors you would like to work with. Discuss why their work intrigues you and what you can bring to the table when working with them. This is where you can talk in specifics about the work you imagine yourself doing in graduate school. At minimum, this is the only area you need to change between the Statements of Purpose that you write for each applcation.
• Paragraph 3+: Talk about your research experience. Talk about the specific contributions you have made to the research you have been involved in. For each experience, mention who you worked with and where the work was performed. Each of these experiences you talk about will probably be written about in one of your letters of recommendations (some even underline the names of their letter writers as a cue that readers should cross reference what you wrote with your letters of recommendation), so you should write in a way to supplement what they may be writing about you.
• Conclusion: Wrap everything up. Discuss again, now that your reader knows more about your experience and intentions, why exactly you are applying to this program and what you want to do there.

You don’t have to follow this structure, but this outline provides a nice starting point for writting a succinct essay that gets the point across that you have skills the professors want and you have specific ideas about what you want to do. If you find it difficult to write in this manner, try a different essay structure that feels more natural to you. No matter what you end up writing and no matter what structure your essay has, just make sure you follow these two rules:

DO NOT WASTE MY TIME

This should be the golden rule of all writing. Write with purpose and clarity so that the admission committee gets a clear understanding of your intentions in applying. This will also show them that you are smart and mature, which are good attributes to have in a grad student. Also keep in mind that admissions committees have to read hundreds of applications. If you’re wasting their time with your writing, it’s more reason to just glance over what you write which might weaken your application.

Every sentence and paragraph should serve some purpose in constructing an ideal image of you as a grad student in the reader’s mind. Try to actively think about what the image the reader constructs of you is as you write your SoP.

DO NOT WRITE ABOUT YOUR EARLY CHILDHOOD

This is a big faux pas, and some still make the mistake of starting their application with their memories of falling in love with physics as a kid. Some applications will go so far as to explicitly request that you do not talk about this. If you start talking about how you’ve loved science ever since you used a chemistry set when you were 9, you’re already breaking rule number 1.

Resume / CV

Resumes and curriculum vitaes (CVs) are pretty standard. To get an idea of the expectation for how your resume should be formatted, take a look at the CVs of the professors you want to work with at the various schools you are applying to. In generally, they should list the following information:

Biographical and contact information

Your name, address, phone number, email, etc.

Your educational history

The universities you have attended and your dates of attendence (no high schools), your majors, and your GPA

Your research/work experience

List each of the research projects you have worked on and what your contribution was. If you don’t have enough research experience, supplement with relevant work experience.

A list of your publications/posters/talks

If you have publications (most don’t, but if you do - great!), you should list them with a full reference. Also list any posters and talks you’ve given on your work.

(Optional) Scholarships and awards

List all of the scholarships and awards you have received in college. Don’t be shy, make it seem like a bigger deal than it is.

(Optional) Teaching experience

This can be listed under work experience as well, but it’s good to include any TAing experience you have, as TAing is a core part of many graduate careers. If you have enough experience, this can be an entire portion of your resume.

(Optional) Leadership and involvement

If you have relevant leadership experience (on an exec board of a club) or outreach experience, it’s good to list these on your resume

(Optional) Technical skills

You can also advertise special skills on your resume. If you program a lot, you can mention the useful languages you know. If you have a lot of experience in the lab, you can write down your lab skills and what special software you are adept with.

Your resume should be either exactly 1 or 2 pages. It might look weird to make it 1.5 pages or something like that (use your own judgement). There is generally a 2 page limit that prevents it from being too long. To make formatting easier, you should use LaTeX to write up your CV. Word is fine, but using LaTeX produces a more professional looking document. You can use a template to make it easier. This one is pretty good.

Letters of Recommendation

Generally, you’ll need three letters of recommendation for your applications. For some applications, they will accept more than three letters, but three is all that is necessary. Well in advance of your application deadlines, you should begin reaching out to people who you’d like to write your letters of recommendation. Generally, professors are happy to write a few good words about their students. However, some might just not have much to say, or they might be too busy, so provide room for (and prepare for) refusal when you ask.

In each of your letters, admission committees are looking for good qualities, such as tenacity, intelligence, work ethic, and resolve, that their colleagues have identified in you. In general, you want to receive good letters of recommendation, so you should seek out people who will write great things about you in each of these areas. Primarily, you should be asking for letters from people you have worked under, either professors or post-docs, in a research experience or a work experience of some sort. These should be people that you’ve worked with closely and have a solid understanding of and high regard for the impact you’ve had on their research. If you don’t have three people who you’ve worked with, your next best bet is a professor who has taught you in a course. In this case, you should seek out a professor who knows you well and who has high regard for you. You may have visited them many times in office hours and impressed them with your work ethic. It’s not necessary that you were the best student in their class, but it is necessary that you impressed them and that they have something unique to say about you and your qualities as a person.

Your letter writers may ask that you send them your CV, so make sure you have one prepared for them. Along with your CV, send them a draft Statement of Purpose so they can understand your motivations for applying to your chosen schools and tailor their writing towards your goals. If you don’t have a draft SoP, then at least in your request to them let them know explicitly what you hope they can write about you (e.g. you might say “I was hoping you could highlight X, Y, and Z about our work/time together” when you talk to them). Providing some guidance on what should be in the letter is a much appreciated step when requesting a letter. Finally, send each of your letter writers a well formatted spreadsheet that contains information about all of the schools you’re applying to and a link to where they should submit their letter. Make it as easy as possible for them to not mess up when submitting your letter!

Transcripts

You will either need to send an official or unofficial transcript in with each of your applications. You can get an unofficial transcript easily through SIS, and you can get an official UVA transcript ordered through UVA .

Standardized Test Scores

In general, programs will require that you send BOTH your scores for the general GRE and the physics GRE to them through ETS’s official score sending website. You will want to do this in advance of the submission deadline for each application, so that you can ensure your application is complete by the deadline. Some programs may not ask for you general GRE exam scores or your physics GRE exam scores.

General Advice

It’s a good idea to keep a spreadsheet with all of the schools you want to apply to along with information about which information you’ve sent them (transcript, letters, etc.), and which standardized test scores they require.

How do I pick a program to apply to?

This is probably the hardest part to give specific advice on as which programs you should apply to depends on a lot of different factors, and is inherently a personal choice. In general though, you should go to the school where you will have the most opportunities to do what you want to do . “Most opportunities” can mean a lot. It can mean the school has a lot of funding and allows you to explore research freely. It can also mean that there is simply the largest number of faculty who’s research intrigues you. It can also mean that that school has a nice science facility (e.g. an accelerator) where you can do your research. “What you want to do” is also vague, and is up to each person. Perhaps you are hyper-focused on research, and you want to go to a school where everyone else is like that. Perhaps you find the people you are with is more important to your happiness than the work you are doing, in which case you would want to ensure the faculty and students in your chosen department are friendly and have similar personalities to you. Perhaps you are more interested in the city you will be living in or the hiking opportunities available to you in the surrounding area of the school. These are all valid perspectives to have on what you want out of your graduate program, and they will all enter into your choice of schools that you apply to.

To get an idea of where different schools lie in how “good” they are, you can take a look at rankings, like the US News rankings or other rankings which use other objective factors . GradSchoolShopper is also an excellent place to find schools to apply to, and also provides information about acceptance rates at various schools. Pick a few school off these lists (don’t automatically rule out MIT!), and look at their websites for more information. Go through their faculty pages and read up on their research. Write down in a notepad or document all the people who have research that stands out to you. Look for buzz words that you think sound cool , as that tends to be a good indicator of you’re own interests when you’re unsure of what you want to do. You can use this as a starting point to narrow down which schools actually have science that sounds interesting to you.

Finally, just ask around! Ask your friends who have graduated which programs they applied to and why. Ask the grad students in the physics and astronomy departments about their experience with graduate admissions as well, as they will be able to have a much more specific and tailored conversation about your thoughts in applying to graduate school than this website can provide.

Personal experiences

Below you can find some advice from previous SPS members who have been through this process and wanted to share some words of wisdom to make your life easier.

Understand your profile as an applicant. But you should shoot for the stars too because you’re worth it!

Every professor in the department has gone through this process. Ask them about the program they went to. If you’re interested in potentially going to an international program, talk to Baessler.

Be sure that the research falls in line with your interests. However, your individual happiness is more important than anything, so be sure it’s somewhere you can flourish. When you visit, be sure to talk to the older graduate students about how they’re doing. Also try to get a sense of the community in the program. Grad school can take a toll on your physical and mental health, so it’s important that your superiors and colleagues are invested in you as a person.

As much as we don’t want to make money an issue, if the program doesn’t offer very much of it you should maybe consider another. Also look into the cost of living in the area.

Try to select a school that will make you happy in terms of every aspect, cause you don’t want to end up in a crappy situation for your life (which surprisingly exists beyond physics).

Online resources

• APS’s guide to choosing a grad program
• US News physics department rankings
• The Chronical astronomy department rankings
• GradSchoolShopper

How much will this all cost?

A lot. In total, one can expect to spend $1413 - $1921 on graduate school applications. One SPS student tallied up their own costs when applying to 12 schools, using fee waivers for applications, and spent a total of $1,141. So, make sure you have $1,000 - $2,000 saved up before applying to graduate schools!

Applications

Each application will cost you between $50 and $150 each to even submit them. Fee waivers can generally be obtained for applications if you qualify, and you should try to take advantage of those if money is an issue. Students usually apply to somewhere between 8 and 12 schools, which makes application costs ~$800 - $1200.

Standardized Tests

Taking the general GRE costs $205 each time you take it and taking the physics GRE costs $150 for each test . Considering many take the general GRE once and the physics GRE twice, you’re looking at a cost of $505 to just take the tests. Again, there are fee waivers for the GRE, however you can only claim one fee waiver for one test. The process for obtaining a fee waiver is needlessly complex and time consuming (including mailing a form !), so plan ahead and apply for a fee waiver well in advance of registering for one of the GRE exams.

Actually sending your scores to your schools is the last part of the financial burden. ETS charges $27 for each score report you send to a school (includes both general GRE and physics GRE). When actually taking a test, you will be able to send your scores to four schools for free . Take advantage of this to save $108! Again, using a figure of 8 - 12 schools, you are looking at a cost of $108 - $216 to send your scores.

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PERSONAL STATEMENT EXAMPLE Physics Personal Statement

Submitted by Sam

Explore the secrets of the universe!

Choose QMUL for Physics and study dynamic modules, learn from world-class researchers and specialise in your chosen branch of physics!

Dive into captivating and exclusive topics!

Excel on one of our Institute of Physics accredited degrees and transfer to our flagship programmes at CERN and Harvard.

Physics Personal Statement

The varying scale of physics study is what most excites me: from the universe down to small scale particle interactions, it fundamentally governs all these areas and the many unknowns still existing, which I find fascinating. I want to develop my knowledge through further study of physics to be part of modern day research, which has such a huge impact on our lives.

Alongside my studies, I have been involved in many projects in and out of school to further my interest in physics beyond the A Level course, most recently on Oxford’s UNIQ Physics summer school. In advance of this, I read Feynman’s ‘Six Not-so-easy Pieces’. While I found many of the concepts discussed initially challenging (mainly time dilation, length contraction and curved space), I enjoyed Feynman’s clever analogies to explain these concepts, such as through bugs and hot plates. Study of these topics at Oxford developed my understanding of and interest in relativity, with the opportunity to have intellectual conversations with leading academics being most beneficial and enjoyable. Using the Michelson interferometer to measure sodium emission lines was a session that I particularly enjoyed due to experiencing the university approach to practical work and using equipment that I had only read about, and wouldn’t have otherwise had the opportunity to use. I’ve also read ‘The Last Three Minutes’, in which I found Davies’ links between astro-, particle and quantum physics particularly interesting. However, one of the most interesting points for me in both books was not the content but by how much our knowledge has advanced during my lifetime, with discoveries such as the observation of gravitational waves (which Davies had only predicted), especially as this was performed on a somewhat enlarged version of equipment I have now used.

This year I was selected to join Project Horizon, my school's near-space programme. Over the year, we planned the launch of a payload into the stratosphere, where I led a small team of engineers building and soldering the flight computer and the payload. We had a number of sensors to capture data including temperature, humidity and UV and IR intensity, which was interesting to analyse and compare to expected trends. The payload reached 37864m, capturing spectacular footage from three cameras, which we are hoping to use in a series of outreach lessons in local primary schools. Over the past year I have also mentored a Y8 pupil in physics, as well as assisting in one lower school physics class every week as a STEM Ambassador. This opportunity to have my own basic physics knowledge questioned was extremely beneficial, while also giving back to my school community.

I’ve learnt Mandarin Chinese for the last 5 years and see this as a great benefit to my future career prospects due to the global nature of modern science. Playing the piano since infant school, now at ABRSM Grade 6 level, shows my commitment and I am also proven to be a strong leader: being Vice-Captain of School I work with the Senior Leadership Team to ensure the smooth running of the school on a weekly basis, while also leading and organising the largest RAF Air Cadet section in the country as the Cadet Warrant Officer, and being part of a Cub Scout leadership team to run a weekly programme of activities for 8 to 10 year olds. These all show my willingness to take up the leading role of a university society or in the local community, as well as my ability to communicate with all ages, from young children to peers and staff, and to be adaptable and innovative when things don’t go to plan: all making me suited for group work and the practical side of the course. Overall, I am looking forward to furthering my physics ability at university and believe I display inter-personal and time management skills essential for this challenge, with the prospect of a career in the aviation or space industries adding to my motivation to study the subject.

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How to Write a PhD Personal Statement for Physics

23/02/2023 Emily Watson

If you’re applying to study Physics at PhD level, you may be required to submit a personal statement. Crafting an excellent personal statement is more than simply relaying a list of your qualifications and skills – it involves careful planning and putting thought into your motivations, interests, commitment to the subject area, and more.

This guide contains nine tips on how to write a stand-out personal statement for a Physics PhD programme. You’ll also find top tips from The Profs’ expert postgraduate admissions tutors as well as Profs Co-Founder, Dr Leo Evans , who has personally helped students develop successful applications for top universities.

1. Check what is required of you

Before you begin writing your personal statement, make sure you check what is required of you. Some universities do require you to write a personal statement for PhD Physics, while others do not (instead, they may ask for other documents along with a research proposal).

Each university that does require a personal statement for PhD Physics specifies slightly different guidelines. For example, Manchester asks that your personal statement be no more than one page long, while King’s College London asks for a statement of no more than 4,000 characters (or two pages). Specific questions may also be given as prompts around which to structure your personal statement.

Whether you are required to submit a personal statement, and what you include in that statement, may also depend on whether you are applying for a defined PhD opportunity (e.g. a funded studentship) that is on a topic chosen by the university, or an open PhD programme that asks you to submit a research proposal on a topic of your choice. There may also be some taught elements to your PhD, such as compulsory research methods and research integrity modules – if this is the case, think about how you can prove that you are prepared to develop these advanced research skills and succeed at this element of the programme in your personal statement.

2. Think about your motivations for applying

Your chosen university will want to know your motivations for applying for a PhD in Physics. It’s all well and good to be interested in the subject area, but having a more specific purpose or goal in mind will show the university that you are an excellent candidate to study the subject at PhD level.

For example, perhaps you have a particular career goal and completing a PhD will help you achieve it. If so, how will it help and what specifically do you hope to gain from the course? Maybe you have been inspired by a particular event related to your chosen course and want to enact real-world change. If so, tell the university how pursuing this course will help you do this.

Founder of The Profs and Imperial College London graduate, Dr Leo Evans, also recommends making it clear that you are committed to the subject area for the long haul: “Not only will academics be trying to gauge whether you are suitable for a PhD (i.e. that you are intelligent, qualified, a self-starter, driven and committed), they will also be judging whether you are likely to see it out when the going gets hard. Drop-off rates are high in PhDs and it is quite expensive for departments to essentially train people who then leave (i.e. they take up departmental resources by having classes and taking up supervisors’ time, etc.).”

3. Consider what appeals to you specifically about the course

It is important to research the specific PhD programme you’re applying for and discuss exactly why it appeals to you in your personal statement. University-specific research is often the most overlooked part of a postgraduate application and so it is a great way to stand out to universities. Consider why you have chosen to apply for this PhD Physics programme over another – perhaps it is the strong links the university has to your desired industry, or maybe you are able to choose a PhD programme in your particular area of interest. For example, Oxford offers DPhil courses in Astrophysics, Atmospheric, Oceanic and Planetary Physics, Atomic and Laser Physics, Condensed Matter Physics, Particle Physics, and Theoretical Physics. Whatever the reasons why your specific course appeals to you, make sure to include them in your personal statement.

4. Go into detail about your past studies

When applying for PhD Physics, you need to outline exactly why and how you are well-suited to the course based on your previous academic experience. Universities will know what you have studied as it will be outlined in your grade transcript, so don’t be too vague. It’s best to talk about specific modules or topics you covered in your Master’s degree (or undergraduate degree, if you are applying without a Master’s) that have prepared you for studying Physics at PhD level.

You should focus on discussing any independent work you have completed, both during your studies (such as a dissertation or independent research project), as well as work that has allowed you to develop the necessary skills for studying Physics at an advanced level (particularly strong mathematical skills). This will help to demonstrate your academic competence, commitment to the subject, and ability to work independently – a highly important skill at postgraduate level.

As an example, if you are proposing research that involves carrying out new observations of pulsar systems, you will need to demonstrate a track record of strong performance in related modules (e.g. Astrophysics, Cosmology, Quantum Gravity, Observational Astronomy, etc.) throughout your past studies. If you have studied a similar research area as part of a dissertation or research project, even better.

Top tip: If you have any gaps in your education history, make sure you address these in your PhD personal statement. Your university will be keen to know that your postgraduate degree is not just a ‘back-up’, but that you are serious and committed, and that it is part of your academic or career plan. Similarly, if you are lacking any subject-specific experience (for example, if you studied your undergraduate degree in a subject other than Physics), compensate for this by explaining how you have developed your foundation of relevant knowledge in other ways.

5. Include any relevant work experience

Including any relevant work experience you have completed in your personal statement will help to further demonstrate your genuine interest and real-world understanding of advanced level Physics on an industry-specific level. It is particularly important in a postgraduate personal statement because it shows proactivity and dedication to your future academic or professional career – something that your chosen university will be looking for closely.

Relevant work experience for a Physics PhD might include: research internships, a placement at a relevant engineering company, astronomy centre, or other, tutoring younger children in maths and physics, and more. Manchester University provides a great list of organisations and work experience opportunities for Physics on its website.

Rather than simply listing the relevant work experience you have, make sure you show a degree of introspection. Tell your chosen university not only what you did on any work experience placements, but also what you learnt from it and how you intend to apply that experience in order to excel in your PhD.

Top tip: Though it’s important to include it if you have it, don’t worry if you are lacking in professional work experience. Many people who apply for a PhD have been in education their whole adult lives, so if you are missing experience then simply fill the space with further educational experience and skills that prove you are well-suited to studying at PhD level.

6. Show that you have the technical skills required

University-level Physics requires students to have more than just excellent subject knowledge and mathematical skills – it is a highly quantitative and technical subject that requires you to use complex equipment and conduct research with the utmost integrity. Depending on the research you are proposing, you may need to demonstrate that you are able to use certain types of equipment or certain software needed to conduct experiments and analyse the data collected.

If you studied Physics at Master’s level (especially your chosen research area), you will almost certainly be familiar with many of the technical skills required and will be able to demonstrate this in your personal statement. However, if you studied a slightly different (but related) subject area, you may need to research what skills you will need in order to conduct your research project effectively. This will help to reassure your university that you are prepared to study Physics at PhD level.

7. How else have you developed your interest in the topic?

Universities won’t just be looking at your past studies and work experience, but also how you have pursued and developed your interest in your chosen research topic in your own time. For example, maybe you led the Physics/Mathematics/Astronomy society at your previous university, or perhaps you have simply explored your interest in the topic through reading relevant academic papers or keeping up to date with the latest news in the discipline/industry. Make sure to include examples and name-drop any significant organisations, news, papers, and academics throughout your personal statement to support your claims.

8. Briefly outline your 5-year plan

Universities will be looking for PhD applicants who are driven and committed to their industry. A strong personal statement should outline your goals for the future and explain how studying a PhD in Physics will help you to achieve your 5-year plan.

If you don’t have a 5-year plan, you’re not alone! Start by thinking specifically about what you hope to achieve by the end of your PhD, whether educationally or professionally. If you have professional objectives, explain how this course will help you move towards your career goal.

Top tip: Coming up with a 5-year plan may seem like a daunting task, but remember that plans can always change. The 5-year plan you outline in your personal statement does not have to be set in stone and it is expected that you will inevitably adapt your plans based on your changing circumstances and interests. However, no matter how daunted you are, don’t be tempted to leave this part out – it is invaluable for demonstrating your motivation and commitment to the course.

9. Consider how your work can contribute to the department, university, and wider society

Our final tip to writing an excellent PhD personal statement for Physics is to consider how your work will contribute – not only to the specific department and university you are applying for, but also to wider society. Universities will want to know that you understand the wider context in which your research will sit and what gap it will fill in the current research.

When applying for a PhD (especially a funded PhD), you’re also essentially asking a university to invest in you, so you need to convince them that you are worth that investment. A major way to do this is to explain how you will add value to their department and be an excellent member of the academic community.

Physics research can also have real impacts in a range of other disciplines and in wider society. For example, Oxford University’s Climate Physics research led to the proposed idea of a ‘carbon budget’, based on the finding that it is cumulative emissions of carbon dioxide that determine the level of global warming. This idea has revolutionised policy debates around global carbon emissions, a topic that is becoming ever more important in the fight to protect our planet for generations to come.

How can we help?

The Profs’ PhD admissions consultants are true experts in helping students prepare for study at PhD level, submit stand-out PhD applications, and get into their first-choice universities. Our network contains current researchers, lecturers, and ex-admissions staff who have reviewed hundreds of postgraduate applications, as well as Physics experts, so they know just what universities are looking for in PhD applicants.

95% of students who work with our team secure places at their first or second choice university. These universities often include top 10 institutions like Oxbridge, Imperial, Manchester, UCL, King’s College London, and more.

For professional, one-to-one guidance on your PhD application, get in touch with our team today.

Further resources

• How to Apply For a PhD
• How to Write a PhD Research Proposal
• How to Prepare For a Postgraduate Interview
• Common Postgraduate Interview Questions

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Successful Personal Statement For Natural Science (Physical) At Cambridge

Last Updated: 12th April 2022

Author: Chloe Hewitt

• Natural Sciences

Table of Contents

Welcome to our popular Personal Statement series where we present a successful Personal Statement, and our Oxbridge Tutors provide their feedback on it. 

Today, we are looking through a Natural Science applicant’s Personal Statement that helped secure a place at Cambridge University. The Natural Science Course at Cambridge is a unique and demanding course focused on blurring the boundaries between the different fields of science. 

Read on to see how this candidate wrote a Personal Statement that helped secure their place on a reputable degree. 

Here’s a breakdown of the Personal Statement:

SUCCESSFUL?

The universities this candidate applied to were the following:

Enrolling on our Cambridge Natural Science comprehensive Programme will give you access to Personal Statement redrafts. 

Your tutor will give you actionable feedback with insider tips on how to improve and make your Personal Statement Oxbridge quality for the best chances of success.  

Natural Science (Physical) Personal Statement

The more I discover about physics, the less I realise that I know, and the keener I am to further explore unfamiliar topics at university. Studying areas such as special relativity and quantum mechanics have made me question concepts I took as given, such as the nature and manipulation of time and the degree of certainty to which we can truly know anything.

My particular interest in physics was sparked when I read an article on quantum physics, and was introduced to a simple description of the fundamental constituents of matter. This led me to read further about particle physics. I particularly enjoyed Brian Greene’s The Elegant Universe, which gave me a brief insight into the intricacies of string theory, and The Feynman Lectures on Physics, from which I learnt new mechanics and probability theory. I watch lectures on the MIT website, read New Scientist and am a junior member of the IoP to further my knowledge of new scientific developments. I enjoyed visiting CERN last year and learning more about the experiments conducted there. I have also competed in national challenges to develop my thinking skills further, achieving bronze in the Physics Olympiad, silver in the Cambridge Chemistry Challenge and gold in the Senior Maths Challenge. Additionally, this year I won the school leavers’ physics prize.

Last summer I attended a residential Headstart physics course at the University of Leicester, and spent three days at the Debate Chamber physics school. I enjoyed performing undergraduate experiments, and was particularly interested by the lectures on recent developments in nanotechnology and the ways in which nanoparticles could be used to destroy cancerous cells in the body. I also had a tantalising glimpse of some of the complex mathematics behind General Relativity, and would love to study this intricate topic in more detail. These experiences confirmed my love of physics as well as increasing my appreciation of more complicated subjects not covered by my A Level courses. Furthermore, they helped to develop my skills in processing new information and quickly adapting to unfamiliar concepts.

I recently took part in an extended-essay competition at school, producing an independently researched piece of work on the superluminal neutrinos apparently found in 2011. I focused on the impossibility of faster-than-light travel according to special relativity, and the implications for time travel the discovery would have had if the measurements had been correct. This gave me the chance to explore further a subject I was interested in but had not studied at school. I researched my essay by reading scientific journals and textbooks, and speaking to scientists I met at physics events.

I will shortly begin a paid internship at Hildebrand Technology Ltd, where I will be using mathematical modelling of real life situations for statistical analysis. This will be an opportunity to apply mathematical techniques I have learnt in school to more complex problems. This placement, along with self-studying university textbooks and extra further maths modules, will ensure that I maintain and expand my maths skills and scientific knowledge during my gap year.

In my final year I was captain of the school Boat Club. I have rowed in the top senior boat since I was 15, and in 2013 I won silver at National Schools and gold at Schools Head. This sport has involved intensive training, which demands self-discipline and commitment. I love music, and take part in many close harmony groups and choirs, as well as taking grades in musical theatre, singing and piano. My music and sport, along with lifeguarding and weekly volunteering at a local primary school, have allowed me to develop my time management skills and use the time I have for work efficiently and productively.

I am a hardworking and intellectually curious student and am excited by the prospect of developing my mathematical skills and studying physics at a more advanced level at university.

For more inspiration, take a look through our other successful Personal Statement a nalysis articles:

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Good Points Of The Personal Statement

This is a very good statement. The statement is well structured, and the student’s motivation to study physics is clear. All points are explained clearly, and experiences expanded on. The student uses examples beyond their A-level studies to explain their desire to study physics, which comes across very well to the reader.

Bad Points Of The Personal Statement

The student forgets to use quotation marks around the names of books etc., and also ‘the’ before ‘New Scientist’. Whilst these are rudimentary errors, a simple proof-read would have found these. The main issue with this statement is its length. There are eight paragraphs in total.  By the penultimate paragraph it is clear enough that the student has done many physics-related extra-curricular activities. The quality of the statement will not be reduced if it is shortened.  The student does not explain acronyms, e.g. ‘IoP’. Some sentences can be shortened in order to save space, e.g. ‘I have also competed in national challenges to develop my thinking skills further, achieving bronze in the Physics Olympiad, silver in the Cambridge Chemistry Challenge and gold in the Senior Maths Challenge’ can be shortened to ‘I have also competed in national challenges to develop my thinking skills further, achieving bronze, silver and gold medals in the Physics Olympiad, Cambridge Chemistry and Senior Maths Challenges respectively’.

UniAdmissions Overall Score:

In general, this is a very good statement. It is well written, and the student’s motivation to study physics at university is clear from the very beginning. Due to the length of the statement, it is quite cumbersome to read. With some shortening, this would be a compact and powerful statement.

This Personal Statement for Natural Science is a solid example of demonstrating a wealth of knowledge, motivation and interest, vital to Admissions Tutors.

Remember, at Cambridge, these Admissions Tutors are often the people who will be teaching you for the next few years, so you need to appeal directly to them.

Check out our other successful personal statements and our expert guides on our Free Personal Statement Resources page.

Our expert tutors are on hand to help you craft the perfect Personal Statement for your Cambridge Natural Science application.

With our  Cambridge Natural Science Premium Programme, we help you craft the perfect Personal   Statement , perform strongly on the Admissions Test  and teach you how to  Interview effectively .

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How to write an excellent personal statement in 10 steps

Stand out from the crowd: here's how to write a good personal statement that will get you noticed

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Your personal statement forms a core part of your university application, and the sooner you get going, the better you can make it. You may think that your personal statement won’t matter as much to unis as your grades and experience but a great personal statement could make all the difference between you and a candidate with the same grades. Sure, your application might not reach that deal breaker stage. But is it something you want to leave to chance?  Here we’ll take you through the process of planning, writing and checking a good personal statement, so you end up with something you can submit with confidence. And to make sure the advice we're giving you is sound, we’ve spoken to admissions staff at loads of UK universities to get their view. Look out for video interviews and advice on applying for specific subjects throughout this piece or watch our personal statement playlist on YouTube .

• Are you looking for personal statement examples? Check our library of hundreds of real personal statements, on The Student Room

Personal statement deadlines

You'll need to make sure you've got your personal statement written well in advance of your application deadline. Below are the main university application deadline dates for 2024 entry.

2024 entry deadlines

16 October 2023: Deadline for applications to Oxford and Cambridge universities, along with most medicine, dentistry, and veterinary courses.   31 January 2024: Deadline for applications to the majority of undergraduate courses. After this date, universities will start allocating places on these courses –   but you can still apply after the 31 January deadline , as this article explains . 30 June 2024:  Students who apply after this date will be entered into Clearing .

• Read more: Ucas deadlines and key application dates

What is a personal statement?

A personal statement is a central part of your Ucas application, where you explain why you’ve chosen a particular course and why you’ll be good at it. It's your chance to stand out against other candidates and hopefully get that all-important offer. You only write one personal statement which is then read by each university you apply to, so if you are applying for more than one subject (or it's a combined course) it's crucial that you include common themes or reference the overall skills needed for all subjects. Personal statements are especially important if you’re trying to get on a very competitive course, where you need to do anything you can to stand out to admissions tutors. Courteney Sheppard, senior customer experience manager at Ucas, advises that your personal statement is "the only part of the application that you have direct control over. Do lots of research to demonstrate your passion, curiosity and drive to pursue your chosen subject." There’s a limit on how much you can write: your personal statement can be up to 4,000 characters (including spaces) or 47 lines of 95 characters (including spaces); whichever is shorter. This may appear generous (read: long) but once you've got going you may find yourself having to edit heavily.

• Read more: teacher secrets for writing a great personal statement

1. Plan what you want to cover

The first thing you need to do is make a plan. Writing a personal statement off the top of your head is difficult. Start by making some notes, answering the following questions:

• What do you want to study?
• Why do you want to study it?
• What is there about you that shows you’re suited to studying this subject at university? Think about your personality, as well as your experiences.
• What are your other interests and skills?

These few points are going to form the spine of your personal statement, so write them in a way that makes sense to you. You might want to make a simple bulleted list or you might want to get all arty and use a mindmap. Whatever you choose, your aim is the same. You want to get it clear in your own head why a university should offer you a place on its course. Getting those details down isn't always easy, and some people find it helpful to make notes over time. You might try carrying a notebook with you or set up a memo on your phone. Whenever you think of something useful for your personal statement, jot it down. Inspiration sometimes comes more easily when you’re thinking about something else entirely. It might help to take a look at The Student Room for some sample personal statements by university and sample personal statements by subjects , to give you an idea of the kind of thing you want to include. 

• Read more: personal statement FAQs

2. Show off your experience

Some things are worth adding to your personal statement, some things are not. Firmly in the second camp are your qualifications. You don’t need to mention these as there’s a whole other section of your personal statement where you get to detail them very precisely. Don’t waste a single character going on about how great your GCSE grades are – it’s not what the admissions tutor wants to read. What they do want to see is: what have you done? OK, so you’ve got some good grades, but so do a lot of other applicants. What have you done that’s different, that shows you off as someone who really loves the subject you’re applying for? Spend some time thinking about all the experience you have in that subject. If you’re lucky, this might be direct work experience. That’s going to be particularly appropriate if you’re applying for one of the more vocational subjects such as medicine or journalism . But uni staff realise getting plum work experience placements is easier for some people than others, so cast your net wider when you’re thinking about what you’ve done. How about after-school clubs? Debating societies? Are you running a blog or vlog? What key skills and experience have you picked up elsewhere (eg from hobbies) that could be tied in with your course choice? Remember, you’re looking for experience that shows why you want to study your chosen subject. You’re not just writing an essay about what you're doing in your A-level syllabus. Use this checklist as a guide for what to include:

• Your interest in the course. Why do you want to spend three years studying this subject at university?
• What have you done outside school or college that demonstrates this interest? Think about things like fairs/exhibitions, public lectures or voluntary work that is relevant to your subject.
• Relevant work experience (essential for the likes of medicine, not required for non-vocational courses such as English )
• Skills and qualities required for that career if appropriate (medicine, nursing and law as obvious examples)
• Interest in your current studies – what particular topics have made an impression on you?
• Any other interests/hobbies/experiences you wish to mention that are relevant either to the subject or 'going to uni'. Don't just list your hobbies, you need to be very selective and state clearly what difference doing these things has made to you.
• Plans for a gap year if you’re deferring entry.

Read more: 6 steps you need to take to apply to university

3. Be bold about your achievements

Don't be bashful about your achievements; that’s not going to help you get into uni. It's time to unleash your inner Muhammed Ali and get all “I am the greatest” with your writing. Do keep it focused and accurate. Do keep your language professional. But don’t hide your qualities beneath a layer of false modesty. Your personal statement is a sell – you are selling yourself as a brilliant student and you need to show the reader why that is true. This doesn’t come naturally to everyone, and if you’re finding it difficult to write about how great you are it’s time to enlist some help. Round up a friend or two, a family member, a teacher, whoever and get them to write down your qualities. Getting someone else’s view here can help you get some perspective. Don’t be shy. You are selling your skills, your experience and your enthusiasm – make sure they all leap off the screen with the way you have described them.

• Read more: the ten biggest mistakes when writing your personal statement  

4. How to start your personal statement

Type your personal statement in a cloud-based word processing program, such as Google Docs or Microsoft Word and don’t copy and paste it into Ucas Hub until it’s finished.  One of the benefits of doing it this way is that you can run spell check easily. (Please note, though, that Word adds "curly" quotation marks and other characters (like é or ü) that won't show up on your Ucas form, so do proofread it on Ucas Hub before submitting it to ensure it is how you typed it.)  Another big benefit is that you'll always have a backup of what you've written. If you're being super careful, you could always save your statement in another place as well. Bear in mind that extra spaces (eg adding spaces to the beginnings of paragraphs as indentation) are removed on Ucas. In your first sentence, cut to the chase. Why do you want to do the course? Don’t waste any time rambling on about the daydreams you had when you were five. Just be clear and concise – describe in one line why this course is so important to you. Then, in the rest of your intro, go into more detail in demonstrating your enthusiasm for the course and explaining how you decided this is what you want to do for the next three or more years. However you choose to start your statement, just avoid the following hoary old chestnuts. These have been some of the most used lines in personal statements over the years – they are beyond cliche, so don’t even think about it.

• From a young age I have (always) been [interested in/fascinated by]…
• For as long as I can remember, I have…
• I am applying for this course because… 
• I have always been interested in… 
• Throughout my life I have always enjoyed… 
• Reflecting on my educational experiences… 
• [Subject] is a very challenging and demanding [career/profession/course]… 
• Academically, I have always been… 
• I have always wanted to pursue a career in… 
• I have always been passionate about…   

5. Focus your writing on why you've chosen that subject

So you’ve got your intro done – time to nail the rest of it. Bear in mind that you’ve got to be a little bit careful when following a personal statement template. It’s easy to fall into the trap of copying someone else’s style, and in the process lose all of your own voice and personality from your writing. But there is a rough order that you can follow, which should help keep you in your flow. After your opening paragraph or two, get into any work experience (if you’ve got it). Talk about extracurriculars: anything you've done which is relevant to the subject can go here – hobbies, interests, volunteering. Touch on your career aspirations – where do you want this course to take you? Next, show your enthusiasm for your current studies. Cite some specific examples of current work that you enjoyed. Show off your relevant skills and qualities by explaining how you’ve used these in the past. Make sure you’re giving real-world examples here, not just vague assertions like “I’m really organised and motivated”. Try to use examples that are relevant.   Follow this up with something about you as a person. Talk about non-academic stuff that you like to do, but link it in some way with the course, or with how it shows your maturity for dealing with uni life. Round it all off by bringing your main points together, including a final emphasis of your commitment to studying this particular course.

• Read more: how to write your personal statement in an evening  

6. How long should a personal statement be?

You've got to work to a very specific limit when writing your personal statement. In theory you could use up to 4,000 characters – but you’re probably more likely to be limited by the line count. That's because it's a good idea to put line breaks in between your paragraphs (to make it more readable) and you only get a maximum of 47 lines. With this in mind, 3,500 characters is a more realistic limit. But when you’re getting started you should ignore these limits completely. At first, you just want to get down everything that you feel is important. You'll probably end up with something that is far too long, but that's fine. This is where you get to do some polishing and pruning. Keep the focus of your piece on the course you’re applying for, why you want to do it and why you’re perfectly suited to it. Look through what you’ve written so far – have you got the balance right? Chop out anything that goes on a bit, as you want each point to be snappy and succinct.

• Read more: universities reveal all about personal statements  

7. Keep it simple

8. Smart ways to end your personal statement

Writing a closing line that you’re happy with can feel as tricky as coming up with your opener. What you’re looking for here is a sign-off that is bold and memorable. The final couple of sentences in your statement give you the opportunity to emphasise all the good stuff you’ve already covered. Use this space to leave the reader in no doubt as to what an excellent addition you would be to their university. Pull together all your key points and – most importantly – address the central question that your personal statement should answer: why should you get a place on the course?

• Read more: universities explain how to end your personal statement with a bang  

9. Make sure your personal statement has no mistakes

Now you’ve got a personal statement you’re happy with, you need to make sure there are no mistakes. Check it, check it a second time, then check it again. Once you’ve done that, get someone else to check it, too. You will be doing yourself a massive disservice if you send through a personal statement with spelling and/or grammatical errors. You’ve got months to put this together so there really is no excuse for sending through something that looks like a rush job. Ask your teachers to look at it, and be prepared to accept their feedback without getting defensive. They will have seen many personal statements before; use what they tell you to make yours even better. You’ve also got another chance here to look through the content of your personal statement, so you can make sure the balance is right. Make sure your focus is very clearly on the subject you are applying for and why you want to study it. Don’t post your personal statement on the internet or social media where anyone can see it. You will get picked up by the Ucas plagiarism checker. Similarly, don't copy any that you find online. Instead, now is a good time to make your parents feel useful. Read your personal statement out to them and get them to give you feedback. Or try printing it out and mixing it up with a few others (you can find sample personal statements on The Student Room). Get them to read them all and then try to pick yours out. If they can't, perhaps there's not enough of your personality in there.  

10. Don't think about your personal statement for a whole week

If you followed the advice at the very start of this guide, you’ve started your personal statement early. Good job! There are months before you need to submit it. Use one of these weeks to forget about your personal statement completely. Get on with other things – anything you like. Just don’t go near your statement. Give it a whole week and then open up the document again and read through it with fresh eyes. You’ll gain a whole new perspective on what you’ve written and will be well placed to make more changes, if needed.

• Read more: how to write your personal statement when you have nothing interesting to say  

10 steps to your ideal personal statement

In summary, here are the ten steps you should follow to create the perfect personal statement.  

Personal statement dos and don'ts

• Remember that your personal statement is your personal statement, not an article written about your intended field of study. It should tell the reader about you, not about the subject.
• Only put in things that you’re prepared to talk about at the interviews.
• Give convincing reasons for why you want to study the course – more than just "enjoying the subject" (this should be a given).
• For very competitive courses, find out as much as you can about the nature of the course and try to make your personal statement relevant to this.
• Be reflective. If you make a point like 'I like reading', 'I travelled abroad', say what you got from it.
• Go through the whole thing checking your grammar and your spelling. Do this at least twice. It doesn’t matter if you’re not applying to an essay-based course – a personal statement riddled with spelling mistakes is just going to irritate the reader, which is the last thing you want to do. If this is something you find difficult then have someone look over it for you.
• Leave blank lines between your paragraphs. It’s easier for the reader to get through your personal statement when it’s broken into easily digestible chunks. Remember that they’re going to be reading a lot of these! Make yours easy to get through.
• Get someone else's opinion on your statement. Read it out to family or friends. Share it with your teacher. Look for feedback wherever you can find it, then act upon it.
• Don’t write it like a letter. Kicking off with a greeting such as "Dear Sir/Madam" not only looks weird, it also wastes precious space.
• Don’t make jokes. This is simply not the time – save them for your first night in the union.
• Don’t criticise your current school or college or try to blame teachers for any disappointing grades you might have got.
• Be afraid of details – if you want your PS to be personal to you that means explaining exactly which bits of work or topics or activities you've taken part in/enjoyed. It's much more compelling to read about one or two detailed examples than a paragraph that brushes over five or six.
• Just list what you're doing now. You should pull out the experiences that are relevant to the courses which you're applying to.
• Mention skills and activities without giving examples of when they have been demonstrated by you or what you learnt from them. Anyone can write "I have great leadership skills" in a PS, actually using a sentence to explain when you demonstrated good leadership skills is much rarer and more valuable.
• Refer to experiences that took place before your GCSEs (or equivalent).
• Give explanations about medical or mental health problems. These should be explained in your reference, not your PS.
• Apply for too many different courses, making it difficult to write a convincing personal statement which supports the application.
• Write a statement specific to just one institution, unless you're only applying to that one choice.
• Copy and paste the statement from somewhere else! This means do not plagiarise. All statements are automatically checked for plagiarism by Ucas. Those that are highlighted by the computer system are checked manually by Ucas staff. If you’re found to have plagiarised parts of your statement, the universities you apply to will be informed and it could jeopardise your applications.
• Use ChatGPT or another AI program to write your personal statement for you. Or, if you do, make sure you thoroughly edit and personalise the text so it's truly yours. Otherwise you're very much at risk of the plagiarism point above.

You may want to look at these...

How to write your university application.

Tips for writing your university application, including deadlines and personal statements

The Ucas personal statement is changing in 2025

A question-based personal statement will be required as part of university applications from autumn 2025 onwards

How long does it take for universities to reply to your application?

It might feel like it's taking forever for your uni offers to come through. Find out what's going on, and when you should hear back

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The Higgs particle could have ended the universe by now – here’s why we’re still here

Postdoctoral Research Associate, King's College London

Disclosure statement

Lucien Heurtier works for King's College London. Lucien Heurtier's work is supported in part by the U.K. Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) under GrantST/X000753/1

King's College London provides funding as a member of The Conversation UK.

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Although our universe may seem stable, having existed for a whopping 13.7 billion years, several experiments suggest that it is at risk – walking on the edge of a very dangerous cliff. And it’s all down to the instability of a single fundamental particle : the Higgs boson .

In new research by me and my colleagues, just accepted for publication in Physical Letters B, we show that some models of the early universe, those which involve objects called light primordial black holes, are unlikely to be right because they would have triggered the Higgs boson to end the cosmos by now.

The Higgs boson is responsible for the mass and interactions of all the particles we know of. That’s because particle masses are a consequence of elementary particles interacting with a field , dubbed the Higgs field. Because the Higgs boson exists, we know that the field exists.

You can think of this field as a perfectly still water bath that we soak in. It has identical properties across the entire universe. This means we observe the same masses and interactions throughout the cosmos. This uniformity has allowed us to observe and describe the same physics over several millennia (astronomers typically look backwards in time).

But the Higgs field isn’t likely to be in the lowest possible energy state it could be in. That means it could theoretically change its state, dropping to a lower energy state in a certain location. If that happened, however, it would alter the laws of physics dramatically.

Such a change would represent what physicists call a phase transition. This is what happens when water turns into vapour, forming bubbles in the process. A phase transition in the Higgs field would similarly create low-energy bubbles of space with completely different physics in them.

In such a bubble, the mass of electrons would suddenly change, and so would its interactions with other particles. Protons and neutrons – which make up the atomic nucleus and are made of quarks – would suddenly dislocate. Essentially, anybody experiencing such a change would likely no longer be able to report it.

Constant risk

Recent measurements of particle masses from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at Cern suggest that such an event might be possible. But don’t panic; this may only occur in a few thousand billion billion years after we retire. For this reason, in the corridors of particle physics departments, it is usually said that the universe is not unstable but rather “meta-stable”, because the world’s end will not happen anytime soon.

To form a bubble, the Higgs field needs a good reason. Due to quantum mechanics, the theory which governs the microcosmos of atoms and particles, the energy of the Higgs is always fluctuating. And it is statistically possible (although unlikely, which is why it takes so much time) that the Higgs forms a bubble from time to time.

However, the story is different in the presence of external energy sources like strong gravitational fields or hot plasma (a form of matter made up of charged particles): the field can borrow this energy to form bubbles more easily.

Therefore, although there is no reason to expect that the Higgs field forms numerous bubbles today, a big question in the context of cosmology is whether the extreme environments shortly after the Big Bang could have triggered such bubbling.

However, when the universe was very hot, although energy was available to help form Higgs bubbles, thermal effects also stabilised the Higgs by modifying its quantum properties. Therefore, this heat could not trigger the end of the universe, which is probably why we are still here.

Primordial black holes

In our new research, we showed there is one source of heat, however, that would constantly cause such bubbling (without the stabilising thermal effects seen in the early days after the Big Bang). That’s primordial black holes, a type of black hole which emerged in the early universe from the collapse of overly dense regions of spacetime. Unlike normal black holes, which form when stars collapse, primordial ones could be tiny – as light as a gram.

The existence of such light black holes is a prediction of many theoretical models that describe the evolution of the cosmos shortly after the Big Bang. This includes some models of inflation , suggesting the universe blew up hugely in size after the Big Bang.

However, proving this existence comes with a big caveat: Stephen Hawking demonstrated in the 1970s that, because of quantum mechanics, black holes evaporate slowly by emitting radiation through their event horizon (a point at which not even light can escape).

Hawking showed that black holes behave like heat sources in the universe, with a temperature inversely proportional to their mass . This means that light black holes are much hotter and evaporate more quickly than massive ones. In particular, if primordial black holes lighter than a few thousands billion grams formed in the early universe (10 billion times smaller than the Moon’s mass), as many models suggest, they would have evaporated by now.

In the presence of the Higgs field , such objects would behave like impurities in a fizzy drink – helping the liquid form gas bubbles by contributing to its energy via the effect of gravity (due to the mass of the black hole) and the ambient temperature (due to its Hawking radiation).

When primordial black holes evaporate, they heat the universe locally . They would evolve in the middle of hot spots that could be much hotter than the surrounding universe, but still colder than their typical Hawking temperature. What we showed, using a combination of analytical calculations and numerical simulations, is that, because of the existence of these hot spots, they would constantly cause the Higgs field to bubble.

But we are still here. This means that such objects are highly unlikely to ever have existed. In fact, we should rule out all of the cosmological scenarios predicting their existence.

That’s of course unless we discover some evidence of their past existence in ancient radiation or gravitational waves. If we do, that may be even more exciting. That would indicate that there’s something we don’t know about the Higgs; something that protects it from bubbling in the presence of evaporating primordial black holes. This may, in fact, be brand new particles or forces.

Either way, it is clear that we still have a lot to discover about the universe on the smallest and biggest scales.

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Frank Bruni

Donald trump, prince of self-pity.

By Frank Bruni

Mr. Bruni is a contributing Opinion writer who was on the staff of The Times for more than 25 years.

The size of the crowd at a rally for Vice President Kamala Harris in Atlanta last month rivaled the turnout for Donald Trump days later only “because she had entertainers,” Trump told the audience at his event, referring to the rappers Quavo and Megan Thee Stallion. “I don’t need entertainers.”

Translation: Harris cheated. Even so, she didn’t get the better of him.

She isn’t really Black but “happened to turn Black” over the course of her political career. That’s what Trump said at a meeting of the National Association of Black Journalists, insinuating that Harris had performed a melanin metamorphosis and was falsely improvising identities to contrive some perk unavailable to him.

Poor Trump. Always forced to compete on an uneven playing field.

Of all his feats of projection, which is psychology’s term for seeing your own methods and motivations in someone else, none fascinates me more than his incessant insistence that every one of his adversaries — that everyone, period — is the beneficiary of some scheme or scam that puts him at a disadvantage. If he triumphs nonetheless? It’s a testament to his peerless might. If he doesn’t? It was never a fair fight.

He’s the prince of self-pity, the bard of bellyaching, reportedly worked up over the imagined injustice or trickery of Harris’s late replacement of President Biden on the Democratic ticket. According to an article in The Washington Post this week, he told an ally : “It’s unfair that I beat him and now I have to beat her, too.”

The more assertively Trump presses a complaint, the more you know it’s bunk. He operates on the theory that if you’re selling falsehoods, peddle like the wind; your audience might well assume that you’d never speak that extravagantly and be that audacious if there weren’t some legitimacy to your claim.

So it is with his underdog yap — his pantomime of Cinderella when he’s really her wickedest stepsister.

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