How To Write A Personal Statement For Dental Hygiene (Including My Actual Personal Statement!)

One of the very first steps in applying to university is putting together your personal statement. In my opinion, a personal statement isn't something you write but more something that you plan and build. I'm going to try and outline how I created mine and what I think they should contain, but ultimately, your personal statement is about you, and everyone's should be a unique piece about them as an individual.

Remember: There is no single "right way" to write a personal statement.

Initially, I believe it's really important to determine what should be present in a stellar personal statement. Writing a list and then connecting it to your experiences and achievements is a great way to ensure you don't forget to include anything and cover all the important areas.

So, what should be included in a Dental Hygiene personal statement?

Here's what I think...

Personally, I think a good DHDT personal statement should be structured around the NHS Core Values and the NHS Six C's. Let me write them out for you...

NHS Six C's

• Care

• Compassion

• Competence

• Communication

• Courage

• Commitment

NHS Core Values

• Working together for patients

• Respect and dignity

• Commitment to quality of care

• Compassion

• Improving lives

• Everyone counts

So let's call the list above, 'List A'. The next step I took from here was writing what I will call 'List B'; ultimately a list of things I wanted to mention in my personal statement that I was either proud of or felt was very relevant. I then placed List A and List B side by side and tried to pair things up. What from List B shows 'courage'? How can I link my volunteering experience to List A? Where in my life have I demonstrated an understanding that 'everyone counts'? And so on, until I had something to relate to every point on List A.

If you want to, you can extend List A to include the key qualities required to be a hygienist - it's totally up to you!

(Ps. If you can't think of enough points, try asking friends and family to see if they can remember something you don't. However, maybe you need to go out and do something extra so you can then talk about it and tick the box. Maybe some volunteering, tutoring a younger student, reading a book related to the course, and so on.)

My List B looked something like this...

- Work experience shadowing hygienist

- My awareness of the role through my job in a dental practice

- Volunteering trip to Kenya

- Studying for my Access to HE through distance learning whilst working full time

- Experience as a Dental Technician

- Previous work within the NHS

- Being a mature student

- Manual dexterity skills

- Hobbies and extracurricular activities like yoga

...but yours will look completely different!

So, once you've connected the lists...

Consider what each experience or achievement has taught you, what quality it helped you develop or what quality allowed you to succeed at it. This is the part where you should try and work your personality into the statement. (If you love lists, you could even make a third list of qualities and try and link them in.) Ask yourself... What do you pride yourself on most? Are you organised? Are you determined? Do you have good attention to detail? How would you describe yourself? Motivated? Empathetic? A great team player?

Now once you've reached this stage...

You should have a fair few notes, and should hopefully no longer be staring blankly at a blank A4 Word document thinking 'Where do I start?'. From here, you need to order the points in a way that flows. This bit is really down to your preference. It could be chronological and somewhat a story of how you've arrived at making the decision to apply for DHDT, or it could be in an order you think sounds the best! Try to avoid too much storytelling. The statement should be quite concise so you can fit everything in. Remember there is a word limit! Think intentionally about each sentence. Does it add value or is it waffle?

During this part, I cut sentences from one part and pasted them into another part to see how it sounded, and if it worked better elsewhere. Once you have the core text, the rest is mainly just tweaking and adjustment.

Once I had this done, which probably took me the best part of a Sunday afternoon, I left the statement alone for about a week. Then I came back to it with fresh eyes. Firstly, I spotted a bunch of spelling errors and silly mistakes like 'the the'. At this point, I put it into a website that reads it aloud to you. This helps you spot a bunch of sentences that just do not flow very well.

Now finally somewhat happy with it, I gave it to a few trusted family members, friends, and work colleagues and asked them to effectively rip it apart. What overall vibe did they get from it? What bits sounded too cheesy? Does it represent me well? What parts make no sense at all to anyone but me?! My Grandma by far did the best job of criticising it, and I was really grateful for it. When someone just says 'yeah, seems fine' you probably need to give it to someone meaner!

Ok so, we've gone into some pretty good detail on what should go into a personal statement. However, there is definitely a list of things that shouldn't.

Here are 10 things I would definitely avoid doing...

1. Lying. Do not lie in your personal statement.

2. Starting the statement with 'From a young age...', 'Ever since I was little...' and so on. Try and be unique!

3. Not checking for spelling mistakes and grammatical errors.

4. Being negative.

5. Colloquialisms.

6. Repeating yourself.

7. Humour. Don't make a joke, including a pun or any play on words.

8. Trying to address any "problems" with your application.

9. Appearing arrogant.

10. Plagiarism. Taking things from other people's personal statements is not only morally pretty wrong but also can land you in a serious pickle. Most universities check statements for plagiarism and if they find it, your application will be rejected.

Finally, at some point, you have to stop.

Agonising over a singular comma or whether you should use the word motivated instead of determined is really not going to change things. Once you reach this point, stop. Be proud of yourself! You've done it!

Now, the moment you've all been waiting for...

Below I have added a download for the actual personal statement I sent off in September 2019 as part of my UCAS application. I hope you enjoy reading it and being a little bit nosy! I'd love to hear what you guys think...

My Personal Statement.pdf

Download PDF • 340KB

Thank you so much for reading. I hope you've found my advice helpful. Please feel free to send me a message if you need anything. I'd love to hear other people's tips for writing your personal statement!

If you know anyone applying for Dental Hygiene this year, feel free to share this article with them!

Remember, #healthiswealth !

Lots of love,