Bioengineering personal statement example

Personal statement example

The rowing club where I train keeps a small shelf of epoxy, glass cloth and sandpaper, and since last spring I have been one of the people trusted to use it. Repairing a crack in a hull is slow work: the resin has to be mixed in the right ratio, applied before it starts to set, and left alone long enough to cure. I enjoy it because the material either holds or it doesn't, and I have learned to read the difference between a joint that will flex with the boat and one that will fail at the next collision with the landing stage. That interest in how materials behave under real conditions is a large part of why I want to study bioengineering, where the materials and devices have to work with living tissue rather than fibreglass.

At school I study Biology, Chemistry and Mathematics. In Biology I was most interested in how haemoglobin's binding of oxygen changes with conditions, and when our school ran an open-ended design project I chose to build a simple pulse oximeter clip. I used a red and an infrared LED, a photodiode and a microcontroller, and wrote code to compare how much of each wavelength passed through a fingertip. Getting a stable reading was harder than I expected. Ambient light swamped the signal at first, so I redesigned the clip with a 3D-printed shell lined with black foam, and added a moving average to smooth the output. Eight classmates agreed to test it at rest, and I compared my readings with a commercial fingertip device borrowed from the school's first aid kit. My numbers were usually within a few percentage points, though less reliable for people with cold hands. The project was commended at our school's science fair, which I was pleased about, but what stayed with me was reading afterwards about how such devices can give less accurate readings on darker skin. It made me realise that a sensor that works on the people who happened to test it is not the same as one that works for everyone.

Alongside school I work Saturdays on the front desk of an opticians. Most of the job is booking appointments, taking payments and helping people choose frames, but I also explain to customers how to look after new contact lenses and why they cannot sleep in some types. Watching patients describe discomfort in very everyday language, such as a lens that "feels like an eyelash", has shown me how much a medical device depends on the person using it at home, not just on its design. I have also become calmer and clearer when explaining something technical to someone who is anxious or in a hurry.

Rowing has given me a different kind of discipline. Early sessions in winter, and coordinating with three other people in a coxless four, have taught me to prepare properly and to notice small changes, whether that is a crew member's timing or a rigger that has loosened. I now help the younger juniors check their boats before they go out, which I enjoy more than I expected.

Outside school work I have read Siddhartha Mukherjee's The Gene, which gave me a clearer picture of how ideas about heredity developed, and I follow general explanations of tissue engineering, particularly scaffolds that cells can grow into. I understand only the outline so far, and I want to learn the chemistry, mechanics and cell biology properly enough to judge why one design succeeds and another does not.

I am applying for bioengineering because I want a course that joins the biology I enjoy with the building and testing I find most satisfying. I am practical, patient with problems that resist the first solution, and used to working with other people, and I would like to bring that to a degree where the end goal is something that genuinely helps someone.