Earth Science and Engineering (MEng) postgraduate personal statement example

Personal statement example

The core box on the tailgate held three metres of grey-brown clay, and my job was to describe it before the rain reached it. Since graduating I have worked as a field assistant for a small site-investigation company, logging boreholes under the supervision of an engineering geologist. Most days involve the same steps: photographing the core, noting colour, consistency and structure, bagging samples for the laboratory, and writing a log that someone else will use to decide how deep a foundation should go or whether a slope needs support. I enjoy the precision of it, but I have become more interested in what happens after my log leaves the van, and that is why I want to undertake postgraduate study in earth science and engineering.

My undergraduate degree in geology gave me a strong grounding in sedimentology, structural geology and geomorphology, with a smaller component of soil mechanics that I found unexpectedly absorbing. For my dissertation I mapped a stretch of eroding coastal cutting where clay-rich glacial deposits overlie weaker mudstone. Over two seasons I recorded the positions of fresh slips, measured back-scarp heights with a tape and clinometer, and compared my observations with older aerial photographs available online. I found that the larger failures clustered where a sandy layer within the till appeared to channel groundwater towards the contact. I was careful in my write-up to present this as a field association rather than a proven mechanism, because I had no piezometer data. That limitation is exactly what I want to learn to address: how to move from describing ground conditions to quantifying them, using laboratory testing, groundwater monitoring and numerical slope-stability analysis.

Work has sharpened that aim. I now read laboratory results for the samples I collected, and seeing my description of a 'firm, fissured clay' set beside measured shear strength and plasticity values has taught me how much interpretation sits between observation and design. I have started teaching myself the basics of limit equilibrium methods, working through textbook examples of the method of slices by hand and then in a spreadsheet, so that I understand what software is doing before relying on it. I have also learned practical habits that a lecture cannot give: checking a drillers' record against my own depths, labelling samples so a technician in another town cannot misread them, and asking questions early when something in the ground does not match the desk study.

Before this job I spent most of my degree working weekend shifts in a busy café. It had nothing to do with rocks, but it made me quick, organised and comfortable dealing with people under pressure, which proved useful on sites where a drilling crew wants to keep moving and I need two more minutes to describe a change in material properly.

Outside work I play bass in a ceilidh band that performs at village halls and weddings. Keeping steady time for dancers who are not always steady themselves has made me a reliable member of a small team, and I handle the band's bookings and travel, which involves the same kind of careful scheduling that fieldwork does.

At postgraduate level I hope to deepen my understanding of soil and rock mechanics, hydrogeology and geohazard assessment, and to gain experience with monitoring data and modelling tools that I have so far only seen in reports written by others. In the longer term I would like to work as an engineering geologist or geotechnical engineer on slope and coastal problems, where geological understanding and engineering judgement must work together. I would bring careful field skills, honest reporting of uncertainty and a clear sense of why the ground beneath a project deserves close attention.