Biological sciences postgraduate personal statement example

Personal statement example

A customer once brought a jam jar into the garden centre where I work and asked whether the small snails in it would kill her fish. They were ramshorn snails, harmless grazers, and explaining that took two minutes. What stayed with me was her next question: how could she tell whether her pond was healthy at all? I realised that my degree had given me a partial answer, and that I wanted the training to give a fuller one. I am applying for postgraduate study in biological sciences to develop the quantitative and molecular skills that would let me study freshwater ecosystems with more rigour than a field degree alone allows.

I graduated in Zoology with a 2:1. My strongest modules were in ecology, animal physiology and invertebrate biology, and I chose the optional statistics course, which I found demanding but useful. For my final-year project I compared macroinvertebrate communities at three sites above and below a small sewage treatment outfall on a lowland stream. Over six visits I collected three-minute kick samples, sorted them in trays and identified animals to family level. I then calculated a biotic score and compared community composition using ordination in R. Downstream sites had fewer mayfly and caddisfly families and more chironomid larvae and oligochaete worms, a pattern consistent with organic enrichment. With only three sites, however, I could not separate the effect of the outfall from natural changes along the stream. My supervisor encouraged me to say this plainly, and that section of the report was the part I was proudest of.

The project made me aware of the limits of identification by eye. Some chironomid groups are almost impossible to tell apart without specialist keys, and I spent long evenings unsure whether two larvae were the same. Since graduating I have read about environmental DNA methods, in which organisms are detected from genetic material shed into water. I do not have laboratory experience of these techniques, and I would like to learn how sampling, extraction and sequencing choices affect what such surveys can and cannot show. More broadly, I want stronger foundations in molecular biology and data analysis, because I can see that the most useful ecological questions now draw on both.

For the past eighteen months I have worked in the aquatics section of a garden centre. I test customers' pond and tank water for ammonia, nitrite and pH, maintain display tanks and advise on stocking. The work is ordinary retail, but it has made me practised at explaining biology to people with no background in it, and careful about record keeping, since a missed water change in a display system shows up quickly in the fish. I have also trained two newer colleagues on the testing routine. Through my manager's suggestion I now help with the weekly ordering for the section, which has taught me to plan ahead and to balance cost against animal welfare.

Outside work I volunteer with a local canal clean-up group about once a month. Most of it is pulling out trolleys and plastic, but I also help record which plants are recovering along a stretch we cleared last spring. I play five-a-side football on Thursday evenings, which has nothing to do with biology and is a reliable way to switch off after a long shift.

I am realistic about what I need to learn. I am comfortable with fieldwork, careful sorting and basic statistics, and I want to add laboratory competence, a better grasp of experimental design and the confidence to work with larger datasets. In the longer term I would like to work in environmental monitoring, possibly with a regulator or a rivers trust, or to continue into research if a suitable question emerges. A taught postgraduate course with a substantial research project would let me test that direction properly, building on what I have already done rather than starting again.