Environmental Geoscience (faster route) [BSc] personal statement example

Why do you want to study this course or subject?

In the cemetery near my house, the oldest headstones are sandstone, and the lettering on many has softened until only the deepest cuts remain, while granite stones a century younger look freshly carved. Last summer I started recording this properly. With a tape measure, a phone camera and the dates on the stones, I logged 140 headstones by rock type, date, direction faced and how readable the inscription was on a simple five-point scale. The pattern was not as tidy as I expected. Some sandstone faces sheltered by yew trees had kept their lettering, and a few had lost their surfaces in flakes rather than grains. Trying to explain those exceptions led me to read about salt crystallisation, frost and the clay content of sandstones, and showed me how strongly the local environment controls how fast rock breaks down. Environmental geoscience appeals to me because it joins patient fieldwork to chemistry and physical processes, and asks practical questions about water, soil and land that affect where people live. I am applying for a route with advanced entry because my Advanced Highers have given me a foundation I want to build on straight away.

How have your qualifications and studies helped you to prepare?

My Advanced Higher Geography project grew out of the cemetery survey. I narrowed it to sandstone headstones and tested whether aspect affected legibility using a chi-squared test. South-west facing stones, which take the prevailing wet wind, were significantly more worn in my sample, although my evaluation noted that age and stone quality were hard to control. Presenting the method to my class made me tighten my definitions of each legibility score. Advanced Higher Chemistry has helped me understand the reactions behind weathering; when we studied equilibria, I could see why carbonate cements in rock dissolve more readily in slightly acidic rainwater. In Maths, differentiation and logarithms have been useful for thinking about rates and scales, and Higher Physics gave me confidence with density and energy, which came up when I read about how sediment settles. Outside class I read Marcia Bjornerud's Reading the Rocks, which encouraged me to treat outcrops as records of past events rather than simply as types of rock, and I worked through free online geological mapping exercises to practise drawing cross-sections. My school does not offer geology, so I have learned to find material independently and to ask teachers in different departments to check my reasoning.

What else have you done to prepare outside of education, and why are these experiences useful?

For two years I have worked on Saturdays and two weekday evenings in a family-run hardware shop. I cut keys, mix paint and advise customers on sand, cement and slabs, so I now know more than I expected about aggregate grades and why some paving stones weather badly outdoors. The owner trusts me to open up and cash up alone on Saturday mornings, and I have trained two newer staff on the till. At home I collect my younger sister from primary school three days a week and help her with homework, which has made me good at organising my own study around fixed times. I also swim with a local club and help coach the beginners' session on Sunday evenings; explaining a stroke in small steps to nervous eight-year-olds is surprisingly similar to explaining a chi-squared test to a friend. On walks along the burn near my town, I have started noting where the banks slump after heavy rain and photographing the same spots each month. It is a small record, but it has taught me to return to a place, compare carefully and not decide what I am seeing before I have looked. I am looking forward to fieldwork, laboratory analysis and mapping, and to learning methods that would let me answer questions like these properly.