Biological Sciences (Biochemistry) BSc (Hons) personal statement example

Why do you want to study this course or subject?

For eight years I worked at a commercial laundry that cleaned linen for care homes and hotels, and part of my job was setting wash programmes. Our supplier's biological detergent let us run many loads at 40°C instead of 60°C, and the results still passed the care homes' checks. I knew the word 'enzyme' from school, but not why a protein made by a microbe could break down egg or blood on a pillowcase, or why it stopped working if a programme ran too hot. Reading the product data sheets led me to proteases, lipases and amylases. From there I reached a bigger question: how does a chain of amino acids fold into a shape that does one precise chemical job? That question draws me to biochemistry. It explains living things through molecules I can draw, measure and reason about. The same principles apply to a detergent enzyme, a digestive enzyme and the proteins a cell uses to copy its DNA. After years of practical work, I want to understand the theory beneath it and gain the laboratory skills to test ideas properly, rather than by trial and error on a drum of sheets. Returning to education at thirty was a deliberate decision, and my work so far has shown me that I can study well.

How have your qualifications and studies helped you to prepare?

I am taking an Access to HE Diploma in Science at my local college, with units in biology, chemistry, physics and maths. So far I have achieved Distinctions in my assessed units, including cell biology, organic chemistry and statistics. The unit I enjoyed most covered enzyme kinetics. Plotting reaction rate against substrate concentration showed why the rate levels off as active sites become saturated. The idea of Km as a measure of affinity also made sense of what I had seen at work. For my independent project, I measured protease activity in a biological detergent. I put drops of diluted solution onto milk agar plates and measured the clear zones after incubation at five temperatures. Activity rose to a peak around 40°C and fell sharply above 60°C. I repeated each temperature three times. My tutor pushed me to explain why zone size is only an indirect measure of activity, since diffusion through agar also changes with temperature. Writing up that limitation taught me more than the result did. Outside the course I have read The Machinery of Life by David Goodsell, whose illustrations of crowded cell interiors changed how I picture molecules. I am also working through online material on metabolic pathways to prepare for first-year study.

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

At the laundry I started on the folding line and moved on to running the wash floor on early shifts. That meant checking dosing pumps, logging temperatures for infection-control records and working out why a batch had come out grey or stained. Colleagues began asking me when a machine's chemical readings looked wrong. This was mostly because I kept careful notes and looked up the supplier's guidance rather than guessing. I expect to use those habits of recording, checking and explaining clearly in a laboratory. I also trained new starters, several of whom spoke little English. This taught me to show a task step by step and check understanding rather than assume it. Studying alongside shifts has required organisation. I now work three days a week and plan my coursework around them. Two afternoons a week I collect my nephew from school and help with his reading. Away from work and study, I keep an allotment with my partner. Growing beans has made me curious about the nitrogen-fixing bacteria in their root nodules, though mostly the allotment is a way to spend time outdoors. I am ready for the demands of a full-time degree, and I want to understand how molecules make living things work.