Biomedical Sciences BSc (Hons) personal statement example

Why do you want to study this course or subject?

During an A level Biology practical, I squashed a garlic root tip, stained it and counted cells at each stage of mitosis. My mitotic index came out far lower than my partner's, and working out why took longer than the practical itself: I had cut too far back from the tip, where cells have largely stopped dividing. What stayed with me was how much a result depends on knowing where to look and how the sample was prepared. That is a large part of why biomedical science appeals to me. Diagnosis and research both depend on material being collected, processed and interpreted correctly, and I want to understand the underlying biology well enough to do that work properly. Reading Siddhartha Mukherjee's The Gene, I was struck by how long the connection between inheritance and disease took to establish, and how much of it came from patient observation before molecular tools existed. I am particularly drawn to haematology and immunology, because a single blood sample can say so much about the whole body, and I want a degree that lets me study physiology, pharmacology and infection before deciding where to focus.

How have your qualifications and studies helped you to prepare?

Biology has given me the clearest foundation, especially the topics on the immune response and gas exchange, but Chemistry has been just as useful. Learning how buffers resist changes in pH made the regulation of blood pH far easier to understand, and organic chemistry has helped me see why the shape of a drug molecule matters. Psychology might seem a less obvious choice, yet its research methods content taught me to think about sample size, confounding variables and when a statistical test is appropriate. For my Extended Project I investigated whether manuka honey inhibits bacterial growth more than ordinary supermarket honey, using a non-pathogenic strain supplied for school use. My first method, soaking paper discs in honey, produced inconsistent zones because the honey was too thick to diffuse evenly. With my teacher's guidance I switched to cutting wells into the agar and filling them with measured volumes, which gave more repeatable results. I was careful in my write-up to say only what my small number of plates could support, and the project taught me how much time good aseptic technique and planning actually take. A more repeatable result did not automatically explain the mechanism. Differences in diffusion still mattered to how I interpreted the plates, and I want to learn how experimental design can separate those effects.

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

Through my school's careers scheme I spent three days observing in the pathology department of my local hospital. I followed samples from reception, where staff check that labels and request forms match before anything is processed, to the automated analysers and then to a biomedical scientist reviewing blood films under a microscope when results were flagged. She showed me how she looked for abnormal cell shapes, and I realised that my root tip practical had been a small version of the same skill. My role was simply to watch and ask questions, but it showed me how much of the work is careful checking rather than dramatic discovery. For two years I have worked Saturdays at a cinema, where I now help train new starters on the till and cleaning rota, which has made me calm and organised when it gets busy. I am also a young leader with a Cub pack, and last term I planned an evening for their first aid badge, working out how to explain the recovery position to eight-year-olds. I swim twice a week, which keeps me disciplined about managing my time around revision.