Biomedical Engineering (in partnership with Tianjin University) [BEng/MEng] personal statement example

Why do you want to study this course or subject?

In a Year 12 Biology practical we were given chicken wings to examine joint structure. When I pulled an exposed tendon, the wingtip folded inwards, and I kept doing it long after finishing my diagram. It was the first time I had seen a muscle's job reduced to a cable under tension, something I could describe with the free-body diagrams from Physics. That overlap draws me to biomedical engineering. The body is a biological system, but many questions about repairing or supporting it concern force, materials, signals and design. I want a course where anatomy and physiology sit alongside mechanics and electronics, because I enjoy the moment when one subject explains a problem the other has raised. Prosthetic hands, hearing aids and joint replacements interest me less as finished products than as sets of compromises: weight against strength, cost against precision, what an engineer can measure against what a patient feels. I want to learn how those compromises are made properly. I would also value working with students and staff from a different engineering culture, since medical technology is developed and used internationally.

How have your qualifications and studies helped you to prepare?

Mechanics in A level Maths has been more useful than I expected. Resolving forces on a slope uses the same skill I later applied to estimate tension in a finger tendon. In Physics, the practical measuring the Young modulus of copper wire made me wonder why bone and cartilage behave so differently under load. To understand stiffness and strength as separate ideas, I read the early chapters of J. E. Gordon's Structures, or Why Things Don't Fall Down. Biology gave me the vocabulary of tissues and nerve impulses, and the action potential linked neatly to circuits in Physics. My Extended Project asks how well a simple tendon-driven mechanism can reproduce the curl of a human finger. I began with a cardboard model threaded with fishing line, then used the school's 3D printer to make PLA segments with pin joints. I measured how far each joint bent for a given pull and compared this with photographs of my own finger against a protractor grid. The printed finger curled convincingly, but the line pulled away from the joints under load. Researching this taught me how pulleys in real tendon sheaths keep force close to the bone. Keeping a log and writing up my results taught me to report uncertainty honestly and to separate what my model showed from what I had assumed. The mechanism was a model of movement, not evidence that it could safely replace a human joint.

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

Since Year 11 I have worked Sunday shifts at a local cinema. I sell tickets, clean screens between showings and now train new starters on the till. Busy afternoons have taught me to stay calm and polite as queues build. Training others has made me explain routines clearly instead of simply doing them quickly myself. I noticed that wheelchair users waited while staff fetched a portable ramp from a storeroom, so I suggested keeping it beside the accessible screen, and the manager agreed. I play bass in a band with three friends at school events and a monthly café open-mic night. Fixing our own cables and amplifiers has made me comfortable with a soldering iron and multimeter, and arranging songs needs the same give and take as lab group work. On Thursday lunchtimes I help run the Year 8 science club. I planned a session on levers using rulers and coins, which showed me how much I enjoy making a technical idea clear to younger students. I would bring that patience and practical confidence to a demanding engineering degree.