Acoustics and Music Technology BSc (Hons) personal statement example

Why do you want to study this course or subject?

In our school drama studio, people in the back row kept missing lines during the Year 9 play, even though the room is small. When my physics teacher suggested I investigate it for a project, I expected the answer to be volume. It turned out to be time: bare blockwork walls and a hard floor kept each word ringing long enough to blur into the next. That shift, from thinking about loudness to thinking about how sound behaves in a space, is what draws me to acoustics alongside music technology. I have played piano since primary school and recorded myself at home on a cheap audio interface, so I knew microphones and software before I knew much wave physics. Now I want to understand both sides properly: the mathematics of how a room, an instrument or a loudspeaker shapes sound, and the tools used to capture and process it. Reading Trevor Cox's Sonic Wonderland showed me that acoustics reaches well beyond concert halls, into echoes in tunnels and the design of very quiet spaces, and made me curious about how measurement and careful listening inform each other. A degree combining physics, signal processing and music is the clearest route to work I would find absorbing for years.

How have your qualifications and studies helped you to prepare?

I am studying A levels in Physics, Mathematics and Music. Physics has covered superposition, standing waves on strings and in pipes, and the inverse square law, which I tested with a phone sound meter app and found held only roughly indoors because of reflections. Mathematics has helped in less obvious ways: logarithms finally made sense when I used them to convert between intensity and decibels, and trigonometric identities explained why two close notes produce beats. For the drama studio project I recorded balloon pops at several positions, read the decay from the waveform in Audacity and estimated the reverberation time. I then calculated a prediction using Sabine's formula, which relates reverberation time to room volume and total absorption, with published absorption coefficients for each surface. My measured values were longer than predicted, which I traced partly to guessing the coefficient for painted blockwork. The drama department hung old stage curtains along the back wall, a second set of measurements showed a shorter decay, and the teacher felt the next production was clearer from the back. In Music, composition coursework taught me to write for real players and to hear when a texture is too thick, a skill I think matters as much as any measurement.

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

For two years I have worked weekend shifts at a cinema, mostly on the kiosk and checking tickets. It has made me calm with long queues and complaints, and I now show new starters how to use the till. Customers occasionally report that a screen sounds wrong, and I pass the details to the duty manager; seeing a technician check the speaker settings showed me how routine checks keep a system working. Away from work I belong to a local table tennis club, where on Tuesday evenings I help run the junior session, setting up tables and leading simple drills for children aged eight to twelve. Explaining spin to a nine-year-old has improved how clearly I explain anything. Last season I won the club's most improved player award in the adult league, largely because I finally practised my backhand properly. At home I built a pair of bookshelf speakers from a flat-pack kit, which meant soldering a crossover and a lot of patience with wood glue; comparing them with the port open and blocked was my first experience of hearing a design choice. I also accompany the school choir on piano. I would bring steady habits, practical confidence and real enjoyment of listening carefully.