Climate Change: Science, Society and Solutions MSc postgraduate personal statement example

Personal statement example

Every July, the allotment society I belong to argues about the hosepipe rota. Two years ago I offered to sort it out, mostly to end the arguments, and ended up coordinating a scheme to fit water butts to every shed on the site. Forty-one plots now collect rainwater from their roofs. The work was ordinary: measuring gutters, applying for a small grant from the council, persuading older members that a butt was worth the space. What stayed with me was how quickly a dry spell turned an abstract forecast into a practical question of who gets water, when and why. I want to study climate change at postgraduate level because I am interested in exactly that join between physical change and the decisions people make about it.

My undergraduate degree in Geography gave me a grounding in both halves. I took physical modules in hydrology and climatology alongside human geography, and I enjoyed the moments when they collided. For my dissertation I mapped three years of residents' complaints about surface-water flooding in one Stockport ward against the council's drainage records and rainfall data. I used QGIS to geocode the complaints and compared them with the Environment Agency's surface water flood risk maps. Most complaints clustered where the maps predicted, but a noticeable group sat on streets rated low risk, often near blocked gullies or paved-over front gardens. I could not prove a cause with the data I had, and I said so, but the pattern taught me how much local detail a national map cannot hold. I was pleased to receive a first for the dissertation, and my supervisor encouraged me to think about further study.

Since graduating I have worked as a claims handler for a home insurer. Much of the job is patient conversation with people whose kitchens have been flooded or whose roofs have lost tiles in storms. I log damage, arrange surveyors and explain policy wording in plain terms. I have no say over pricing or underwriting, but I see the human end of weather-related losses daily, and I have become interested in how risk is communicated. A customer once asked me whether her street would flood again. I could not answer, and I realised I did not know how the probabilities she needed were produced or how far to trust them.

That question has shaped my reading. Mike Hulme's Why We Disagree About Climate Change helped me see that disputes over climate are often about values and trust rather than physics alone, which matched what I heard at the allotment and on the phone. To strengthen the science side, I have been working through the Summary for Policymakers of the IPCC's Sixth Assessment Report, slowly, with the glossary open. I have also refreshed my statistics through a free online course in R, since my undergraduate quantitative work was mostly done in spreadsheets and I know a masters will demand more.

Outside work I sing tenor in a community choir, which has nothing to do with climate and a great deal to do with listening. I also still run the water-butt scheme, which now includes a shared spreadsheet tracking which plots run dry first.

I am drawn to a course that treats climate science, society and solutions as connected rather than separate. I would like to develop stronger skills in climate data analysis and to understand adaptation policy well enough to judge what works locally. In the longer term I hope to work in flood resilience, perhaps for a local authority or a water company, where good evidence and clear explanation both matter. I bring a solid geographical foundation, practical experience of talking with people affected by extreme weather, and the habit of turning a small problem into something organised.