Ethnic studies personal statement example

Why do you want to study this course or subject?

My interest in Ethnic Studies started with a gap in what I was being taught. In History we covered post-war Britain in some detail, but the people I grew up around barely appeared in it, except as a paragraph about immigration and a photograph of a ship. In Sociology, by contrast, I met the idea that ethnicity is something made and remade rather than simply inherited, and that categories used in censuses and school records carry a history of their own. Putting those two subjects next to each other made me want to study a discipline that treats race and ethnicity as central questions rather than optional extras.

What draws me particularly is the comparative and interdisciplinary range of the field. I have been reading around the edges of it: Stuart Hall's essays on cultural identity, which helped me see identity as a position taken up rather than a fixed inheritance, and parts of Paul Gilroy's writing on the Black Atlantic, which pushed me to think beyond national borders when tracing culture. I also read Sathnam Sanghera's Empireland, which is more popular in style but useful in showing how imperial history is embedded in ordinary places, including the town where I live. These readings made me want more rigour than I can reach on my own, especially in understanding how scholars use archives, interviews and statistics differently, and what each method can and cannot show.

I am not expecting the degree to confirm what I already think. I would like to be tested on questions I find difficult, including how far categories like ethnicity can travel between countries, and how researchers work responsibly with communities rather than about them. That question of responsibility is the one I keep returning to, and it is why I want to study this subject seriously at degree level rather than treat it as a personal interest.

How have your qualifications and studies helped you to prepare?

My A levels have given me complementary tools. History has trained me to handle sources sceptically; for coursework I examined competing interpretations of Indian independence and had to weigh British official records against Indian nationalist accounts, which taught me to ask who produced a document and for whom. Sociology introduced me to research methods, and I now plan a small study for my own interest with attention to sampling and ethics rather than simply gathering opinions. English Literature has improved my close reading and my willingness to sit with ambiguity in a text instead of resolving it too quickly. Writing about narrative voice in fiction has also made me more careful when I quote someone's words in another context.

Alongside lessons, I completed the Extended Project Qualification on how a local high street changed between the 1970s and today. I used census summaries, old trade directories in the library's local studies section and newspaper archives available online. The most valuable part was discovering that my sources disagreed: directories recorded shop names and ownership changes, but told me nothing about why families moved on, while newspaper coverage tended to appear only when something went wrong. I wrote about that limitation openly in the project rather than smoothing it over, and my tutor's feedback on being explicit about evidence has changed how I write essays.

I have also taught myself basic Punjabi reading with my grandmother's help, working through children's books slowly. I am nowhere near fluent, but it has made me appreciate how much is lost when families and researchers rely on translation, and it has made me keen to take language study further during a degree.

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

The project I care most about grew out of the EPQ. Wanting voices as well as records, I began recording short oral history interviews with people who had worked on the high street, starting with a former tailor who lives two doors from us. I now have six recordings of between twenty and forty minutes. I wrote my own consent form after reading guidance from an oral history association website, asked permission before sharing anything, and let two participants remove sections they were uncomfortable with. I made mistakes early on, mainly talking too much, and learned to leave silences alone. My concrete achievement is modest: six transcribed interviews, indexed by theme, which the community library has agreed to hold as a folder for anyone researching the area.

I did not do this alone. A friend from college who is studying Media helped with one manageable piece of work: together we edited a ten-minute audio piece from three of the interviews for the library's local heritage display. She handled the sound editing, I chose and sequenced the extracts, and we argued productively about how much context a listener needs before hearing someone speak. Sharing the task taught me how much interpretation happens in editing.

For two years I have helped at a Saturday reading group for younger children at the same library, mostly listening to readers and restocking shelves. It is unglamorous and it has taught me patience and the value of showing up consistently. I also work Sunday shifts in a bakery, where I have learned to keep a clear head during a rush and to be straightforward with customers.

Outside study I swim twice a week, which keeps me steady during exam terms, and I have started learning to make my mother's samosa pastry properly, which is harder than it looks. These commitments have taught me to plan my week realistically, a habit I expect to need when balancing reading, seminars and independent research at university.

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