Science and technology studies personal statement example

Why do you want to study this course or subject?

In Biology I learned how a clinical trial is designed; in Sociology I learned how people decide whom to believe. The two subjects rarely spoke to each other in my timetable, but they kept overlapping in my head. When our Biology class discussed why some parents delay vaccinations, the textbook answer was about misinformation, while my Sociology reading suggested that trust is built through institutions, relationships and past experience rather than through better leaflets. I wanted a subject that treats that gap as the actual object of study, and science and technology studies seemed to be it. What draws me is the idea that scientific knowledge is produced by people working in particular places under particular pressures, and that this does not make it less reliable but does make it worth examining. I read Harry Collins and Trevor Pinch's The Golem, and the case studies stayed with me because they show disagreement as a normal part of research rather than a failure of it. I also read parts of Ben Goldacre's Bad Science, which is more combative, and comparing the two taught me something about how different writers position themselves in relation to expertise. I am interested in questions such as how a measurement becomes a standard, why some technologies feel inevitable once they exist, and who is consulted when a new system is introduced. I expect the degree to be demanding in an unusual way, because it asks for technical literacy and social theory at the same time, and for careful writing about both. That mixture is exactly what I have been trying to assemble informally for two years, and I would like to do it properly, with supervision and with people who disagree with me.

How have your qualifications and studies helped you to prepare?

History has been the strongest preparation, though not obviously so. Our coursework on the 1918 influenza pandemic in Britain required me to weigh local newspaper reports, Medical Officer of Health returns and later historians' interpretations, and to explain why the same outbreak produced different accounts depending on who was recording it. That habit of asking who made a source, for what audience, and what was left out is the one I use most when reading about science. Biology gave me the technical grounding: enzyme kinetics, immunology and population genetics, plus practical work where my results did not match the expected curve and I had to write honestly about error rather than tidy it away. Sociology introduced me to Weber, Durkheim and more recent work on risk, and taught me to use theory as a tool rather than a decoration. For my Extended Project I investigated how the public interprets probabilistic weather forecasts. I read Met Office public guidance on percentage rainfall chances, surveyed forty-three students and staff at college about what a thirty per cent chance of rain meant to them, and found that answers varied widely, with several people reading it as a proportion of the area rather than a likelihood. My sample was small and self-selecting, which I discussed in the evaluation, but the project taught me how much work goes into translating a model output into a sentence anyone can act on. Writing it also forced me to learn basic descriptive statistics properly and to think about how survey questions shape the answers they collect. I am now more careful about the difference between what people believe and what they say when asked.

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

I have worked Saturdays and Sundays at a large supermarket for nearly two years, mostly on the customer service desk handling returns, refunds and complaints. It is ordinary work, but it has given me a practical education in how systems and people meet. When the store moved to handheld scanners for stock checks, some colleagues adapted within a shift and others quietly kept a paper list as a backup, and the paper list was often what saved us when the handhelds lost signal near the freezers. Watching that taught me more about technology in use than any article I had read: official procedure and actual practice are related but not the same thing. I also deal regularly with customers who distrust a machine's decision, whether a self-checkout weight error or an out-of-date label, and I have learned to explain a process clearly without being dismissive. At college I help run the lunchtime debating club. Last term I proposed and argued the motion that facial recognition should not be used in shopping centres, which meant researching both the technical limits of the systems and the arguments about consent, and then having to answer opponents who knew the subject well. Preparing that case improved my ability to summarise a technical claim fairly before criticising it. Outside college, my cousin and I have taken over my grandmother's allotment plot since her knees stopped cooperating. We keep a notebook of sowing dates, what failed and what the soil did after rain, and the older plot-holders offer advice that is detailed, confident and sometimes contradictory. Choosing between competing expert accounts with no way to run a controlled trial is a familiar problem by now, and I find it genuinely interesting rather than frustrating. I am used to balancing paid work, coursework and commitments, and I plan my week around deadlines rather than hoping for spare time.

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