The UCAS personal statement changed for 2026 entry. Instead of one 4,000-character essay, applicants answer three questions, each with a minimum of 350 characters and 4,000 characters between them. If your child has done a real project outside school, the third question is where it belongs. This guide explains the three questions, shows how to write a project into the third, and points out the mistakes admissions staff see most.
The first two are about the subject and the classroom. The third is about everything else, and UCAS’s guidance for it lists work experience, employment or volunteering, personal life experiences, hobbies, extracurricular and outreach activities, and achievements outside school. Note the second half of the question: “why are these experiences useful”. UCAS is not asking for a list. It is asking the student to explain what each experience gave them that is relevant to the course.
Most third answers read like a CV: Duke of Edinburgh, a sports team, a part-time job, a week of work experience. Each is real, but each gets a sentence, and none of the sentences explains usefulness. Bristol’s guidance for 2026 puts the fix in four words: “Focus on the impact of the experience”. Bath says the same: “Explain what you learned, not just what you did”.
A project solves this problem because it gives the student one experience deep enough to explain. One project, told properly, can fill the whole third answer and say more about the student than six activities told in passing.
Give the third answer four moves, in this order.
The problem. One or two sentences on what the student noticed and why it mattered to them. “Younger students at my school had nowhere to ask for homework help after 4 pm.”
What they made and how they tested it. Two or three sentences on the thing itself and the real people involved. “I ran a weekly session for six Year 7 students for eight weeks, with a sign-up form and a feedback slip after each session.”
What happened and what changed. Two or three sentences of evidence and response. “Attendance held at five or six. Feedback showed they wanted worked examples, not explanations, so from week four I prepared three each session. Confidence ratings rose from an average of 2.1 to 3.8 out of 5.”
Why it is useful for the course. Two sentences that close the loop with question 1. “Planning the sessions, adjusting them to evidence and presenting the results to the head of year is the closest I have come to the applied work I want to do in education studies.”
That is roughly 900 characters, which leaves room for one more experience or for a fuller account of the project.
The most selective UK universities are direct about this. Oxford suggests focusing “around 80% of your personal statement on your academic interests, abilities and achievements” and says extra-curricular activities help “only in so far as they demonstrate the selection criteria for your course”. UCL asks for most of the statement to be about the subject. So the project the student writes about should be one that grows from the course they are applying for, and the “why it is useful” move should make that link in plain words.
Leave out the size of the project; admissions readers do not care whether it made £40 or £400. Leave out anything the student did not do themselves. Leave out claims about the future (“this will make me a great engineer”); the evidence should make the claim. And leave out the word “passionate”, which appears in most statements and says nothing.
Read the third answer aloud and ask two questions. Could anyone else have written this? If a sentence could appear in a hundred other statements, cut it. Does every experience end with why it was useful? If not, either add the reason or drop the experience.
Here is a complete third answer, about 1,600 characters, written by a student applying for business management. It is offered as a shape to copy, not a text.
“In Year 12 I noticed that our school’s lost-property cupboard was full and nobody used it, so I set up a system: a labelled shelf by year group, a Google Form to report a lost item, and a notice in Monday assembly. I ran it for six weeks. Before, the school returned roughly one item in ten; in the six weeks, 41 of 67 reported items went back to their owners. The form told me that most losses were in PE, so from week four I moved the shelf to the sports block, and the return rate rose again. I presented the results to the deputy head, who agreed to keep the system running with a Year 10 volunteer I trained. The project taught me that a process only works if it sits where the problem is, and that a small amount of data changes a decision faster than an opinion. That is the part of operations management I want to study: how organisations design the systems that make everyday things work. Alongside this, I have worked Saturdays at a family friend’s café for a year, where I have seen the same lesson from the other side: the till and the rota are the systems, and when they fail, everything else does.”
Notice that the numbers do the persuading, the change is explained, the presentation to a decision-maker is included, and the last sentence ties the whole answer to the course.
Write about what has happened so far, with the evidence to date, and say what the next checkpoint is. “By the time of interview I will have the results of the second trial” is a legitimate sentence, and it gives an interviewer a question to ask. Do not describe results that have not yet occurred.
Question 2 is about qualifications and studies. A project done through school, such as an EPQ, can go there. A project done independently belongs in question 3.
Yes, briefly, if it shows something the course values, such as sustained effort or working with people. But it should not be the centre of the answer. The centre should be an experience that connects.
Two or three, told with reasons, beat six told as a list. One deep project plus one or two shorter experiences is a sound shape.
At least 350 characters each, and 4,000 characters across the three. There is no fixed split; a common shape is roughly 1,500 for question 1, 1,000 for question 2 and 1,500 for question 3, adjusted to where the strongest material is.
Avoid it. Question 2 is for qualifications and study, including school projects such as an EPQ; question 3 is for what was done outside education. If a project spans both, put the substance in one and refer to it in a sentence in the other.
Not sure what to build? The CURIOO Project Finder asks a student ten questions and suggests three projects sized for twelve weeks: one practical, one ambitious, one for a cause they care about.
Parents: the Signature Project guide is a five-page PDF you can forward, at curioo.com/signature.
Sources. Quoted from UCAS and each university’s current admissions pages. CURIOO is not affiliated with or endorsed by any university named. Requirements change each year; check the university’s own pages before applying.
