Before you submit your UCAS application, your personal statement needs a thorough review. Spelling mistakes, weak structure, or poor sentence flow can undermine an otherwise strong application. This guide explains what to check, which tools help, and what expert feedback looks like.
What Should a Personal Statement Checker Look For?
A good personal statement review goes beyond spell-checking. There are four layers of quality to assess:
- Technical accuracy — spelling, grammar, punctuation
- Structure and flow — logical progression of ideas, clear sections
- Content quality — subject depth, specificity, evidence of independent thinking
- Admissions-readiness — does it answer what universities are actually looking for?
Most free tools only cover the first layer. The fourth layer — admissions-readiness — is the one that determines whether you get an offer.
Your Self-Review Checklist
Before using any external tool, go through this checklist yourself.
Content checks
- Does the opening grab attention without using a cliché or quotation?
- Is the academic/subject motivation section at least 40% of the total statement?
- Have you named at least one book, paper, lecture, or course you engaged with independently?
- Does each experience mentioned connect explicitly back to the course?
- Have you reflected on what you learned — not just what you did?
- Is there a clear closing paragraph that looks forward (not backward)?
Structure checks
- Would an admissions tutor know your subject from the first two sentences?
- Does every paragraph serve a different purpose (interest, experience, skills)?
- Is the statement free from repetition between sections?
- Does it flow naturally when read aloud?
Technical checks
- Are all spellings correct, including subject-specific terminology?
- Is punctuation used correctly, particularly with commas and semicolons?
- Have you avoided passive voice except where essential?
- Is the statement within the 4,000 character (approx. 650 word) limit?
- Does it stay within 47 lines?
Admissions checks
- Have you avoided mentioning specific universities (all five see the same statement)?
- Is the statement written in the first person throughout?
- Have you avoided listing A-level grades or predicted grades (these appear elsewhere)?
- Have you avoided reproducing long quotations from other sources?
Free Tools for Checking Your Personal Statement
Spell and grammar checkers
Grammarly and Hemingway Editor are the most widely used. Grammarly catches grammar and spelling errors; Hemingway highlights passive voice, adverbs, and overly complex sentences.
Limitation: neither tool understands the context of a UCAS personal statement. A sentence can be grammatically perfect and still be weak.
Character and line counter
UCAS counts characters (including spaces), not words. Use charactercounter.com to check your count accurately. Always verify in the UCAS system itself before submission.
Similarity detection
UCAS uses its own similarity detection tool to flag statements that closely match previous applications. If you have used sample statements as a starting point, run a check through a plagiarism tool (Turnitin, or a free equivalent) to confirm your statement is original. Do not submit any sentence you have copied — even from your own earlier draft reused across multiple applications.
What Free Tools Cannot Tell You
This is the critical gap. A spell checker cannot tell you whether:
- Your subject motivation sounds genuine or generic
- Your opening paragraph would stand out from the other 50 statements an admissions tutor read that morning
- Your experience section is too listy and not reflective enough
- Your statement is strong enough for a competitive course at a competitive university
- Specific sentences are undermining an otherwise good application
These are judgment calls that require understanding what admissions tutors are looking for — and that understanding comes from experience with actual applications.
Getting a Human (or Expert) Review
Ask a teacher or tutor
Your school or college UCAS coordinator has likely read hundreds of personal statements. Their feedback on content and structure is invaluable. However, they may not specialise in your subject area or know the specific expectations of competitive courses.
Ask someone in your chosen field
If you have a mentor, family member, or contact who works in the profession you want to enter, ask them to read your statement. They can tell you whether your subject knowledge rings true.
Use a specialist reviewing service
For competitive applications — particularly Medicine, Law, Oxbridge, or Dentistry — a specialist reviewer can provide feedback calibrated against actual admissions standards.
What an Admissions-Quality Review Looks Like
When Statementory reviews your personal statement, it works across four dimensions:
Scoring — Your statement receives a score out of 100, benchmarked against admissions criteria. The score breaks down by section so you know exactly where you are strong and where you are losing marks.
Annotation — Every sentence is reviewed inline. Weak phrases are flagged; strong moments are highlighted. You see the reasoning behind each comment, not just a label.
Rewrite examples — For the weakest sections, Statementory provides before/after examples showing how the sentence could be improved.
10-step action plan — The review closes with a prioritised list of changes, ordered by impact. You know exactly what to fix first.
The full review takes under 10 minutes.
When to Start Checking
Do not wait until the final draft to check your statement. Build review into the writing process:
- After your first draft — check structure and content. Is the basic argument there?
- After your second draft — check flow and specificity. Is every claim backed by evidence?
- After your final draft — check technical accuracy and character count.
- Before submission — get an expert review.
Most applicants submit without getting a thorough review. That gap is where offers are lost.
Check Your Statement Now
Statementory gives you a complete admissions-quality review of your UCAS personal statement — score, annotations, rewrites, and action plan — in under 10 minutes.