Why should the department pick you over someone else with the similar averages? How can you let the reader feel that you indeed are very passionate, more passionate than the next student?

This is what the personal statement is for. Since you have already ranked the disciplines, the purpose of the personal statement is for the reader to assess for themselves if you are indeed interested in the choice that you picked.

The personal statement should very clearly demonstrate your strong interest and well thought-out decision to go into your first pick.

This is the main argument to grapple with in this personal statement, and here are some ways you can answer this: using experience, a story, and discussing future endeavors in that field.

Showing experience

What concrete evidence can you use to support that interest? Have you followed through with your interest? This is a good time to bring up any design team/work/personal experience. Like writing a persuasive essay or arguing for a court case, solid evidence is the most convincing support. Similarly, your time investment and dedication to a particular interest related to the specialization is proof enough.

But if you’re scratching your head right now as you haven’t really pursued any technical work in the field as of yet, don’t worry. Personally, I didn’t join a design team or have any significant work or personal experience in my first year. But I did tell an interesting story about when I was inspired to go into computer engineering.

Telling a story

I think this is a very good element to have in a personal statement. There are ~1000 first year engineering students every single year, so the reader has probably read a whole bunch of these. Imagine having to score these essays, but they’re all the same: CPEN (I enjoyed APSC 160), MECH (I like working hands-on), IGEN (I want to try everything), etc. If you can write a story that makes your essay more exciting and interesting to read, then it will probably stand out among those that say very similar and basic points.

This could be a story about meeting some professional people in the discipline and being inspired, a situation that made you realize the specialization is what you want to pursue, or an experience you had that reinforced your passion for the specialization. As an example for CPEN, I wrote about attending my first hackathon, and watching the demonstration of all the other students’ projects. Even though I did not make a successful project, seeing the possibilities of computing made me want to go further in the field.

Future plans

What are your future plans if you do get into that discipline? Are you excited about learning about a particular topic in that field, about a course that you will take, or more broadly, a career path/direction that you will pursue? I always include this in all my applications because it shows the reader that you are making a well thought out and researched decision rather than haphazardly choosing a specialization, and reinforces the main argument -- your interest in the field.

Should I discuss courses I enjoyed in first year?

If you do not have a lot to write about then yes, but otherwise I would stick with experience/story over this. The reason being all students can write about their experiences in first year classes, and how much they enjoyed the autonomous claw project, so it becomes less convincing for the reader. But all in all, it does come down to how you describe it.

I really enjoyed making the autonomous claw in APSC 101 this year. Especially dealing with the mechanical pieces and construction, which I did most of the work. This project made me realize that I want to go into mechanical engineering.

This description is pretty plain and bland, like a stale piece of bread. Even an elementary student could’ve written this.

Constructing the autonomous claw in APSC 101 this year was such a thrill, yet exasperating at times. I was so excited about the project, that I started sketching and constructing possible designs even before the design studio class. Despite how well thought out and planned our idea was, there were so many unexpected things that we didn’t envision, like how the claw wasn’t able to close properly due to its shape, or that the swinging motion was too clunky and slow to scoop up more than 3 pastas at a time. Yet this unexpectedness is exactly why I find mechanical engineering enthralling. Although we can try to predict motion with math and physics, with the complexity of so many moving parts and pieces in modern machines, there’s so much to test, and so many things to design. After many tweeks and fixing our claw, perhaps taking up more time than even building the claw itself, we managed to make the claw work smoothly. The unpredictability of the design, and then solving these issues using prototypes and testing is so exciting to me, and exactly what I want to do as a future career.

This is much better than the first example because it provides valuable details that make the project worth reading about. It captures exactly why the writer is interested in mechanical engineering, as well as some challenges that they struggled with in the claw project. The writer says the claw-making process was “exasperating at times” in the introductory sentence to pique the audience’s interest, instead of saying something plain like they “really enjoyed making the autonomous claw” as the first example.

Where can I find some examples?

Although there are few examples of personal statements for UBC 2nd year placements, you can find similar university/college admission essays that address the same thing: interest in a particular field. Try to use the samples as idea inpsiration, and look at how they’re conveying their interest rather than what they’re saying.

I hope this post was helpful in inspiring some ideas and structure. The most important thing of course is to showcase your own work, aspirations and stories. Even if you don’t have the most experience, conveying why you personally enjoy the specialization will make for a great personal statement.