Could anyone who got accepted to do the BCL at Oxford please kindly share a bit of your infinite wisdom with me:

1) With regard to the personal statement: the application form says that 'one A4 page will normally suffice' (or something along those lines anyway). Therefore, I have only included the really important bits about me however there are a lot of other things I wanted to include. Do you think it would affect my application if I went slightly over this guideline?

2) What sorts of things did you include in your personal statements? I am not trying to copy or anything I just want to see what sort of standard is expected of me as far as the personal statement goes.

I will greatly appreciate any help on this and any additional aspects of application process that you think I should know about.

I'm going to be doing the BCL in 2006-2007, so I might be able to offer you some guidance. My personal statement was slightly longer than one page of A4 and this evidently didn't affect my chances of getting in; I think they are just trying to ensure that no-one feels compelled (or is tempted) to compose a small novel about their life, Oxford and the universe in support of their application. As for the contents of the personal statement, I suppose they are not looking for anything extraordinary but (for example) just a straightforward exposition of your interests/achievements/plans/... and how these relate to what you hope to gain from doing the BCL - I don't think Oxford is any different in this respect from other universities. Feel free to PM me if you have more specific queries.