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Your personal statement is not just an application document — it is a menu from which interviewers will order. Every book, article, experience, experiment, lecture, podcast, and documentary you mention is fair game for questioning. If you wrote it, you should be able to discuss it in depth.
This is one of the most predictable parts of any university interview, which means it is also one of the easiest to prepare for. And yet, year after year, students are caught out by straightforward questions about things they themselves chose to include in their own personal statement.
Never mention anything in your personal statement that you cannot discuss in detail.
This sounds obvious, but the temptation to name-drop is real. Students include books they have only half-read, theories they have only vaguely understood, and experiences they have only superficially reflected on — all because they think it will "look good."
It will not look good when the interviewer asks you about it and you have nothing to say.
Being able to discuss something in detail does not mean memorising every page. It means:
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