Maths Personal Statement Example for Cambridge and Oxford

Mathematicians often take A levels that don't involve essay writing. Writing 4000 characters on why an applicant would like to study maths can therefore present a real challenge. Note that the personal statement below does not merely list books. The books and lectures that are mentioned are in the context of a wider mathematical journey of discovery. The statement shows that the candidate has a real interest in studying mathematics beyond A level and there is ample evidence to back this up. The candidate applied to Gonville and Caius College Cambridge and received an offer to study Mathematics.

Oxbridge Example Mathematics Personal Statement

I want to study mathematics at university because it is such a broad and rigorous subject which I find particularly stimulating. I have been engaged with the subject since early in my primary school, who facilitated this by allowing me to go up a year group or two for maths from the age of seven. I also relish the different focus of extra mathematical challenges which extend the A Level curriculum by looking at other areas such as modular arithmetic, combinatorics and geometry.

I have enjoyed the UKMT mathematical challenges and Olympiads at secondary school because I feel that I thrive when given three hours to think about a few problems. After four years of these, the UKMT invited me to their 2015 National Mathematics Summer School, where I was first introduced to a particularly engaging area of mathematics: set theory. Professor Andras Zsak lecturing there spoke about infinite sets and after hearing a similar talk at a day of mathematics lectures at the University of Essex which added that there were sets larger than the reals in passing, I went to ask the lecturer in person about it. He set me off researching power sets and the aleph numbers and I chose the book Reaching for Infinity (S Giblisco). Approaching the topic from distinctly different standpoints was beneficial, but in terms of allowing myself to become more open minded in respect of the infinite, examples using sets to show that aleph zero subtract aleph zero could be any real number or indeed infinite itself most encapsulated the character of infinity for me. I then presented what I learnt to the school Physics and Maths Society.

Also following the Summer School, I signed up to the UKMT mentoring scheme, where I have email contact with a teacher in Cheshire experienced in Olympiad-style problems to discuss the eight set each month. Subsequently, I qualified for BMO1 in 2015 and achieved distinction in 2016. I have also tasted different types of problems at the inaugural Game of Dragons mathematical challenge at Girton College, with the school team victorious in our category. In addition, I have worked in a team in inter-school quizzes.

I enjoy physics too and would look for a course with breadth as far as quantum mechanics. My enthusiasm for this was particularly enhanced when my team won the Beamline 2016 competition and the chance to go to CERN and perform our experiment on the effect special relativity on pion decay. Similarly, I appreciate the real-world applications of statistics, and enjoyed analysing the results of a year group survey on media consumption.

Calculus has not been my favourite Lower Sixth topic since it is taught as a rather mechanical process. Thus I decided to research this more in T W Körner’s Calculus for the Ambitious, a challenging but eye-opening read. Approaching the topic from a very different direction to curriculum calculus, this text introduced me to the rigour of university mathematics and, despite struggling with parts, by persevering with the exercises I still got much from it. Anticipating difficulty, I first read K Houston’s How to Think Like a Mathematician, and found this useful because it introduced new styles of proof, as well as how to dissect a proof. Applying this certainly made Körner’s book more accessible and so valuable to me.

I like being part of a community, and have contributed both by representing my school as a senior prefect and by helping out at the local library in recent summers. Thus I believe that I would thrive in and contribute to the community atmosphere at university. My sporting interests are focused on football and darts. I think that football is great because people of all abilities can take part together and enjoy it, whilst I love darts partly because of the extreme skill and concentration involved, but primarily because of the nuances of the scoring system, which seems arithmetically perfect for the format. Even in such abstract and unexpected ways as this, I think that mathematics is absorbing.

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