As mentioned in a previous post I need to articulate the reasons for my desire to study Mathematics at Lancaster university. I’ve decided that as I am going to have to write a personal statement for my UCAS application anyway, I am as well to just write a draft of sorts here…

As it’s the easier part, I’m starting with the choice of location and university, to be followed in a different post by the course choice and general motivation for starting a degree again.

So, Lancaster, city of my birth… I have family and there are many friends of the family around there. That’s pretty low down on the list really, I don’t really know many of them or much about them, I only lived there until I was two and a bit years old.

It is close to bits of the country that mean something to me though; where I went to school, the Lake District, the Howgill Fells and other bits of the best fell walking country in the world, for example. It is also pretty close to Blackburn, home to Blackburn Rovers, the football team I support. So fell walking society and occasional trips to Ewood Park it is.

More seriously though, Lancaster university has an excellent reputation for teaching and it has always been on my radar when it comes to choosing a university for that reason. More recently though, having now read their prospectus properly, or perhaps I just now appreciating how good it is, I really like the sound of their course structure… It goes a little something like this:

The plan with this is to apply for maths and be able to add other things; Music, Philosophy, Sociology, Economics, Accounting or an intensive language course all appeal. As you can see from the little chart thing, at the end of the first year I could then go on to do a combination degree (timetables permitting I think) or single honours in any of the subjects I’ve studied.

This allows me a great deal of flexibility, which is a breath of fresh air. Even having decided to apply to study maths, I’m still not 100% sure about it so the value of this is huge and very difficult for me to quantify. I haven’t seen this kind of freedom around degrees anywhere except the Open University and I’m about to start a course there.

The incredibly flexible degree structure at Lancaster is what sets it apart for me and is the reason that I have picked it before anywhere else with a similar reputation for research and teaching.

I think that just about rounds it up for location. Obviously this is far too long for a personal statement but the main idea was to get my ideas written down… Thankfully some ideas about motivation to study, both in general and specifically maths, have come into my head as I’ve been writing so I shall end here and jot them down.