midwifediaries.com

With Personal Statement School you’ll be writing your statement to show the best of yourself and you won’t be alone – I’ll support you with every step, from identifying your transferable skills to knowing what areas of midwifery to research and write about.

Nearly 1000 aspiring midwives have gone through this course now and not one of them has asked for a refund because they thought it wasn’t helpful.

Instead, there are rave reviews (scroll down) and this process has helped open the door to lots of university offers!

In case you're wondering about anything, here are some questions you may have about Personal Statement School to determine if it's for you.

 

Isn’t this cheating?

In a word, no. In Personal Statement School you’ll be writing your own statement.

I coach you on how to complete a successful application. We cover midwifery knowledge, professionalism and the core philosophy of midwifery, including advocacy.

I'll show you how you’ll draw on your own life to show that you understand these essential concepts.

You’ll likely feel like you’ve been drinking from a fire hose at some point during Personal Statement School. It’s hard work, but it’s worth it!

I also want you to have the techniques you need to take forward to apply for jobs when you’re qualifying.

If you feel like getting help somehow makes you a lesser applicant, fair enough.

But I’ve worked with enough excellent midwives who didn’t get a spot first time to believe that this isn’t the case.

I know many now qualified midwives who used Personal Statement School and they're amazing professionals!

My aim is to shorten the learning curve for you so you don’t have to do multiple years and cycles.

I suspect we lose excellent midwives just because their application technique isn’t quite there the first year and then they do not continue to pursue this career.

My goal is to assist as many aspiring midwives as possible, by removing the obstacle of not knowing how to complete a successful Personal Statement.

 

People are really passionate about midwifery - is your support ethical, and are you not just profiting from this excitement?

That's a really good question. With so much absolute rubbish being aimed at parents (£100 sterilisers presented as a 'must have' when you can just use Milton tablets?) and formula companies trying to give midwives free pens and education to advertise their milk, I can completely understand why you're sceptical about anyone making money in this field.

MidwifeDiaries, The Secret Community, conferences, services and books all took so much time and effort that I made far below minimum wage for years. I'm happy to do this, it's a vocation for me. I believe that the essential skills of good communication are vital not only to the Personal Statement process, but to midwifery in general. We want good applicants to shine and sometimes they haven't written a statement or interviewed in a long time. No shame in needing some support and practice in this area so they may follow their dreams.

I think this resistance to getting support for a midwifery career is linked to undervaluing midwifery in general.

People completely understand why you’d pay for application support to get into medicine or dentistry. They’re good, worthwhile careers, it’s an investment and you’re not expected to know it all already.

But midwifery is linked to motherhood which means we think people should ‘instinctively’ get it and if they get help applying then they’re somehow not right for it.

Of course, there are people not cut out for midwifery and part of being an advocate for this community is having those difficult conversations with applicants.

But that’s a million miles away from someone dreaming of caring for women but not knowing where to start to put that into a professional career application.

Also, in terms of my support specifically, the midwifery internet space is a pretty small community. I've been doing this since 2013 and if it was in any way unethical, you’d know about it!

Instead, I've been asked to speak at the Normal Physiological Birth Conference, the RCM conference, and lots of student conferences; I've had a novel published with a major midwifery publisher 'Pinter and Martin'; and my book 'Becoming a Student Midwife' is on University reading lists for application support.

I don't get sponsored and I’m not interested in writing or doing anything I don’t believe in.

It would have been far easier and more lucrative for me to settle into a nice community midwifery job - or any job for that matter!

But like most of us, I’ve experienced loss I had no control over and now I FOLLOW MY DREAMS no matter what. I do midwifery application support because I find it so rewarding.

You can't fake anything in a midwifery application, it's too complicated and you'd be found out immediately at the interview stage anyway.

But you can learn how to present the best of yourself to admissions tutors, and this is what I am here to help you do.

 

I’ll do it closer to the deadline!

Okay, but...are you waiting for ‘the right time’?

It might be that this isn’t the right time but writing a midwifery personal statement is hard and time consuming.

Even if you’re someone who brings 100% effort normally, you can stumble with this process because it’s very difficult to write about yourself.

Are you sure your brain isn’t just giving you excuses not to get started? What do you gain if you put it off? I’ve seen so many candidates leave it to the last minute because once you give in to one excuse, it’s so easy to make others, relying on the fear kicking in near the deadline – but you don’t want that nervousness to come through in your statement.

I find when candidates start and get through the first resistance it’s such a relief. And when you’ve finished your statement and read it through it’s an incredible feeling which will give you confidence.

Having a statement you’re really proud of really makes the process far more relaxing and exciting. Once you get that first draft done in a timely manner, you have loads of time to review your statement, which can be the secret ingredient to pushing it even further and getting it to stand out. Perspective is wonderful.

To encourage you to honour your goal of getting your statement done before the deadline, midwifery applicants who join Personal Statement School during April get my bonus training ‘5 current issues in midwifery to inspire you and to mention in your application’. It’ll be gone after this!

And you’ll be training your brain to tackle hard assignments head on, exactly what you’ll need to be successful once you are in the degree course.

 

I want to get my work experience done before starting my statement.

Awesome that you have work experience, midwifery is a practical profession so this counts for a lot, but I would still get your statement written early for a couple of reasons.

a) You can write about what you’re going to gain from work experience. e.g.

‘I have arranged to shadow a community midwife later this year, and from this I hope to see how midwives achieve care and compassion with a busy workload. This will also give me the opportunity to talk to midwives about the challenges and privileges, and to the women about what they want from midwifery care. I organised this as I know nothing can prepare you for midwifery apart from the job itself’.

See how writing about what you want to gain shows your amazing insight?

You'll look out for more learning opportunities on your work experience too.

You can then add a line or two of specific insight before you send it off, but you know basically what will be in your statement.

b) This will also give you some great stuff to talk about at interview.

If the placement doesn’t work out, that’s a shame but you can be totally transparent and honest about why and you’ve shown you know why it would have been a good idea. And you’ll be even keener to get started!

 

I just don't have time right now.

Yeah, I have huge time pressures too.

But I love what I do and somehow I managed to get a novel written and published which I started while I was still working clinically as a midwife (I’m coming back clinically next year!).

The thing is, we all get the same 24 hours in a day and it depends on what you prioritise right now.

Can you give yourself the treat of focusing on your statement for a few hours a week?

It’s all you need. Book it into your calendar, get someone else to have the kids, explain how important this is to your future. You’re modelling such amazing behaviour.

As women (if there are any guys applying, you’re likely caring people so this applies to you too) we tend to not give our dreams the time and attention they deserve. We give other people our time.

We think we can do it with the scraps left over.

But by prioritising this task you’re taking the first step to putting the rights and needs of women at the top of your to-do list. It’s a very worthy thing.

Can I suggest you subscribe to Personal Statement School and then find a few hours a week to go and sit in the library or a cafe and work through the modules?

Even the impact this has on your mental health is worth it.

(I carved out an hour a day dedicated to writing for years. Although I did not feel like I had the time, I did it anyway, and somehow made it work. You can too!).

 

Any tips on getting started? I don't want to sign up for something when I'm not able to get going.

Yeah, it is really hard. Most of us applying are from the UK and therefore don't have a good relationship with compliments, and this is basically a long list of compliments to ourselves!

Also, if you're female you're probably used to 'one downmanship' or 'one down womanship' i.e. when someone says you're good at something you come up with a reason why it's a fluke or isn't true.

The blank page is something we all struggle with though, even seasoned writers.

I'd say make a start. Stop overthinking it.

If you have loads of conversations going on in your head you will talk yourself out of it. Brains want us to not take any risks and the emotional exposure of starting writing something with so much riding on it is hard.

But, being a midwife is all about courage.

This is what I do for writing: make a deal with yourself to concentrate on your writing for one hour. You have to sit there with a blank piece of paper and brainstorm all the reasons you'll make an excellent student midwife. Even things like 'I write really neatly which will be good for notes'. The rules are that you are only allowed to write or to stare out the window. No googling for ideas, no calling up your mum. Just sitting and writing or thinking about writing for one full hour.

Then plan another hour in a few days time and spend it circling the top 15 reasons you'll make a good midwife.

You can then come up with a structure (Personal Statement School can help with choosing the ideas and the structure) and you'll have a solid plan.

It doesn't have to be perfect, you just need to start.

Think of all the potential midwives who never even got their application sent off. You're not one of them! If you wait until you 'feel' ready there's a real possibility you'll still be chilling out watching Netflix when the time to send your statement comes along.

 

I'm a practical person, not an academic or a writer. Will Personal Statement School still help?

Well, good news. The odds are you'll write a sensible, to the point personal statement which emphasises skills like compassion.

Midwives don't need to be highly academic (though there are roles where this is extremely helpful - but there are many more roles where you need to be good with people, dilemmas, have stamina etc.)

Write about what you love doing, in midwifery terms and it'll be fine.

Personal Statement School will show you how to find your experiences and skills and structure them, while referring to the research.

 

Why are you doing this instead of practising midwifery?

I did this as well as midwifery for quite a while. I love clinical midwifery and will be going back to it soon, now I've finished my novel and have built up my midwifery support business to the point where I can keep it going. Application support is one of many ways of helping the midwifery community. Essentially, I love words, love helping people express themselves and I'm particularly fired up by supporting aspiring students and newly qualified midwives.

 

If you don’t give actual feedback on my statement, will it actually be useful?

Yes, it's true I don't look at your statement, this is a self directed course, and if you do not learn well in an environment where you are self-directed, this may not be the best fit for you.

However, nearly 1000 aspiring midwives have gone through Personal Statement School and not one of them has asked for a refund because they didn't find it helpful. Instead, there are rave reviews (scroll down).

If you do want one to one help, drop me a line on ellie@midwifediaries.com

 

There's less competition than ever, is this really necessary?

Numbers of applicants have dropped since the bursary was taken away from training student midwives, but the competition for midwifery is still very high.

Birth is an amazing part of people’s lives and many want to be part of that.

Also, being a midwife means friends and family tend to be proud of you (rightly so) and you’re a useful person to have around.

It also attracts applicants of many ages.

It’s still a course which nearly 7000 people apply for every year, and while statistics vary but it’s apparent that midwifery is one of the hardest courses to enter in the UK, probably coming a close third to medicine and dentistry.

Here is a breakdown of applicants per available places in 2019:

700 applicants for 33 places Cardiff
700 applicants for 70 places CCU
800 applicants for 28 places Chester
300 applicants for 17 places Lincoln
1500 applicants for 60 places SHU
1200 applicants for 60 places Stafford
1000 applications for 18 places UWE

But please don’t let this put you off! Many of these applicants will not be successful, due to lack of qualifications, lack of understanding of what midwifery is about, and poor Personal Statements.

Many make the mistake of thinking that if they “write from the heart” they will have a successful application. Passion is important – but your personal statement/interview must focus on the skills that are going to make you a wonderful midwife as opposed to just talking about how much you love midwifery!

This is a learnt skill! REPEAT – application writing is a learnt skill and one you can absolutely master!

For instance, have a look at the following two sentences from a statement. Both are passion filled, which one is more effective?

'Within my friendship group and at work I practice active listening, a skill which midwives need because…'

vs

'I now understand the compassion and listening skills midwives need.'

See the difference?

If you make it to interview, you'll generally have a 1 in 3 chance of getting a place.

If you get help to make sure you’re thinking within the midwifery model, and you help yourself to the right information, you have every chance of success.

 

What’s your refund policy?

Try Personal Statement School for the first 3 teaching videos and if it’s not for you, that’s okay. Just email me and ask for a refund and I’ll honour it. (This hasn't happened so far but no worries if it’s not for you!)*

*You are responsible for unsubscribing when you’ve finished, I want to be really up front about that and you will find instructions on the welcome email and main Personal Statement School page.

It takes IT support to process refunds and to work out when you last logged in. This means I don’t usually offer refunds if you just haven’t remembered to unsubscribe as it’s not financially viable for such a small business. Hope you understand!

If there are special circumstances, of course, email me at once and we'll sort it!