Statement of purpose: three worked examples.

"A debate in a history lesson at school first showed me that evidence, ordered well, changes what people believe. I argued that Julius Caesar was a poor leader for Rome, and found I enjoyed building the case more than winning it.

That interest carried into my undergraduate degree, where I wrote my thesis on the Great Depression using first-hand accounts rather than government records. Working from primary material taught me how much an argument depends on which evidence you choose to trust.

After graduating I secured a paralegal role at a firm handling immigration cases. Shadowing solicitors in court showed me how legal argument works under pressure, and where preparation ends and judgement begins.

I want to study law because I have spent six years learning to build arguments from evidence, and I would now like to do it where the stakes are a person's circumstances rather than a grade."

"I was nine when I came off my bike and landed on my shoulder. What I remember is not the pain but the registrar explaining the X-ray to me rather than to my parents — how the bone had moved, and what would happen next.

Biology became the subject I read beyond the syllabus. I joined the after-school science club, built a model of the shoulder joint for a school exhibition, and later earned a place on a hospital volunteering scheme.

During my biology degree I volunteered on a respiratory ward. I saw consultants deliver bad news well and badly, and learnt that the clinical part is only half the work.

I am applying to medicine because I have tested the interest rather than assumed it, and it has held."

"My father's hardware shop taught me that a business is a set of relationships before it is a set of numbers. I was processing orders and handling stock by the time I was fifteen.

I read English Literature at university rather than business, which I do not regret — it made me a better writer, and writing clearly turns out to be most of management.

Since graduating I have worked as a freelance writer, which meant running the whole thing myself: pricing, invoicing, chasing payment and keeping clients. I now want the parts I taught myself badly to be taught properly."