Uni visits - when?

I have sat through one admissions talk where the lecturer stated the Personal Statement contributed 70% of the decision to interview the candidate

So you're in the wild edge cases already, because if 1% of applicants overall are interviewed I would be astounded.

For the same course another University stated the only thing that mattered ( after a level prediction / GCSE results) was work experience.

Medicine, right?

Some places do give lower offers (for some courses even unconditional) to students they really want. I'd guess this may depend on interview

No, because there are few places that still do interviews. One of the most persistent myths on MN is the idea that the typical student will be interviewed. Two universities do it for everyone, as do med schools, one university does it for many/most, and a small number of universities do it for particular courses or for borderline candidates (we used to interview everyone with a particular qualification we were nervous about, but have now decided to just no longer accept it as we couldn't reliably judge at interview anyway).

Unconditional offers, at my university at least, go to applicants whom one can deduce, in the manner of bridge bidding conventions, have applied to Oxbridge, in the hope that we can encourage them to firm us if Oxbridge turn them down and think well of us when taking a decision about insurance (I can't recall precisely where the row with UCAS over "firm-only" unconditionals has got to).

There are also contextual schemes in most universities for students from deprived backgrounds, although that usually at most a grade drop.

Everyone else gets the standard offer.

I have sat through one admissions talk where the lecturer stated the Personal Statement contributed 70% of the decision to interview the candidate.For the same course another University stated the only thing that mattered ( after a level prediction / GCSE results) was work experience.The Personal Statement barely figured.I think each student needs to do their own research and not be swayed by inaccurate information.

if there are 100 students applying for a course, surely most of them are going to be pretty similar anyway.

100? A typical RG course that's actually viable will get at least a 1000 applicants.

As someone on another thread who's actually an admissions tutor said, the problem with personal statements is that almost everything people put in them boils down to "I am middle class, and my parents have given me lots of opportunities because they have the time, money and inclination"; if you used personal statements to do admissions you would basically kill any hope of a diverse intake stone dead.

Personal statements from first-in-family applicants from schools with no tradition of sending students to selective universities are often a car crash (I read them prior to doing "one on ones" at applicant visitor days) and if they actually were being used for admission, they would be excluded on that basis alone.

Students from easier backgrounds clearly invest a lot of time in personal statements, get offers on the basis of their sensible A Levels, and thus inadvertently perpetuate the idea that it was the effort on their personal statement wot did it. It's like the myths around secondary admission: people who would have got a place anyway but who did some weird ritual involving chicken entrails tell people it was the chicken strangling that got the place, forgetting that they live next door and have four siblings in the school already.

Get reasonable GCSEs. At the end of Y11 look at prospectuses. Carefully note the A Levels that are required and desirable for the general sort of courses you want to do. Do those A Levels. Come Y13, look at the grades required. Pick courses realistically based on your predicted grades, in places you fancy living in for three years. Visit a few of them to get a sense of the courses and the departments. Apply and get five offers. Work hard for your A Levels. See you in October.

Some places do give lower offers ( for some courses even unconditional) to students they really want. I'd guess this may depend on interview which might in turn relate to what's in the personal statement as a starting point for discussion.

Errol, that's interesting - the two DD went to she just had to sign up for the academic talks and accommodation was tours on the day AFAIK.

Neck - I wonder if one reason that some schools encourage kids to put thought into their personal statements is that it's practice for CV writing?

Back to open days - while I'm sure you can rock up anywhere and tour the campus and probably accommodation without booking, a lot of the talks and department tours get booked up very quickly. Dd has got onto booking pretty much as soon as the bookings open but has never yet managed to get a place on one about accommodation which she'd wanted to. I'm not sure we missed much just went and talked to the accommodation office people but for engineering (and sciences) you really do want to go on the tours and hear the dept talks, and even booking quite quickly not always got ideal timing.

Thanks, that's really helpful. I did think that the Personal Statement thing was overrated - if there are 100 students applying for a course, surely most of them are going to be pretty similar anyway. Maybe I will try to find an admissions person/anyone on the uni visit DD is letting me go on and ask directly in front of her!

according to Ho6th, DH who was HO6th in a high-achieving grammar school, doncha knowwink and friend who is HO6th!

Go and ask an admissions tutor in a department comparable with the ones your daughter is thinking of applying to.

I have no idea where sixth forms get their ideas about university admission from, but being involved in admissions policy for my department and having had two children go through admission in the past few years, what the schools say is largely wrong, inadequate or misguided. They don't tell children about things they do need to know about, and perpetuate ludicrous myths (particularly around personal statements) which have no basis in fact.

DD will probably be applying for Eco BA or Social Policy - do you think those departments won't read them?

I'd put money on it. Unless it's the LSE, there's hardly an oversupply of applicants, so why wouldn't they just make conditional offers to everyone with a reasonable chance of making it?

And my friends DD is going to apply for a niche degree which apparently always interviews.

Yeah, they exist: usually courses which need some attribute that A Levels genuinely don't predict for. Oxbridge interview because of the need to see if you respond well to tutorial teaching, Imperial are so crushed under the weight of applicants they need to do something other asking for yet more A*s, a few courses may be essentially teaching ab initio and need some way to see who's up to it.

But as your maths friend says, Maths would be a clear example of the exams-based process. What's a better predictor for passing exams in maths than having passed exams in maths, would you say?

Neckguard, according to Ho6th, DH who was HO6th in a high-achieving grammar school, doncha know and friend who is HO6th!

I am going to show DD your posts - hopefully she can cobble something together so she can apply for the courses she wants to get on rather than finding 5 courses to fit her PS.

Well that's what I thought, but apparently it's not that easy!

Based on what evidence?

I have an acquaintance who is the admissions lead for a major RG department. They have on several occasions gone into schools and told the facts about admission to their course, and their university more generally. Afterwards, apparently (in one case their child was in the room at the time) , the teachers have said "well, the universities may say this about admissions, but they're not telling the truth, so you need to do this, this and this to have a chance".

FFS. There is no shortage of places for 95% of courses. Admission is done on A level grades and collateral supporting them to make conditional offers slightly less of a lottery. Outside of medicine, you should get 5 offers for 5 applicants, except Oxbridge/Imperial applicants might only get 4, provided you have applied to universities realistically for your predicted grades. People make a huge fuss about nothing over university applications. It really isn't that hard.

Neckguard, that is exactly what I have been thinking all along - who actually reads the bloody things (my good friend who is high up in a RG uni for Maths says they don't)?

DD will probably be applying for Eco BA or Social Policy - do you think those departments won't read them?

And my friends DD is going to apply for a niche degree which apparently always interviews. Please tell me that won't happen to my DD!

Well that's what I thought, but apparently it's not that easy! And yes, it is similar to the Medicine/Biochem scenario, but not sciences. And it's likely to possibly be 3 and 2

Are the 5% all Durham?

Both of my kids applied to Durham and Bristol and got offers by return. These weren't for MN-obsession courses, being in the (gasp!) humanities.

The Scottish places appear to be slower. One hears stories about Exeter. I know of one large university which had process issues this year which delayed offers substantially, but it wasn't caused by reading personal statements and weighing up the county orchestra against your work experience at 15, it was staff illness.

The obvious exceptions are places that interview but aren't Oxbridge, with Imperial the obvious example, plus a small number of extremely over-subscribed courses which for various reasons haven't responded by just upping the tariff, and applicants with non-standard qualifications.

95% of courses will make you an offer by return.

Are the 5% all Durham?

As usual at this point, I will remind people that the vast majority of personal statements are never read. Apply to a course with predicted grades at about the right level in about the right subjects, meeting the floor requirements for GCSE, and in 90%+ of cases you get an offer on the basis of that alone. The main exception is medicine, but for Oxbridge there is much more weight on additional tests and submitted work. The idea that admissions staff read a thousand personal statements and sift through them looking for subtle clues, which is apparently what some schools tell their pupils, is farcical.

To take senua's example, the sort of Law course that you would be applying for as a backup to medicine would almost certainly not read personal statement. There's not a lot such a personal statement could say, Law courses aren't wildly oversubscribed with qualified candidates outside Oxbridge (which it's unlikely a potential medic would be applying to as their fifth slot) and a potential medic presumably has the grades for any Law course and some to spare.

University admission has replaced secondary admission (where at last, equal preference does appear to actually be understood) as the place where rumours of special secret mechanisms circulate. Have decent GCSEs, be predicted the right grades in the right A Levels, 95% of courses will make you an offer by return.

as apparently you can only write a Personal Statement for one "subject" and there are two similar areas she is interested in

This is possible. You can only apply for four medicine courses so the fifth choice is usually something like BioChem - they must word it so that the fifth choice doesn't stand out too much as a fifth choice.
You do hear strange stories of people applying for four medicine and (say) law - and still getting five offers! Presumably you write something like a horoscope that sounds personalised and pertinent but actually applies to every occasion.

lljkk DD and her friends were adamant they wanted to move schools for Sixth Form in Y10 so they researched and made a long list which they narrowed down. We took them to visit 6 in the Sep/Oct of Y11 and DD applied for and got offers for all 6. She chose the nearest and thankfully got the grades!

Eeek Atia, DD is hoping to go on the Bristol Uni open day in Sep - she better be ready to book it asap!

She has already been to two with friends (no probs getting into talks AFAIK) and I am going with her to another one.

I think it would be too much to try to do them all in September/October and the first two visits really fired up her enthusiasm. Now she has to decide between two particular degree subjects as apparently you can only write a Personal Statement for one "subject" and there are two similar areas she is interested in

That is, people who had booked for that talk, not just people who'd booked onto the open day.

At Bristol, they were letting people who'd booked into the subject talk first, and then the others were queued up waiting to see if there was space, and I don't think all of them got in.

I can't remember if there was anything like that anywhere else.

Open Days get booked up very quickly

I guess for small, heavily over-subscribed places you might get turned away from some very popular events, but at campus universities the only reason the booking is pushed is to try to capture details for followup. At my university, they are keen to get you to check in on arrival as you enter the campus, but no-one else cares: so far as I can recall, we would have no way in the department to distinguish between someone who has booked and someone who hasn't, and wouldn't care anyway. Since one of the appeals of open days is to be able to look at multiple departments, that's a good thing. I spoke to a couple of hundred people at each of the talks I did last week, but we had loads of spare room in a big lecture theatre (I gather it was a bit tighter on the Saturday, but we would have probably just run an additional session had it really overflowed).

It's different for post-offer days, when we do things like booking you in for a 1:1 with an academic, but for straight open days, I'd be fascinated to hear if anyone's ever been seriously disadvantaged by not having booked. A university that did that is basically cutting its nose off to spite its face: we should be welcoming people, not erecting barriers, At Yale, you can get a guided tour every day apart from Christmas Day. UK university should be much more open.

You can do visits in the summer of Y12 or the autumn of Y13. Look at websites because some Open Days get booked up very quickly. although you can always just turn up and gatecrash but you might miss some information/talks.
It can be useful if a parent comes along - it's an extra set of eyes & ears and someone to compare notes with. Alternatively, sometimes it's good if they go on their own to faraway places so they can realise for themselves what a pita it will be to travel there.

My dd (and ds before her) have done loads of stuff 'sans parents', but a) it's cheaper usually to take them by car than buy a train ticket, b) it's quìte nice to spend a day with just one of the dc at a time, c) its actually quite nice to see differnt universities.

Yes, they can go on their own, but, as, between us dh and i have the time, then I'm not sure what the problem is.