Civil Service Fast Stream

[Jakolantern]

Has anyone got any experience or advice about applying for this? My son has just graduated from a prestigious university and is going back to do a masters next year. He is planning to apply to the civil service fast stream in October and is very motivated and excited by this prospect. He is highly intelligent, with excellent grades and good work experience and is a hardworking, very likeable young man who is committed to the idea of using his life to provide public service. He is not motivated by money, he just wants to be of benefit of others, but he does need to earn enough money to live obviously. I know he would be an asset to the civil service but as a white, middle class man with a humanities degree I feel as though the odds are stacked against him before he even applies. I haven’t mentioned this to him, of course, and I am just a passive spectator to his life now really, but if there was any help or advice I could give him it would be much appreciated.

My youngest (white middle class women) has a fast stream place this year. Her stream has overall 2% success rate. I think there is an element of luck The two students who got overall year prize and diss prize in my DDs year didn't get a place. My DD thinks doing a placement year gave her an edge (but it didn't get her any exemptions from tests). Successful completion of the summer internship gets you a bye from the first set of tests. They do have spots on this even if you are not disadvantaged. My DD is not and got a place (took placement instead). I believe quite a lot of internship students get fast stream (again maybe 6 weeks experience gives you an advantage and the initial tests are the same).

Agree with others about plan Bs and Cs. Look at direct entry grad jobs or lower level jobs too (as backup). DDs placement boss was super smart and came from outside. Reached same level as fast streamers in less time.

A lot of middle class kids with middle income parents go to London universities. They take the student loan, get Saturday and holiday jobs and budget carefully. It’s perfectly possible.

Also, these are anecdotal, so not representative, and also some time ago but show there’s more support once you get in than there might seem to be before applying. A good university friend of mine got additional financial support because her father declared to the university that he disowned her. Not as a person, but financially. He said he left school at 16 and got a job, he saw no value in university education, so he wasn’t going to support her financially. My college was so appalled by his attitude and so impressed by his daughter that they stepped into the fray and supported her through her degree. Another friend was disowned after telling her parents she was a lesbian. They refused to let her come home during the holidays, so my college gave her a holiday job with accommodation for the remainder of her degree.

My CS department is full of young white poshos, cluttering up the communal fridges with their oat milk and quinoa.

Surely he just has to apply?

The whole point of applying for any job/career is you will always face rejection.
You can't live his life for him and put obstacles there because of how you perceive something.
He also should have a Plan B in case he isn't accepted.

The announcement today is about work experience/interns. It's being done I assume because lots of young people get a leg up in certain careers because their parents either have connections of fund their non-paid internships.

That's different from your son applying for entry in the way you describe.

Oh I agree with you on that. But it’s your right to know. It helps form a more complete picture of the candidate. You might even judge them more harshly if they interview badly having been to an elite institution.

Yep, my DH did this. And yes that relies on parents living within greater London or surrounding areas, but many of these may be in social housing or bought many years ago when properties were cheaper so not necessarily especially well off

With an inclination towards public service, why no go for something like social or Legal Aid work?

Live it!! Maybe stick an article like ‘Oatly: the New Coke’ to the fridge and scare them witless!

That will be my DD in 8 weeks. Currently cluttering up our fridge with similar.

My white middle-class son got offers from both the Treasury and another London Fast Stream this year but has rejected them for another offer. Humanities grad with a 2i.

There is no way I would get in! Looking at the assessments he had to do, the stakeholder interviews etc were really quite tough. And the application, like all graduate jobs was very time/consuming with lots of tests. There were so many hoops to navigate that I think you have to be able to think on your feet, have good people skills and be quick-witted. Regardless of your background, being able to interview well seems to be what matters.

London unis are becoming increasingly out of the pocket for middle income students and their families. Accommodation prices are hugely expensive and it’s becoming increasingly hard to get the cheapest. Getting weekend work that fits in round degrees is becoming increasingly harder and for more intense degrees having to work is a huge disadvantage. The ignoring of this and the we’re alright Jack by the wealthy alongside the government’s “let’s just focus on the poorest and screw the middle” stance is making things harder and harder for students from squeezed middle families to attend unis.

Yes I know lots of wealthy divorced couple who misuse divorce to access higher student loans.🙄

If by "screwed" you mean won't have the opportunity to do a 6 week internship that does not guarantee a job or a place in the Fast Track scheme, but still have all other application avenues to the civil service open to them, then yes. But that does seem a little dramatic.

I forgot to mention that he did the internship there the year before. There were lots of questions about diversity on the application and he didn’t tick any of them. But he still got in, the application was pretty tough as well.

When he got there, he said most people working there were actually white middle class from ‘good’ universities, despite all the diversity questions on the application…

Other application avenues that are clearly monopolised by the privately educated rich hence the government bringing in these new measures which doesn’t solve the problem and just make things even harder for those in the middle.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3ez3v9v8jqo

One of my DC is a fast streamer OP.

I know he would be an asset to the civil service but as a white, middle class man with a humanities degree I feel as though the odds are stacked against him before he even applies

I don't think this is true. A lot of my students (prestigious university, social sciences) apply to the civil service fast stream. It's certainly very competitive and some extremely strong candidates are not successful. But some are successful, including white middle class men. Dont't put him off!

All the internship does is it exempts you from the very first stage of online tests for the fast stream: numerical, verbal reasoning etc that you did anyway when you applied for the internship. You still have to plough on through the rest of the gruelling tests. A nice bonus, but it is not like other city internships where you are given a return offer if you complete a successful summer internship.

Apologies if that link to today's BBC piece has already been posted. Haven't yet RTFT.

@Castaneta DCs experience is same as my white middle class DD. She only applied to internship to practise the test as it cautioned few spots for non disadvantaged but got a place.

Internship students don't get that much advantage (skip one stage). Best advantage is an Oxbridge degree their success in my DDs stream is 3.5 times the average (clearly they score well on the tests).

I do agree with you that work can be disadvantageous in intense degrees and that there is a squeezed middle that are not poor enough to be eligible for support or rich enough to be funded by their parents. Also that there is a regional difference regarding cost profiles (someone brought up in London can live at home) I don’t know divorcees playing that game, but it doesn’t surprise me. Thats loans though. I was talking about hardship bursaries from the universities themselves. They aren’t widely advertised, but they do exist for those in desperate need, especially at richer institutions. I know nothing about the details of these.

Nevertheless, I was using an Imperial as an example of a global top 10 institution, where getting a 2:1 is more challenging than at a low ranking university with low admissions grades. The degree class is therefore not comparable. There are plenty of universities in between and students are perfectly capable of explaining their choice. To me, anonymising that data is crackers. Admissions teams need as much data as possible to get a full insight into a person’s achievements and capabilities.

i applied for the internship last year. They didn’t ask for my degree or university. It involved 6 hours of maths and “personality tests”. I got above average in maths and below average in personality (the questions were very odd!). And I didn’t get through. Tbh it really put me off the civil service because I work so hard for my degree and then they don’t even ask for it and base of some nonsense

Oh yes I see it's been linked. As other have said, it's only the internship though.

Definitely apply, I work with younger men and women who have gone through it and they really are people who are good at their roles. And middle class, white and male will not go against him. The CS is much more diverse than even 20 years ago when I joined but it still is mostly white middle class men at the higher grades.

DS did an internship with HMRC after leaving university but decided it wasn’t for him and ended up getting a much better offer from a local authority who were also willing to fund a professional qualification - this allowed him to move up job role wise quite quickly - he’s now early 30s and a much higher earner than most of his peers

Anonymising unis isn’t crackers, it’s hugely necessarily for all the reasons discussed.

Saying my parents couldn’t afford to support me at anything other than the local uni isn’t going to get you far on any list.