Admissions tutors, is this true?

[scaryteacher]

Read this in the DT www.telegraph.co.uk/education/universityeducation/8320761/Are-you-ready-for-the-latest-university-challenge.html

Is it true, or is what a friend with a lad in his first year at Uni said correct - it's the grades that count, not the personal statement? The admissions tutors where he is said they don't read the personal statements, but make offers purely on the grades achieve at GCSE and those predicted at A level.

My lad is in Year 10, and we have all this to go through in a couple of years - I'm beginning to wonder if I wouldn't be better to get him to apply in Europe rather than go through all the English system palava. Based on the article, he wouldn't get in as we live abroad, Saturday jobs are hard to find if you not fluent in Dutch and French; he's doing DofE, and helps out with cubs. He will board for sixth form in UK, and do A levels, but Maastricht might be a better bet and closer than the UK.

My Ex-DH is a lecturer and does some admission stuff. He definately reads personal statements and puts a lot of weight on to them - the best, he says, are the ones where the love/enthusiasm for the subject shines through. He's less bothered about whether they did Duke of Edinburgh, more about whether they have shown they love the subject - the best being effectively "I really want to do X, X is fascinating and here's why".

Argh, I wish the Times and the Telegraph would stop writing terrifying articles like these. I'll probably be applying to university next year, and things like this are never very encouraging.

If anyone has ideas for personal statement-improving activities geared towards Eng. lit. or foreign languages, I'd love to hear suggestions. Or y'know, if anyone happens to have important contacts, or are uni admissions tutors...

A silly article - I can't think of a single parent I know who is in the state hysteria described. DD2 is in year 13, she did a spread of GCSEs and got good grades, she is predicted high grades for her A2s in the summer but has resat modules, she wrote the vast majority of her personal statement on why she wanted to do her subject and she chose universities with very high entrance grades and back up ones with slightly lower expectations. She got 5 offers and is currently choosing where she wants to go.

OseMorDdreng I would have thought a love of reading would be the number one thing to convey in your personal statement.

A visit to The Student Room is very useful as a starting point then delve deeper:

www.thestudentroom.co.uk/wiki/A-Z_of_Universities

Key thing if you do go to the Student room is to be very careful as it is very easy to unwittingly plagiarise a PS.

mummytime Absolutely. I meant use the uni guide on there. There is a lot of helpful information.

An admissions tutor saved my DD's bacon last year. The school had screwed up big style and this wonderful woman spotted the error, sent DD an e-mail alerting her, made the necessary phone calls and sent a second e-mail telling her that it only needed a phone call from the school to a particular number to sort it out. Unfortunately these e-mails were on DD's passworded computer in her bedroom, she was at school and there was only a matter of hours in which this could be sorted out before DD's first and second choices went down the pan. Cutting a long story short, it was sorted, thanks to this kind woman.

Moral of the story:-
1)NEVER trust the school at any stage.
2) At the moment your DC is about to hit send on the UCAS application tell the above story and get DC to tell you the password!

I have worked as an admissions tutor.

IME the PS is irrelevant for any students with outstanding grades (relative to the entrance requirements) and a very conventional academic history. The PS is also pretty irrelevant for any student who clearly misses the academic requirements.

However, the PS is very important for any students who has a less conventional set of qualifications or subject choices, or who is borederline in terms of the academic requirements. This is usually a fairly small numbner of students IME.

The problem is that you neve know in advance whether your PS will be important, so you have to assume that it is.

muddleduck - that's the best piece of advice I've heard on this subject - especially as you have to write one statement to suit 5 universtities and they all have their different approaches to selection.

Beware Maastricht. I put a girl up a few years ago for a few nights (her mother was English living in Brussels). They were shocked at the price of a room. Filth pits for ~400 a month or a semi-decent studio for 650. Maastricht is gorgeous - but they've got students over a barrel here. She might want to look at a satellite town - or take the train every day. There's a high-speed commuter train from Oostende to Maastricht these days.

Foreign languages you can't beat spending time in that country. Also look beyond the learning of the language itself to literature, current events, history, politics etc. Alternatively an interest in linguistics might be looked on favourably as it shows a student who is really thinking about language(s).

Agree with Birmingham and early offers btw, not just for medicine. They do very well off Oxbridge rejects because they offer early on the assumption early applicants are also Oxbridge candidates, collect those up and make a second round of offers around now.

The good thing about applying for B'ham is that a student applying also for Oxbridge might then have a B'ham offer in hand as a confidence booster before the Oxbridge interview and a decent fallback if unsuccessful. It also means that it's done and dusted early so student can get on with studying instead of angsting.

The downside is that it is a wasted choice if the student doesn't have enough A*s at GCSE. I gather that this particular goalpost moved, allegedly, during the process last year.

DD's insurance offer was Leeds which last year had more than 3600 candidates for approx 250 places. (Usual no. of applicants is around 2500) so, come to think about it, the GCSE A* requirement at B'ham was bound to have risen if B'ham also experienced a similar surge in applicants. I assume it did so I would estimate that it is using an even higher cut-off this year.

Of course the Ebacc. might affect matters considerably next year!

My son is currently going through the process and has managed to get to get five offers. Birmingham and Manchester in particular have said that the personal statement and the school reference/ combined with your interview becomes very relevant if you narrowly miss your grade offer.

I am a lecturer (1994 group) and my current administrative role is departmental UCAS selector; that is, I go through the hundreds of applications to our department and select for interview or rejection.

The answer to the OP's question is, predictably, yes and no...

Because we interview, the first round of the selection process is basically an automatic one, ie. I go through the pile, and those who meet our A-Level (or equivalent) entry tariff (or are predicted to) are invited to interview; those who do not are rejected (unless there are serious mitigating circumstances indicated in the candidate's reference (not PS - after all, they could lie) and even then, I would scrutinise their GCSE results to see if they have form). At this point, then, the PS is virtually irrelevant.

At interview stage, the PS can be important, though not always. Personally, I only use the PS to probe a candidate's ability. So, they say they've read X, I quiz them on X and related topics, etc. If I can, however, I generally ask them to perform a task on the day, and only turn to the PS in the final minutes of the interview. I never, EVER ask about their extra-curricular activities, unless they strike me as particularly intellectually interesting or relevant.

The thing is, in my opinion, the PS is only a useful document for analysing a candidate's writing ability. I have no way of proving that what they state there is true. They tell me they have Grade 8 in violin, or have done internships for KPMG, or whatever. How do I prove this? And why should I care?

I've said it before on MN, but I am NOT INTERESTED in a candidate's general all-roundedness. I want to know if they can study my subject. Whether they play international rugby, or have led their YE group, or whatever, is meaningless to whether they are up to the academic challenge of my subject. Really it is. I can see that in some more vocational subjects, some work experience, etc., would be useful and maybe desirable. But even then, the interviewer will still want to find out if the candidate can hack the course. Frankly, being captain of netball is no predictor of being good at philosophy, for instance...

However, I think that what I have just written primarily applies to places which interview. Probably those that do not, do look at other achievements as a way (totally random and utterly UTTERLY unfair - after all, poorer kids have fewer chances to do all the extras which parents typically pay for) of discriminating between otherwise academically identical candidates.

Personally, I think the PS system has become increasingly out of control and unfair. It discriminates against those with fewer opportunities, regardless of academic ability, and has started an extra-curricular arms race amongst parents who have - or feel they ought to have - the resources to flesh out their children's CVs.

I have interviewed for several Cambridge colleges (humanities subject), and again, the majority of my colleagues and I looked at intellectual qualities, and not all the added CV bits. We couldn't bear it when half the PS was wasted on twaddle about captaincy of this or that.

However - admittedly - older colleagues (ie. those who hadn't been to recent diversity interview training & had been at their colleges for decades ) often did, regrettably, find themselves impressed by that jolly chap who played in the rugby sevens, or that lovely young girl with the short skirt (I have seen this in action, I'm sad to say).

And the thing about the Oxbridge process is this: the subject interviewer will (consciously or unconsciously) be thinking, "Can I supervise this student? Do I want to spend several hours over the next few years alone with this student in discussion?". Things like personality, looks (not just looking smart, by the way, as so many on MN seem to think...), can sway it as this point. But again, it's not predictable in the way you might think. The physics geek who was picked on at school might have inbuilt bias against rugger-buggers. Who's to say that he hasn't been deselecting them at his college for years? There would be no real "trace" of bias, if ever other candidate was similarly qualified and there were only 6 places for 20 applicants, if you see what I'm saying...

Schools, and self-interested idiots like the chap who wrote this article, perpetuate so many myths about the selection process. Nothing we do seems to change this, sadly.

Sorry, long and rambling message that does nothing to help parents or students.

Commendably clear information on the B'ham medicine website.

Minimum requirement to get an interview is usually 7 A*s and a prediction/award of 3 As at A level, one of which must be Chemistry and the second must be one out of Biology/Physics/Maths.

Must have Biology at AS if not A2.

If taking Chemistry + Biology + Psychology/Sociology/PE at A2, must have a fifth AS level in a different subject. Presumably this is because of overlap of content between Biology and the other subjects.

That Russell group guidance should be very useful if read and inwardly digested.

So, in sum , from my own point of view, as kingprawntikka suggests, the PS could sway it if you narrowly miss the grades required and in the statement you write about your interest in the subject you are applying for - and demonstrate this. Just saying, "Gosh, I love X subject and reading, and have done since I was 5, oh and by the way, here is all the other academically irrelevant stuff that I fill my time with" is meaningless. SHOW ME! Write well & critically in the (admittedly very limited) space you have. Don't just tell. Show!

DD1 thought about three "skills" she felt were appropriate to her subject, then culled all her extra curricular stuff which she couldn't fit into demonstrating at least oen of those skills. Fortunately we'd planned ahead, so there were lots of relevant activities, most of which she'd have done anyway. She did keep one not entirley relevant activity, but mainly because it was something out of the ordinary, and might have made her stand out a bit.

TBH, I think her school reference carried more weight than her PS.

I don't think there's anything particularly scary in that article - it's basically saying that excellent grades may not be sufficient if you are applying for a very popular course at a very popular university, and that you need to think carefully about your personal statement too. That was certainly the case when I was applying to university in the early 90s.

I hear what you are saying penthesileia but if someone slips into their PS that they play international rugby (to use your example) but then uses this to show a character trait (perseverance, dedication, teamwork skills, multi-tasking, etc) that will be useful on the course, then does that get a tick from you?

DD put her DofE on her PS but made a point of saying that she had done Bronze, Silver & Gold to show perseverence etc, and she hadn't picked it up in sixthform merely to prettify her PS.

"Commendably clear information on the B'ham medicine website"

but unfortunately 2 years out of date. It was supposedly 8A last year and is 9 or 10A this year (according to a second year student who is currently there and who ironically came top in her first year exams but whose GCSEs aren't good enough to get her an interview had she applied this year)

Well, actually, international rugby might put me off - since they're likely to miss a lot of study off playing!

Before anyone flames me, I have offered a place to an international rugby player and have not discriminated against him.

But this was because he was VERY CLEVER! and gorgeous. Ahem.

In your example, senua, my reply would be, I suppose, maybe. Thing is, in order to prove that playing rugby or doing DofE does all these lovely things (multi-tasking, etc.), you'd have to waste quite a bit of time on your PS explaining this. And I'd much rather you spent that time showing me how great you are at my subject.

I can honestly say that in all the years of interviewing I've done (since 2002), I have NEVER offered a place to a candidate, or recommended that a candidate be offered a place, on the basis of whether they did DofE, etc. Never. It has always come down to whether they could impress me with their mind in the interview. End of. It is - in the end - possible to discriminate between candidates and to create a hierarchy of them based on how they perform in the interview. Ask me at the end of the day to write a list, 1-6, or whatever, based on how smart they seemed to me, and I can. Ask me whether they played instruments, helped at youth groups, etc., and I can't remember at all.

But, as I've said, I've only worked at interviewing universities. Those that do not interview rely on the PS, and - probably and regrettably, as I've said - do look at DofE, YE, etc., as markers (though random & unfair) with which to discriminate between candidates.

I've done B,S, and G DofE. I was - quite literally - dragged through it. The only thing I could honestly have said about it was that it proved that I could endure the endless, boring hikes, and the pointless map reading, and horrible camping food, and dull additional challenges. Endurance & perseverance, maybe. But not the kind I'd value. But that was just lazy ass me.

Fortunately (or not?), my Cambridge interviewer in 1995 took no interest in that at all, and instead spent the full 45 minutes of the interview in pursuit of one - academic - question about a text I'd read. In retrospect, I'd far rather have chatted about the fact that I can also play the piano...

I think what Penthesileia says must be true to an extent. We all have our little prejudices.

When I used to interview new graduates I always found it irritating when they blathered on about gap years. It just annoyed me. A fancy gap year with a bit of orphanage building thrown in just indicated to me that they'd had a jolly good time - they were unlikely to be forging new paths in international relations and anthropological research. I always used to murmur, "Very nice, so you like going on holiday..."

This isn't new news.

When I was applying to Universities in 1990 it was assumed that everyone applying to Cambridge was going to get all As at A-level, therefore a well written personal statement was important.

They are scaremongering about needing to go to a 'top' school to get good A-level results. You need a good brain, a good interest in your subject and the ability to perservere when you don't understand something. Good teaching can help with this but not make up for lack of these attributes.

This is why Oxbridge interview - to make sure that those analytical abilities are there.

You could be at Westminster or St Pauls and not have these attributes. In which case, you would struggle at Oxbridge.