Thread 22 Covid Cohort - Creeping towards the Future - Personal Statements and Interviews

[OrangeCinnamonCocktail]

This is a thread for supporting all young people post GCSEs 2020, regardless of their educational setting. It is respectfully requested that all are supportive and helpful to each other. If you want to start a debate, e.g state vs private, please don't within this thread. Please also be sensitive when responding to threads about grades.

Some of us have been here since first thread back in yr10, some will be new. Everyone has been friendly and helpful in the past. Everyone is welcome. It is hoped this will continue.

Our DS/DD may go down various paths (such as employment, apprenticeships, higher ed) We have decided for anyone interested they will most likely find us within the Further Ed board.

Previous thread
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/further_education/4370509-Thread-21-Corona-Cohort-Nervous-waiting-so-frustrating
Role Call below
@20newnames / DS / Engineering
@Alsoplayspiccolo / DD / English + Film
@AnneofCleavage / DD / gap year? Primary Education
@BlueMarigold / DD / Biology
@crazycrofter / DD / Child (?) + Mental Health Nursing
@Decorhate / DS / Economics + Politics
@Delphigirl / DS / Oceanography
@DoggerelBank / DS / tbc sciencey
@ealingwestmum / DD / Middle Eastern and European Studies
@EerilyDisembodied / DS / History or Environmental Management
@estherfrewen / DS / History
@EwwSprouts / DS / Biology
@Fiddlersgreen / DS / Journalism
@Fruitygal / DD / Biology
@Hattifatteners / DD / Vet Med
@Heifer / DD / Biology
@Hopeful201 / DS / Medicine
@Horace123 / DS / Classics
@icanbewhatiwant / DS / History + Philosophy
@Isthisjustnormal / DS / Comp Sci
@KingscoteStaff / DD / Medicine
@mummabear74 / DD / Environmental Science
@mummyinbeds / DS / Law + French Law
@Nard75 / DS / Maths
@NCTDN / DD / Liberal Arts
@Oblomov21 / DS / Accountancy
@OrangeCinnamonCocktail / DD / Music (uni)
@PaddingtonPaddington / DD / Music (cons)
@Piggywaspushed / DS / Social sciences combo
@ProggyMat / DD / Classics
@SandyBayley / DD / Medicine
@Seeline / DD / Liberal Arts
@singingstones / DS / Neuroscience
@Wheresthebeach / DD / gap year? Marine Biology
@whoamitojudge / DD / Cabin crew training
@Zebracat / DD / Liberal Arts or Anthropology
@ZittiEBuoni / DD / applying next year

@crazycrofter my DS has a volunteer job at a local museum 4.5 hours on Sunday (for experience / personal statement support plus a low pressure environment to get experience in due to autism). Plus a Saturday paper round £3 for half an hour, which he's done for years and keeps him in sweets. He just can't do more though, his school day is 8.30 to 4.20 and they are expected to stay all day, he boards in any case. He plays hockey on a Saturday and football on a Sunday afternoon with training for both on weeknights.

PS is nearly done. An admissions officer at one of the unis we visited kindly offered to help him with it and he is just incorporating her suggestions, hoping to get it back into school by Monday. It's hard for us to work together on it with him being in boarding. Mocks are in a fortnight.

Thanks for the love. I have tried Student finance. There are 180.00 children being raised by extended family/ guardians, but they don’t cover it on the website, and when I rang, the adviser was lovely, but didn’t really get that there are categories of care leaver.
I’m very interested in the insurance vs firm discussion. Her choices are all high tariff much in demand courses, and will be a stretch even with contextual offers, but I am sure that someone will snap her up for a foundation year course if it all goes horribly wrong, she is so keen to learn, and lovely of course.
She has been saying that maybe she should get a job, but she was malnourished for years and she really lacks stamina. I don’t think she could work without it affecting her studies. I do think it is good for them to work, and to be independent in other ways. My older ones think I’m a bit precious with this one, but she had so much catching up to do, and she was in a really bad way when she came to us. I did think that after Christmas we would give her a food budget and ask her to practice getting her own meals for a few weeks. Thought we could have great fun stealing her milk and sweetie stash! Proper recreation of life in halls.

Being in your fantastic care now Zebra, I hope goes such a long way to wiping some of the pain of her earlier years. It sounds odd to write she is a lucky girl because of all of what's she's been through, but, she really is.

@Zebracat you sound like such an amazing person for your DD to have on her side, I hope she gets everything she wants, I'm sure she will.

@Zebracat ‘normal’ rules don’t apply for your girl, she needs to focus on getting the best grades she can and gaining in stamina and emotional resilience. You’re absolutely right to treat her differently to your older ones and it sounds like you’re doing a fab job!

Thanks for all the job feedback! Dd does have a very busy social life, plus attends two different churches on Sunday so she couldn’t really work Sundays. But she reckons she could do Saturdays and maybe an evening or two. She gets home from school early some days. She’s a slow worker so she does need to leave enough study time, but she also seems to find her A Level subjects reasonably easy so I’m not too worried about her studies.

Zebracat, I am SO behind your dd in everything she hopes for and dreams of - I'm sure we all are. You are caring for her so well .

@ealingwestmum

Being in your fantastic care now Zebra, I hope goes such a long way to wiping some of the pain of her earlier years. It sounds odd to write she is a lucky girl because of all of what's she's been through, but, she really is.

This ⬆️⬆️. I love hearing about your turnaround story.

Ooh crikey, strangers on the Internet just made me cry...You are all very kind. Thank you.

Agree with everyone else.
I think you and your DD are amazing @Zebracat

[quote singingstones]@Zebracat you sound like such an amazing person for your DD to have on her side, I hope she gets everything she wants, I'm sure she will.[/quote]
Absolutely this! Would any of the uni's be able to help with advice re: finance or do they just refer you back as it were?

Another vote of cheers for @Zebracat. We have adoptees in our wider family who haven't had a good past and the challenges that brings to the present and future are massive.

@crazycrofter DS did have a job for two evenings a week (9 hrs) but gave it up a couple of months ago as it was just too much with the distance to his school (around 15 miles) and doing 4 A levels, the poor kid had no work/life balance in yr 12 and I am pleased he gave it up. He now does a few hours a week cleaning for us which I pay him for and ad hoc other bits.

I am a strong believer in working to earn money but it just wasn't sustainable with his studies and having any semblance of a life in DS's case.

@JustHereWithMyPopcorn I estimated the grade boundaries based on grade statistics/boundaries for 2019.

So if it had been 20% A/A and 20% B in 2019 and 40% A/A in 2021, I would say
2022 will be 30% A*/A, so half the Bs in 2019 would have been As with the agreed new stats.

If A was 70% and B was 60% I assume an even spread of grades and say half the Bs will be As, so the grade boundary will be 65%.

This is such a lovely thread with lots of very nice people doing great things with their Ds/DDs. So many different stories and different tales to tell but the support shown is amazing and really quite hard warming tbh. This is why I used to love Mumsnet so much when DD was a baby - I used to chat in the bar and made some friends there I still chat to on Facebook (even met a few in real life). It's quite a shock when I wonder into other posts in HE and FE!

it's really not hard warming - no idea what happened there. Heart warming :-)

@Heifer I feel the same about this lovely bunch of mums. So glad I found it. As my boys are 4-5 years older so a lot of my close friends have finished with uni stuff. My friends which I made when DD was little have kids who have decided on the college and job route so Not really something I can talk to them about. Nice to see others wanting the best for their children in a kind way. The rest of MN can be rather Wild West

@Fruitygal. Yes I get it re friends. I am an older Mum (was 35 when DD was born) and only 1 of my friends children has gone to university. This is why we moved to the Wirral from down South. I just found that everyone where I lived just seem to think that passing exams was enough, and finding a job etc was fine. No real aspirations to go to uni. It was the same when I grew up tbh. The thing I find strange, I grew up with loving, caring parents, as did my friends, they attended every parents evening, expected me to behave etc but as long as got a job in an office etc that was fine. My brother who got As in 9 olevels went to work in a bank - no one suggested uni for him!

I knew I wanted more for DD, to give her the opportunity. DH came from a different outlook whereby he was told he had to get a profession (boarding school and uni was expected). I wanted something in between, I want it to be DDs choice but to have the option, so we moved. Up here it's completely different. With 4 grammar schools, a private school, an aspiring Girls school and some good comps (along with a quite a lot of not so great school as everywhere), DD knew from day 1 that she wanted to go to uni. So I feel the move was more than worth it - although I really do miss my friends back home. But it is nice to talk here to people in similar situations, and to learn from those with different choices to make, with children with different challenges than DD. She has her own battles that I haven't chatted about here any probably won't as I feel I've already outed myself so don't feel it's fair on DD to talk about her problems too openly. I may have to name change as some point when I have something to ask/discuss about it.

@Wheresthebeach. Honestly, it’s a minefield. Every institution has its own definitions off care leaver, some don’t tell you what it is, others bury it. Exeter have been really helpful. They have a brilliant offer for care leavers, but she doesnt quite fit their criteria, they recognise there is an issue and are really trying to help. She fits the criteria for Birmingham, but they also have to be seen as independent students by student finance, and we don’t know yet, and so on.. Massively complicated. There is a growing realisation that children who were looked after and then went into special guardianship from a Care Order share many issues with care leavers. I hope that in a few years the pathway into higher Education will be explicit for them. They are now covered for Virtual Schools and the Adoption Support Fund, and that’s new, but provision and support at a local level is patchy. We were very lucky to be paid an allowance, lots of families fall into poverty trying to care for other peoples children, which is shocking.I found a load of posts on a support forum from a person in precisely my position in 2011, trying to find the best financial arrangements for Uni. and it is depressing that it isnt any better now.They got thru it though, and I’m sure we will too.

Was the hideous term ‘geriatric’ used for you when expecting Heifer? It was by my health authority. I still shudder when I hear it but not sure if expectant parents terminology has improved from the early 2000’s!

@ealingwestmum I was a geriatric!! Had DD at 36 (DS at 33). I was older than some of her friends mum's but not that much. Horrible term.

@ealingwestmum - No DD was born in late 2003 and I wasn't called geriatric but something else and I can't remember what :-)

Lets say Mature Mum or similar. I hope someone can job my memory.

Pretty sure the term geriatric primigravida is still used. So ridiculous. The average age for a woman to have her first child is now 34 and geriatric is 35!

Crazy DS does a couple of hours a week lifeguarding and a couple of hours tennis coaching of primary aged children.

Definitely does not do any ironing!

@Zebracat another who loves to hear of your DD and in awe of the decisions you must have taken. Not wishing to teach you to suck eggs, is this forum a potential source of decent info? www.frg.org.uk/FandFCForum/viewtopic.php?t=4931

I was "geriatric" - I had my two DC just before my 37th and 39th birthdays (which was bad planning as we are all birthday'd out by the time we get to mine every year).

I wasn't pushed down the professional route but never really considered not going to uni TBH, it was just assumed I would I suppose, you don't get far in science without a degree. About half my college friends went to uni (all the scientists) the rest went out to work at 18. We are still all very close now. I'm also fortunate to have friends locally with the same age DC as me, most are applying to uni.

I tell you what, if you'd told me even 3 or 4 years ago that DS with his SNs and EHCP would be applying for unis with a realistic prospect of success I'd never have believed it, he has come such a long way. I keep having to pinch myself.

@Heifer one of the reasons my name keeps changing (but always stays as ED) is to stop me being too traceable for the DCs sake. I wasn't on here when my Dcs were babies, joined around when they started school but I have several MN friends who I am now real life friends with, from long running threads like this (there's one I've been on for over 10 years). Also from Woolly Hugs threads. So different to other parts of MN.

@Zebracat I'm sorry things are so complicated with support for care-leavers and adopted children in the unis. I am finding similarly that they all have different policies re contextual offers if you have disabilities and that isn't such a big problem bit does make things more complicated.

@Zebracat I feel for you student finance can be a minefield with straightforward applications so not fitting into a certain category can make it super hard. Having you there for support makes her super lucky. Exeter are good with contextuals and unusual circumstances as they helped one if DSs friends who was a carer 4 years ago when he was applying. Let’s hope things improve