Writing a UCAS reference.

[Mrsmorton]

One of my (just) former employees has asked me to write her a UCAS reference. She applied for the same course 2 years ago and didn't get in- I don't know why but I think she's achieved some additional qualifications now.

I still have the reference I wrote her last time and aside from including her additional achievements, I don't really know how to change it. She's still all of the same things she was before so my question is- will it be a disadvantage to her if I submit a very similar reference? I do these very rarely and had this one checked by the head of Sixth Form at a local school (a friend of a friend) last time, he said it was fine.

Any tips please.

It's difficult to answer without seeing the reference. If it's all positive I assume it's not the reason why she wasn't accepted.

So I can titivate it and resubmit?

Yes, I would.

Thank you so much joopy

advice here

Was her employment with you in a position related to her degree choice? Did she show aptitude for the field? Does your reference give your opinion and evidence from her work with you, that she would be academically capable of working at degree level and successful in her chosen field? Can you back that up with any specific examples of things she did 'above and beyond'?

Chances are, her not getting a place last year was nothing to do with your reference, but if you can honestly beef up what you say about her potential in the degree subject then you might just help if she is on the 'maybe' list. If you can't honestly say those things, she may be better getting a reference from someone who can.

Oh very much related and she did all of those things Haffdonga I will revisit and do some beefing up. Do I need to talk about how well she will do on the course as well as how well she will do in the job afterwards? It's vocational, sort of like an HCA going to be a midwife scenario.

That's good
Of course you can't actually know that she'll do well on the course or have a great career, but any evidence you can give to back up your belief that she has the potential would be great.

I'm pretty confident thank you so much for advice haff

Wouldn't make a blind bit of difference if you submitted same reference as last time, we don't cross reference with previous years. From what I'm told, neither references or personal statements are big part of the selection process for us.

Might say on dept. website how they use the reference information?

Highly unlikely any overworked academic will remember a reference from 2 years ago.

I know shirking I couldn't remember what I wrote! I didn't know if the references went through some form of software like turnitin or some such.

Thank you all for advice.