Extracurricular activities for uni application

[Puzzledmum]

Hi, could you share what extracurricular activities did your DC in order to earn "brownie points" for their uni applications?
My DD has been doing music to a high level (since the age is 3) and is planning to do some volunteering next year.
I know they need to do something which will show they have leadership skills too and am trying to help her decide on what to do about it. But what else? What have your DC have on their CVs which helped them to secure a place at a good uni?

on the off chance

Schools should be telling the kids what is important, not stuff that actually might not make any difference at all and crucially use up a big chunk of the very limited number of characters available to "sell" yourself.

At my DS (private) school they had admissions people from 2 RG universities in to tell them what to put in. The emphasis was very much on the reading around and the relevant work experience to show some interest and knowledge in the subject. DS PS (for geography) referred to a couple of chapters in a book about the rise of China as an international force which he may or may not have cribbed from a review on Amazon , a couple of Royal Geographical Society lectures he watched online, his work experience in an HR department and a geog taster day at Royal Holloway he attended in the summer holidays after Y12. There was no room to also refer to the volunteering in an old peoples home, his membership of a sports team or his participation in school events.

Having said that for the vast majority of courses at the vast majority of universities if your predicted grades are at par to their usual offer they probably don't go on to even read the PS.

No need to eye-roll at me - I'm entirely in agreement that schools should be telling children what's actually needed, but I also know that they don't.

It's not surprising you mention your DS's school is private, though. Some state schools are clued up and know that they can either do their research, or get someone in to talk to them. But a lot aren't, and one of the hardest things to do is to persuade someone that there's something they don't know that they don't know!

I think it's quite useful to stick in a couple of lines at the end of the personal statement about your other interests.

An anecdote to back up based on one particular experience , Ds went to an Oxford History Open day. Whilst queuing to ask a question of a tutor he overheard the girl in from of him asking how much credit she would get for her (apparently very impressive sounding ) DoE achievements. The tutor said something like, "If I were to interview you for DoE Studies then possibly a fair bit . As I would be interviewing you for History, then you wouldn't" . I do know there are not many interviewing universities / subjects now but backs up what others have said.

Ds used most of his PS to talk about the subject and then as Goodbye said, he had a couple of lines at the end for an EC activity which could have a bit of relevance.

I think it's quite useful to stick in a couple of lines at the end of the personal statement about your other interests.
This is sensible to cover different university preferences. Plus a few lines obviously for subject directed interests or relevant work experience.

BTW one of my DCs has a hobby that is very unlikely ever to make it to any application or CV but has played a hugely positive role in relaxation, work ethic, maturity, etc etc. Retrospectively a much better time investment than a box ticking 'worthwhile' interest.

LRD not eye rolling at you but at the situation you so correctly describe. This is one area where private schools could most usefully reach out to local state schools to do joint talks etc to enable the state school applicants access the same good information and support. My DS had umpteen sessions on various aspects of the Uni application process, meetings with pastoral staff to go through it all etc. Contrast with students at a local FE college who were told that they would get no help with applications lest the student not get offers and blame the staff for bad advice (told to me by one of the students)

Sorry!

I'm just frustrated by it. It's not that private schools need to reach out - state schools could get the info from the horse's mouth, but the problem is people who don't realise their own information is out of date, or plain wrong. Plus the rumour mill. I know someone who was preparing to go in to a school where her friend taught, to speak to their sixth form. This woman has done Oxbridge admissions for some years. The deputy head basically told her they didn't really trust her version of events, because obviously, Oxbridge has some kind of secret handshake system, and the fact that Oxbridge was denying that, was proof it must be secret.

Mind you, my own private school was just as bad, back in the day, so it's far from being only state schools that have the problem - it's just more depressing when they do.

Yes sendsummer subject related work experience can be extremely useful in a personal statement but I'd say it should go back up to the body of the statement rather than be the relatively irrelevant throw away lines at the end.

subject related work experience can be extremely useful in a personal statement but I'd say it should go back up to the body of the statement rather than be the relatively irrelevant throw away lines at the end
Absolutely. My comment was directed to the subject relevant experience being not part of the two or so lines rather than to its placement within the text.

My understanding is that universities genuinely don't want to disadvantage applicants who haven't had the opportunity to do the type of extra curricular activities that the more advantaged applicants have had. This is true even for subjects such as medicine where medical schools do look at the non-academic side of their applicants.
Dukd of Edinbrugh is mandatory at some schools and not offered at all at other schools do it would hardly be fair for it to give applicants an advantage.

Contrast with students at a local FE college who were told that they would get no help with applications lest the student not get offers and blame the staff for bad advice (told to me by one of the students)

Home either you live by me or as I suspect this may be very common. I went to a talk about university admissions. I has heard of schools setting deadlines for the completion of PSs so the school could help go through it and the exact words you have written were used when asked about the deadlines at the college.

To be honest I suspect his predicted grades were used rather than his PS.

DS mentioned only relevant EC (hardly any) in his personal statement for Oxbridge but he said that the school's reference said how impressive his marks were given how much EC stuff he did, so in one sense EC did help his application.

gaslight it's mind boggingly depressing isn't it. And we wonder at the lack of social diversity in the top universities

This is one area where private schools could most usefully reach out to local state schools to do joint talks etc to enable the state school applicants access the same good information and support.

Or - state school applicants could just go to university open days. They will get all the information that is required there. Ask on any open day and you will be told that extra-curriculars are not needed to get offers - and yet MN seems utterly convinced that extra-curriculars can make the difference. Ask on any open day what should be in the personal statement and you will get a reasonable guide.

It is in private schools' interests to imply that they can give better support and guidance for UK university admissions - this encourages parents to send their children there. But there are no big secrets, nothing that people can't learn from open days and from looking at university websites/openly available data about courses.

How do you know that helped, though? I can see it could, obviously - as I am assuming he got in - but I don't think you can know.

After all, one way to read that reference is 'this person insists on doing too many irrelevant things and this has not yet affected his marks much', which could ring alarm bells.

That's an extremely tortuous reading of it LRD, if you don't mind my saying.

Why?

Isn't it pretty basic? The student does a lot of extra curricular activities. The school feels that his marks need justifying as excellent taking those into account.

The academic wonders whether this student will continue to do a lot of activities, and whether his marks will still be excellent 'taking that into account'. Because he won't get a first on the basis that he scored 67 and rowed for the first eight.

Alternatively, the academic is bowled over with delight and thinks this is a student who will manage his time excellently, obviously.

So it is possible to read it both ways, but - based on my experience of the number of ways in which academics can read almost anything - I'd be slow to assume they will all read it the second way.

So it is possible to read it both ways, but - based on my experience of the number of ways in which academics can read almost anything - I'd be slow to assume they will all read it the second way.

Do you seriously think academics would make decisions one way or another based on a few sentences in PS/school references? Most university courses which look seriously at the PS also interview. If there's a concern from PS (which happens very rarely) this gets addressed directly in interview.

That is almost exactly the opposite of what I'm saying.

I'm saying they might very well not make a decision based on a sentence like this, and with good reason - that the interpretation of it would be ambiguous anyway.

LRD this sounds to me like a school saying Wimsey Jr is to be congratulated on doing all sorts of other interesting things besides getting good grades. He got into Cambridge if I recall correctly, so the grades must by definition have been good.

good - as I acknowledged, yes, he got in.

And yes, I understand what the statement means.

All I'm saying is, it is not yet proven that the statement - a one-liner in the reference - had anything whatsoever to do with it.

LRD they'd probably just use it as an ice breaker at interview, as in how did you enjoy the tiddlywinks Olympiad in Magaluf? My point was that it's hardly likely to be a doom laden negative.

LRD cross post. By definition you don't know what it means because you've just said it's ambiguous.

That's not what ambiguous means. Ambiguous means there are two or more possibly interpretations.

I never suggested it was a 'doom laden negative,' merely that the claim that ladypeter made originally isn't really tenable. I don't think interviewers are likely to use this sort of thing as an icebreaker, either (because it could sound a bit dodgy). But I could be wrong there.

Only put on extra curriculars if they demonstrate transferable skills.