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?

just to clarify what the admissions tutor view was as compared with the Durham website info (which is split into three sections)

Section 1 - absolutely

Section 2 - marginal, some key aspects but not even close to 1/3 of the bullet points listed on the main website

Section 3 - completely not interested, and more than a couple of lines likely to lead to the reject pile

I think personal statements should be scrapped except for courses that require specific work experience such as Vet Sci and Music.

goodbyestranger. It's fitting that you mention that you mention that Bristol and Durham were explicit about the importance of personal statements in the decision making process,as they are two of the 5 universities flagged by The Social Mobilty Commision as not having having enough state school students and not having enough students from less advantaged backgrounds

Ds is starting a Liberal Arts Degree in a few weeks and the PS is flagged as highly important by the admissions staff. They asked for the following on a PS -

"Tell us why you are interested in studying Liberal Arts and what you think our course can offer you. Since our course is constructed around ‘Problem Based Learning’, we’d like to hear about how you approach problems. Tell us about an intellectual problem or question that you have encountered in your previous study (perhaps in your A levels), or other area of your life, and your response to it.

Liberal Arts courses are described as ‘trans-disciplinary’. What do you understand by this term? How have your educational and personal experiences inspired you to apply for a course that challenges you to think across disciplines?"

This obviously gives scope to use (relevant) EC stuff, if the candidate choses. In fact anything can be relevant!

goodbye stranger yes you'd have thought that. But the actuality is that if your predicted grades hit the mark you get offers at the vast majority of places. DS first offer last year came in less than 24 hours after his UCAS form was submitted. You can't tell me that it was carefully scrutinised in that time.

Yes I know homebythesea, it was literally that you would have thought it!

boys3 the history dept at Durham has been copycatting Oxbridge for as long as I can remember, so it's bound to now ask for an 'academic' personal statement. What the history dept wants is at odds with the idea of the Durham substitute personal statement too, and no doubt there are other departments where it would also be risky to use it - English no doubt and probably law.

This looks very similar to when DS1 was applying a couple of year's back, and which was completely contradicted by the admissions tutor for the faculty's talk at the Durham Open Day DS1 attended.

And yet again, as ever on MN, we are back to the anomalies, rather than talking about the vast majority of university courses.

Durham is over subscribed for many courses and selects based on trivial differences between applicants. This is simply not the case for the vast majority of courses. If you do apply for an oversubscribed course then you should look for all available information about that courses, from the most reliable sources possible. As I said above, it is perfectly legitimate to email admissions teams if it is impossible for financial reasons to attend open days.

You obviously have no clue that some parents have no idea how to help their children! I personally think some schools need mentors for the pupils. Lots of teachers is some schools have not been to the best universities and blatantly say all universities are the same.

Yes, and this is why universities spend a vast amount of time and resources going into such schools, providing mentors and support already.

Ultimately however families do have to take some responsibility for themselves as well. There seem to be a lot of people on MN who have basic misconceptions about university entrance (value of extracurriculars, value of UCAS points). It would be easy for such people to debunk their own myths by looking up information - if you can use MN, then you can use more reliable sources of information about university entrance too. University access programmes are not targeting the families who are using MN education boards, as the latter are for the most part already rather privileged, in terms of educational background.

Upthread my observation that applicants with strong EC seemed to do better in gaining places on some seriously competitive STEM courses than other equally academically qualified applicants , did not suggest causation.

DD has gained a lot from EC, which she partly took up at a point where she was struggling with dyslexia, wanting to have something she was good at. Perseverence, juggling (heading to the library at lunch time to do her homework), access to a wider peer group and to adults who were not teachers, coping with group dynamics in a competitive environment, learning to listen and follow instructions, experience of travelling in a group and staying in hotels...that sort of thing. Also deciding what she wanted to do and sticking with it.

Will this have helped at interview? Yes, because she is used to talking confidently to a range of adults. Will this make her a better student? I think so, as she has good experience of getting on with things, coping with disappointment and adversity etc. We have come across a few kids for whom grades have been everything, sometimes by working very very hard to the exclusion of almost everything else, sometimes propped up with out of school support like tutoring, and have wondered what will happen when they stop being top of the class.

That said the same skills can be learnt in different ways. Being a prefect, volunteering, responsibility within a family, engagement in the community.

KCL medicine puts it quite well:

We look for applicants who have participated as fully as possible in school or college life, making the most of the opportunities available to them and also demonstrated some experience of society beyond their immediate environment.

Haybott will know better, but I can see advantage of a brief mention of non academic experiences/achievements and the skills gained which would help you thrive at the next stage.

And FWIW, DD's medicine application sessions were shared with a local state school. I think it was the first time, and I suspect there was some learning derived from it.

Not least I think DD was the only one from her school not trying Oxbridge and her PS, using the on-line guidance available from the Universities she was aiming for, ended up looking very different from the more academic PS' submitted by her peers. The on-line guidance is there, and whilst it is useful to have teachers read and comment (but not edit), school expertise is not essential.

Perhaps the problem might be teachers giving bad advice based on out of date experience, rather than suggest ways students might do on-line research to select A level subjects, courses and write good applications.

NeedMoreSleep. I think everyone agrees that it's important for medicine applicants to have PCs that cover ECs as well as academics. The medical schools admissions policies are generally very clear about what is required. Most go to some lengths to make sure that their requirements won't inadvertently put off applicants from non-advantaged backgrounds.

Not all schools have prefects etc

Why is there still a requirement for personal statements then? Why not simply revert to the system as it used to be if there's so much discrimination caused by awarding merit to the content of personal statements?

Yes medical students are at one end of the spectrum, but surely more broadly Universities are interested in attracting students who will thrive. And to some extent personal attributes like maturity and resilience, which might be gained or evidenced by extra curricular, will provide comfort that a student will thrive. EC taking on a broader definition, so including a child who is a carer, one who has had the initiate and perseverance to find and keep a p/t job, or who is the only English speaker in a family so has had to operate as an adult in a variety of contexts.

goodbyestranger back in ye oldene dayes one had about 5 lines on the UCCA form to list other interests. But most applicants were interviewed in those days. Now, with 50% of 18 year olds expected to go to higher education (utter nonsense), the universities can't possibly interview everyone. So the PS is meant to replace the interview but it is clear that actually the main "sifter" is predicted grades rather than some kind of qualitative evaluation of all applicants for a particular course. All of my DS offers came in before the end of the UCAS application period, illustrating the fact that he was not compared against the entirety of his potential cohort but against a quantitative criteria ie predicted grades.

So all the pain and angst we go through when writing the bloody thing is a waste of time in my view.

Probably best not to talk about your hacking activities on a personal statement!

Universities do make attempts to inform schools, but often it is just the local one or two and not the best universities for each subject. It therefore opens eyes to the possibility of university but not the necessarily the best university. There are too many influences on young people regarding the belief that all universities are good when plainly they are not good in all subjects.

Homebythsea - I had no pain and anguish when my DDs wrote their PSs. I was not involved and I only read one of them after it was submitted. I never read the other one at all. Parents can be excellent at steering children in the right direction, but overseeing a ps goes too far.

I have, on many occasions, been told off by "those who know" on MN that all potential students are treated equally and a last minute application is treated the same as an early application. I don't see how this can be when some universities say yes almost immediately in October. Presumably they expect all the most capable applicants to apply early. I cannot think of any decent school that advises applying just before the deadline.

I agree that a certain amount of maturity, suitability for the course in terms of personal resilience and the ability to thrive at university are important factors and are not just measured by likely grades. If someone has really struggled to get the required grades and has done nothing else in their lives except school work, will they then struggle at university? Schools can spoon feed, to ensure success so other attributes can be important regarding a successful career.

Following on from your comment about working in a cafe, goodbyestranger, it appears medical schools ae very different in what they are looking for and it is a real "horse for courses" issue. The ones my DN and I looked at were asking for quite a lot of evidence that applicants understood the nature of the work and it is difficult to see how this could be achieved by working in a cafe. Other medical schools are different and there is no harm in that but I have a suspicion DN has been set against some universities by her parents and she will not be given the chance to apply to the most academic, even though I suspect she could have a go. This is also what is wrong with parental influence and school influence if it dumbs down ambition.

I have, on many occasions, been told off by "those who know" on MN that all potential students are treated equally and a last minute application is treated the same as an early application. I don't see how this can be when some universities say yes almost immediately in October.

Yes, this is raised over and over and over on MN.

Courses which say yes almost immediately are those which are not oversubscribed, and which offer to all those who can get the required grades. I.e. the vast majority of university courses, including those at highly ranked universities for subjects which are not heavily over subscribed.

Courses which are likely to be very oversubscribed typically wait longer before making offers. Very few offers go out for medicine until spring, for example, but a few will be made early to the very best candidates.

And then, as pointed out over and over on MN, it's not like we are guessing randomly. We do know how many applications we are likely to get, what calibre they are etc etc. So of course we can give out some offers early when we are already sure these are likely to be in the top fraction of our applicants.

There is categorically no advantage in applying before the deadline, anywhere. It is absolutely against the codes of conduct to treat equal applicants differently just before one applied earlier and we do get audited i.e. we would be in deep trouble if our admissions policies actually did discriminate in favour of those who put their UCAS forms in early.

bojo DS asked for editing help- I'm sure you would not have refused if asked! The stress was all his, hyped up by the school, and in my view for naught given his predicted grades meant he got 5 offers very swiftly

Bojo
I had no pain and anguish when my DDs wrote their PSs. I was not involved and I only read one of them after it was submitted. I never read the other one at all. Parents can be excellent at steering children in the right direction, but overseeing a ps goes too far

I find this type of comment is irritating. The reason you didn't have to 'oversee' your DCs personal statements is because you spent £££'s sending them to a school where they were given lots of support and advice! Of course there is no need for you to 'get involved' if the school was helping them.

My four DC were given almost no help from their non selective state school. Even my DC who applied for medicine got no help with his PS. If they wanted my help I gave it to them.

I must have misunderstood your previous post then, homebythesea, as you did say "we". This came across as more than editing on your part. Yes, I might have helped but I did want them to have ownership of it and write it. DD2 was interviewed, so it really needed to be her words, her achievements and ideas, succinctly written, and everything justifiable when it came to interview. She put together her portfolio totally on her own, at school, with no input from me either. Again, this was subject to discussion at interview and could never be a Mum and Daughter project.

We know of plenty who were offered places to read History, English and other heavily oversubscribed courses at very good universities who were offered very quickly. Well before the candidates heard from Oxford or Cambridge.

We know of plenty who were offered places to read History, English and other heavily oversubscribed courses at very good universities who were offered very quickly.

And? They'd still have been offered if they'd sent their forms in on January 14th.

It makes no difference. You normally receive 200 applications for 20 places. You know that to get 20 starting you need to make 40 offers. In September you get 100 applications, 20 of which are exactly what you want so you offer those 20. Another 20 are close, but you'll leave them pending till January. Your second batch of 100 applications come in and 10 of them are exactly what you want, so you offer, and 10 close. You therefore have 10 remaining offers and 30 potential candidates - those ones you look st more closely and you pick the best 10.

English and History - doesn't matter if you make too many offered anyhow - east to squeeze a few more into a lecture theatre.

My department has gone from being under-subscribed to being very oversubscribed (ie recruiting to selecting). We used to turn offers round overnight - if you were qualified we offered, no hard decisions, no risk of overshooting. Now we keep most of our offers on hold until all applications are in but we still make early offers to applicants who are at the top of the pile - if they have 5 As at Higher or are predicted 3A*s at A level they are always going to be at the top of a system based on academics, we have nothing to lose from an early offer. In the unlikely scenario that we make too many offers then we look for bigger lecture theatres and run labs on an extra day. Offers are made on the same basis whether they come on the first or last day of UCAS.

We know of plenty who were offered places to read History, English and other heavily oversubscribed courses at very good universities who were offered very quickly.

And this contradicts nothing I said - courses know roughly what numbers of applications to expect, what grade profiles these applications will have. A strong applicant can get an early offer, but an equally strong applicant will also get an offer when they apply in January.

You seem to be assuming that universities have no idea what to expect, whereas in reality applications don't change that much year to year. And if you do take too many students, then (as chemenger says) you just deal with it. It just doesn't happen that all courses in a university all over-recruit in the same year by accident, so you can usually manage with facilities and hire extra staff as required.

we was a collective "we" bojo - I think your entirely hands off approach is in the minority certainly in my experience and whilst no writing was done advice was given and editing done to make sure it "fitted"- purely linguistic not content

bojo re. your cafe comment: DS of course had other experience on his application, doing a hospital 'internship' and working with our GP and I forget what else in other words the cafe ticked the hard graft on a sustained basis box and the other stuff ticked the do you know the nature of the job stuff. This wasn't about academic versus 'hands on'. Believe me, the 'academic' medical courses require clear evidence of aptitude for the actual job, way beyond the academic. You need to come up trumps on all fronts - just more boxes to tick.