My DD is in Y11 and we get lots of communications from school about doing things like summer schools, lectures at local universities, exhibitions, Duke of Edinburgh, NCS, books to read, etc, etc which all say 'this will look good on your UCAS personal statement'.
I can see that many of these things might be great experiences, whether for learning skills, developing confidence, increasing knowledge or even just plain interesting or fun! But, not having experienced uni applications for 30+ years, all I can see is that there's quite a limited amount of space on that form, so how would you, for example, use the fact that you've attended 10 public lectures if you don't have space to list them? But, if you can't give details, who is to say you haven't just made up that you've been to various lectures and summer schools? Is there something on the UCAS form asking for evidence of things that you've done?
Sorry if I'm being dense, I suppose I just want to have an idea of how to support DD in choosing what might be helpful to her (& knowing what records to keep of what she's done) but not to get too overwhelmed by trying to take advantage of all the different outreach stuff that seems to be available in Years 11 and 12 in our area (close to London so perhaps more opportunities than in some areas).
It seems to me that a lot of these things are really aimed at giving school students a taster of what their subject is like to study in greater depth, what uni life is like, etc - which is probably all very helpful in ensuring that they make good choices about which subjects and unis to apply to. But it feels like we are expected to make more of it than that and schools (I presume not just DD's school?) can create a frenzy about filling spare time with experiences for the UCAS form.
I am left wondering what kind of things are actually going to be helpful, so I am hoping someone with older DCs might share their knowledge of their DCs actually found useful - whether for the personal statement or for choosing courses, or maybe for other reasons.
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Can you really fit all this on a personal statement? Extra curricular opportunities
49 replies
tangleweed · 21/02/2017 15:50
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