Personal Statements

[whateveryousay]

Am I the only person drafting their child's personal statement?

Please tell me I'm not alone.

Did medicine - my mum wrote my personal statement with a lot of input from me. I tried to write it, but she didn't like it and took over. Her personal statement helped me get my interviews, and they discussed the contents of it in those interviews (so they had read it). I did ensure that I knew exactly what was in it and pretty much memorised it.
Personal statements are completely different from all writing teenagers normally do. Having a parent be heavily invested/do it for you, does not mean the teen will be unmotivated/fail at life. I graduated and am working now despite parental help at the start.

Yes but makes it totally unfair. What about the kids who don't have parents to write a PS for them ? They are stuffed. Which is why Universities have started to not use them - they want to level the playing field. Quite rightly

But that is only if you feel Universities are not able to identify those statements written by parents/teachers and those written by students without guidance.

And I still think the reason that many Universities do not give much weighting to PS' is not because of the factors you mention, but because they don't need to. They have enough places to offer to accept all their good applicants with the right predicted grades.

The same applies to medical schools. Some rely heavily on aptitude tests, UKCAT and BMAT, and others look at PS. (Thank goodness. DD had a relatively poor UKCAT, possibly because she is dyslexic, so had to focus on those medical schools which give good weighting to PS. She will be going to Bristol!)

At the end of the day it does not really matter who writes and how much help was given. The content must come from the applicant. DDs PS was clearly written by a dyslexic, albeit one who shines at science. However she had spent a summer aged 16 working full time in an old folks home, and done more than her share of volunteering and shadowing. One of her friends had a professionally written PS, again for medicine. Lots of polish, not as much content. She got two offers, he did not get any.

To me it does matter who writes it as it's supposed to be written by the applicant !! Not mummy and daddy or some company paid for by mummy and daddy. But then I've spent most of my career working with kids from disadvantaged backgrounds and know how unfair this makes it. If my own DD bombs her UKCAT she too will apply to Bristol with a PS she wrote herself,

Yes. Which is why Bristol has such a high applicant to place ratio. At the end of the day it probably does not matter who writes the PS for a course where the PS matters in selection. It's content that matters, and parents or teachers can't do that for you. If anything a highly polished PS possibly does the opposite of reassure selectors.

Yes but makes it totally unfair. What about the kids who don't have parents to write a PS for them ?
No more unfair than those who go to public vs state schools, those who get great teachers vs those who don't, those who are born with dyslexia vs those who aren't.

Everyone tries to take advantage of what they have and whether fair or not, it is very much life.

DD is applying to medical school and will be competing against those who've gone to private schools, who will have been coached by teachers who've full experience of taking pupils through the process, whereas DD went to a secondary school that has never had a pupil going on to study medicine, and went to a new 6th form that is still trying to established itself. She's overcome this, so I don't think that getting a bit of help from me, with a background in recruitment, is making her application any more unfair that the vast majority of the applications received.

Bristol Med school do. I said Law though 😁
Yes, you've picked those that supported your point and I picked one that didn't.

We shall have to agree to disagree. I believe students should write their own PS and not any

Whoops !! Not anyone else. I read hundreds of them every year and it is so obvious which are not written by 17 year olds. It's a shame as it's meaning Universities are starting to use them less and I think they were a great way to show who you are, especially for state school kids (of whom I have 5). But the system has been so abused it's now all a bit pointless.

I hope it's obvious that dds is recognisable as one a 17 year old wrote, because it's far better than something I'd have written for her, she knows her subject matter and interests far more than I do. I'm so naive, that until this thread it hadn't occurred to me that people might doubt it because of parents writing some of them.

Again, there's 'written' and 'written', in the same difference between a parent who says to their 10yo 'just give me your homework, I'll do it for you and hand it back' compared to a 10yo showing what he's done and mum not too impressed and spending time with him going over what he's done and giving suggestions to improve.

and I think they were a great way to show who you are
Except that they are not, even if solely written by the pupil as it would still separate those who are great at expressing themselves on paper compared to those who aren't. You could even argue that a parent would actually be more capable at evidencing who their child really is compared to the child themselves if that was the aim of the PS.

I personally don't see how it is any different than applying for a job. It remains highly subjective and only one tick box of many others to get to offer.

And by the way, I'm a mum who has never done homework for my kids, not even reading it, and wouldn't normally read my kids' PS, however, medicine is highly competitive and DD if anything is starting a few steps behind than the majority of applicants, but she's work incredibly hard to get where she is, with a good chance for a place, so yes, if I can make some suggestions that help her get there, of course I'm going to do it.

What kind of parent would say to their dedicated, passionate, hard working kid 'sorry, I could help and that help could make a difference between getting an interview or not, but for the sake of fairness and justice, I'm not going to help you'!!

I think they should drop personal statements. They are either pointless as not read or considered at all (i.e. Most of them) or they are written with so much help, cross referencing and research that they aren't a true reflection of a students abilities. I think they are probably yet another thing which advantages the advantaged and disadvantages the disadvantaged.

You could still include lists of work experience, ,responsibilities and interests.

@mumsneedwine -- as a fellow Admissions Tutor, I am totally with you.

Yes, be invested in your DCs' university applications. Yes, please do turn up to open days and ask the hard and the more practical questions that your offspring will be too afraid to/won't know to ask. And yes, help your child draft and edit their PS. But it needs to be theirs, not just the content but the voice.

FYI if your child is applying to a humanities programme, in which how well the applicant is able to craft sentences and paragraphs is an important part of the decision, please be particularly circumspect about parental edits. We want to see how your DC writes, not you or another professional.

Also, this .

Piratepanda I could not agree more - I read them as I'm writing the kids references and I like to make sure I'm on the same 'page' as them. And my own comprehensive DD is also applying to medicine. Her tutor has read her PS and given suggestions to improve it but it's her work and her voice. Because she is the one applying, not me. But as she now knows 4 out of 5 of her choices won't even read it I think she's less worried. I think a form like vets have to do outlining work experience and actual work (something all the med schools liked - 2 mentioned that having a job in McDonalds was more useful than shadowing a surgeon) would be better. It's a shame as I think PS has its use.

After he stared at a blank page for a couple of days I gave DS some bullet points on which to expand. He also then discovered the student room guide which helped a lot.

DS ended up having an interview so I am glad he did most of it himself, he has an offer below the standard offer so the statement and interview must have gone okay. Less than 3 weeks until we know if he has met his offer.

So really, we all agree that it's all about how we define 'helping'!

To be fair, OP did talk about writing her child PS, whereas I had it that the discussion was about providing guidance and support. I actually didn't think any parent would go ahead and write it all independently of their kids! Yes, that's fair enough, it is 'I've done my kids homework for them because it was too hard'.

Hi Bristol Uni only base 50 % on personal statement from visiting open day rest is based on GCSE grades and UKCAT.

They are all reducing the reliance on PS so 3/4 out of the 4 unis my DS is hoping to apply for only 1/4 will be looking at it anyway.

Agree with PiratePanda (as usual). We need to hear the applicant's voice.

And yes, it would be nice if we had a post-results admissions system. Applicants would still have to see universities, make their choices in a ranked order of preference, and then wait until results are out. Universities would simply admit all those who'd made the grades required & put them first.

However, A level exams & results would need to be done & dusted by the end of June.

July: it's academic conference season, and mopping up students doing resits etc, plus all our postgraduate supervisions. August - our only opportunity for a vacation. But it's already being encroached upon. I'm managing a week with family, although there is pressure for me to do something quite important in that week. I've had to say No very firmly. Then I'm at further conferences in the last 2 weeks of August. September we start preparing for the teaching which for me starts mid-September.

So the myth of academics having a 3 month "holiday" in the summer is just that - a myth.

A post-results admissions system would need to shift the timing by at least a month, but more like 6 weeks.

July, not necessarily a good thing. UKCAT is very difficult for someone with slow processing speeds. It is essentially a speed test. Extra time does not help, especially if you are in a non airconditioned basement on the hottest day of the year, when everyone is brain dead by the end of normal time. GCSEs can also be a problem for an applicant whose strengths lie in science not English/languages, again fairly typical for dyslexics. DD did not land an interview at Nottingham as her UKCAT and 7A*s at GCSE were one point short of their threshold.

One boy we know practiced UKCAT daily for six months and got a huge score. DD is not that sort of person, but was very happy volunteering and gaining experience. Both will probably make good, but quite different, doctors, and are studying at very different places.

We were very glad that Bristol was willing to put more emphasis on the individual, rather than simply grades/UKCAT. I can see that others feel that this meant state school pupils were disadvantaged, but my understanding is that private schools actually saw Bristol as one of the most difficult medical schools to get into because of their expectation that applicants had broader experience.

With regards to entry after results. Would it help if the university academic term were shifted by a month?

So we don't start until mid-October, rather than mid-September? My university has 2 twelve week terms, and a summer examination term of 8 to 10 weeks.

So a 12 week term starting in mid-October would have us finishing around about New Year's Eve .... and then Easter would completely get in the way of the Spring Term.

Quite a few Unis don't start until early October so it's not too much of a stretch. - Warwick, Northampton, Coventry, Oxford etc

I'm sure it could be done somehow.

I have one studying history at a well-known northern university and one hopefully going off to medical school in September.

They drafted their own personal statements. I read and sometimes marked up typos and added suggestions. And teachers helped too. But we all felt very strongly that they were going to do the actual writing.

They did at least half a dozen drafts in total.

I hear you @WeyHay . I am going camping at the beach for ten days, during which A Level results come out. So, being Admissions Tutor, I will be locating a spot with decent phone signal and wifi and sitting there for two days just in case the adjustments and clearing desk calls for my yea or nay.

While I'm on my holiday. Camping in a tent. At the beach. (And no, we could not go at another time.)

The 3 months of the university vacation is a STUDENT vacation, not a staff vacation. Statutory 4 weeks plus bank holidays in my place, not that anyone I know ever takes them all. And my DH is Oxbridge, where they don't observe bank holidays either.