Anyone with dc doing a summer school this year?

[DrMadelineMaxwell]

Dd is. She's usually q reserved so when she suggested it, I jumped at the chance to help her go. It's in London and we live in N Wales, so it's a small holiday for her sister and I as well as school for her at UCL.
She's enjoying it, thankfully. She's met new people and the nature of the summer school itself can only help her gain experience and confidence ready for applying for University.

[DrMadelineMaxwell]

DD is state school but didn't qualify for Sutton Trust. We're in Wales and the Seren Network is there to support and encourage pupils with good GCSE results to apply for good universities. She was able to win a place on the Magdalene College residential course that was offered to our area.

It certainly was a big chunk of change to afford the hotel for a week mid London for the summer school, (£700 ish) to allow her to attend. But we don't live anywhere near London and haven't been for years, so we did approach it as a family holiday.

Thanks for the link, thesandwich. No courses that would have interested DD1, but well worth a look in a few years for DD2 who is much more sciency minded and interested.

[TheThirdOfHerName]

DD's school do outreach stuff through EDT.
Not that helpful for her though as she wants to do Art & Design and is not remotely interested in STEM subjects.

[Au79]

I don’t think a Paid-for experience is good material for a ps, precisely. Uni’s to my knowledge are likely to (and rightly so) discount them as unfair to poor candidates. Not that the providers would tell you that!

The value would be to get your lukewarm dc to find a passion, or come across a subject they can really enthuse about, that otherwise wouldn’t have hit home. Also maybe to be attracted to University life, if they aren’t that interested so far. So, I would still spend the money on that rather than a lie on the beach holiday if those were my options and I could manage it, in the appropriate year.

[TheThirdOfHerName]

If a summer school inspired a passion for the subject and/or led on to further reading, you could include that on a personal statement, but it would be more about why you're interested in the subject than about the summer school itself, if you see what I mean.

[thesandwich]

Completely agree re paid for experiences on personal statements but the value in inspiring passion and understanding the range of subjects is very valuable- also an insight into uni life.
There are masses of free courses/ resources on futurelearn, coursera etc, TED talks etc covering every topic.

[DrMadelineMaxwell]

Dd spoke to an applications bod at Cambridgen on one of their taster days (A bargain at 20 for the day btw) and said that yes, summer schools were a good thing in terms of showing an interest in your subject.