Applying for Uni 2019 entry, parents support thread

[Decorhate]

Now that they are back at school, working on Personal Statements, doing the final Open Day visits, I thought we could do with a new thread...

PS stress going on here. I thought he was happy with it, mainly his work with some parental edits. Feedback from school made 1 little change. A few more changes to reduce characters and lines, and suddenly his personal statement is a disaster and he needs to start again because he feels he has not got enough reflection. The most annoying bit for me is that none of the courses he is applying for put much weight on PS - only 1 looks at it before shortlisting. Hope it was just a temporary negative mood following an unhappy experience at a choral scholarship assessment day.

Ho hum.....

Draft 3 here. DD sent it to me and it's massively improved from the last version, so sitting with the friend of a friend who works in a 6th form was a huge help. She's emailed it off to the lady to see what she thinks of the improved version.

Tomorrow brings a meeting after school about PS and applications and hopefully, if she gets good feedback from the 6th form lady, then she will be ready to apply. Although I think she needs to sit and jot down all the uni and course numbers so they are in one place to make the form easier to complete. She's done all the qualifications.

Lots of progress on the thread! Offers already

Not sure there’s any progress here - dd’s UCAS tutor told dd that ‘universities don’t differentiate between predicted A & A’ - so she’d be no better off applying with AAB as AAB. We call bollocks - if that were the case why we they ever predict A*s?

Anyway that was enough to throw a heap more anxiety onto the situation. Dd said she is going to speak to her biol teacher about it - but she’s said that everyday since Friday & hasn’t.

I had a sneakily look at the worksheet they’ve given them to start their ps - it’s pretty crap. Also looked at some exemplar ones on TSR ... errr not sure what to say about those!

She’s aiming to get hers in in October (has EPQ presentation first which is time consuming).

We're not making much progress at all. Biding out time. Still no sign of DS's form tutor's comments on his first PS draft (I suspect we won't hear anything for another week or so, until all the Oxbridge/Medicine applications have been submitted). No information on updated predicted grades. although its unlikely these will charge markedly (surely?) since July parents' evening, unless huge change in approach to study?

On predicted grades, at our school, the end of year report showed the teachers' pessimistic predictions. For UCAS, they increase the predicted grades to optimistic predictions, but we have not officially seen those though I got them from the Head of Year as DS is applying to Cambridge and could not do so with A*AA.

So, NewModelArmyMayhem18, all schools are different, but if they have not made it clear, you might like to check what UCAS predictions will be.

Laniakea - definitely not true for Oxbridge or lots of Medicine. I don't think it could be true for all Russell Group. For med, Leeds said they don't differentiate between A*/A predictions, Edinburgh and Exeter do.

Progress here. Personal statement finished.

No progress here. Supposedly working on PS at school but DD is seemingly laid back about the whole thing, although I doubt that will last.

Ds has assessments this week. They will tweak the predicted grades off the back of these.

Hopefully he will then crack on with his application

Personal statement done, final checks on the form and the final version off to the tutor tonight. The tutor says that she'll submit it to UCAS on Friday.

Parents evening for my DS next week shit will hit the fan

Piggy you may be in for a pleasant surprise! You just never know!

Up until the Yr12 one, DS's parents' evenings had always ended with him in tears (teachers telling him he wasn't putting in the work/effort required). It was such a pleasant change (relief even) going to the most recent one. Let's just hope the next one (in about three weeks) is akin to the latter rather than the former!

right, I'm in a perpetually hideous mood atm so I might be over reacting & I'm posting here before I call the school.

DD finally plucked up the courage to talk in depth to her UCAS tutor (the one I already dislike because she spent the whole of the parents' info evening talking about her own kids rather than ours)

1 - universities don't ever differentiate between A & A* (rubbish)
2 - predicted grades should be optimistic (they've predicted dd what she got in the two sets of mocks)
3 - she hates deferred entry (thanks for the opinion, evidence?)
4 - kids just go off to Thailand and don't come back (I'm not going on holiday)
5 - oh what are you doing (working so I can afford to go to university, job already lined up)
6 - why (because I have lots of siblings & one working parent)
7 - you'll get a maintenance loan (yes 4k, accommodation is 5.5k minimum)
8 - your parents are expected to top that up (yes, see point 6)
9 - well if they are willing to take you on deferred entry they'd be willing to take you applying next year for non deferred entry (not if I have a near miss with the grades & also either way I'd be having a gap year)
10 - well talk to your subject teachers (I will & can I ignore everything you've told me & get my mum to call you in a strop?)
11 - Do you think I'd be better off applying my grades? Well I hate deferred entry.

wtf?

She's seeing biology & chemistry teachers this lunch time, she's going to repeat the point that Ms W has said their grades should be optimistic & hers absolutely aren't. And them call me.

Laniakea Poor you. Try telling her teachers what she needs then asking this is achievable? Maybe they don't know an A isn't good enough? As to deferred...mine was told at her fav 3 that she could call the day before and ask to defer! Totally took pressure off. I agree with you. Better to have the offer on predicted and maybe slip a grade then defer than apply with actual below offer grades. I don't think I'd apply for a deferred place up front though.

that's interesting - I applied for deferred entry back in the day, lots of us did actually. dd spoke to the admissions tutor on the course & they said deferred entry was fine, I wonder if attitudes to it have changed generally?

It's just my feeling for DD really. She loves a plan. So for her I think aiming to go is right but if she got to the week before and decided to take a year out then at least the option is there.

I'm really confused as to why schools have so much input into our children's application process.
It really annoys me that DD1 feels that her tutors have to approve her PS, it frustrates me that some of their advice is based on their own (often outdated) experience, and that the support they get differs so greatly from school to school.
It's absolute madness!
My particular bug bear is that DD has been told that her PS (hadn't completed it yet) will have to be approved and signed off by her tutor. This seems to result in a formulaic statement, it is supposed to be a personal statement. If, after taking advice, my DD decides to stand by her statement surely that's her choice. She can represent herself far better than a tick box exercise.
It seems a fine line between guidance and dogma

I've spoken to dd again, the tutor actually said Southampton may be fine with deferred entry but she wasn't. Dh is calling her now, he's much cooler headed than me.

drivin, I don't think that is true of all schools. Certainly, at mine students ask teachers to look at their PSs for help or advice but no one 'signs them off'. And at DS's school no one seems to be micro managing at all. I genuinely would prefer over interference to laissez faire, all things considered....

newmodel, thanks for support but my hopes are not high!! We actaully had a good parents evening last year and, a few weeks later, teachers were complaining about DS...

I wish he would cry to be honest. It would be a sign of him caring one little bit. GRRR!

No micromanaging of applications at DD's school. Maybe there is for the ones that need it though? First draft came back with really minor suggestions but to be honest probably less than I would've made!! It'll go in tomorrow and maybe one more look after that and that should be it. It definitely is still her words and story though.

biology have put it up to A, no hassle at all, she's already much happier - she might stick with AAB ... her chemistry teacher is really scary.

Yay!! What is she wanting to do?

Laniakea, well done! Sorry, but I have lost track - where and what does she want to do?

On finances, a lot of universities provide extra support. School got somebody in from Swansea who said they give £1,000 (pa?) to any students with AAA. They all have bursaries in place for students whose parents can't afford to help as much as they would like to.

You could e-mail the scary chemistry teacher - most scary teachers are not really scary and want their students to do will. Nothing ventured, nothing gained!

I don't see how the school can sign off the PS on a practical level. DS has been filling it in and it seems that we "press the button" and pay when DS is ready. His tutor saw an early version and suggested he should change 1 word. I could be wrong as we have not actually pressed the button yet!

oceanography - highest grades she'll need are AAB but she's scared that she won't get an interview, A*AB makes her feel much more confident.

The only risk with optimistic grading that I can see is accepting an offer based on them and then not getting the grades in August, thus having to go through the stress of clearing.

I think last year DS had minimal input with his PS, his maths teacher just checked the factual content of the maths he had written about. There were no changes to the way it was written. He got all his offers.

Dd is going to have a crack at Oxford, so I think that's added a level of scrutiny this year that DS didn't concern himself with.

To be fair, I'm wondering if the approach DS took was the better one! Certainly it was more relaxed.

Are there any late open days this weekend?