Would you pay for personal statement support? How much would you pay? What would you expect?

[DirtyDennis]

I'm setting up a side business of tutoring but have had a few people ask whether I'd offer UCAS personal statement support too.

It got me thinking that it'd probably be quite a good idea but I'm not sure how big the market is. So my questions are;

• would you pay for one-to-one personal statement support for your child?
• what would you expect to pay?
• what would you expect for that?
• what would you expect the qualifications of the person providing the support to be?

Really appreciate any thoughts. Thanks

[flamingnoravera]

www.suttontrust.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Making-a-Statement-FINAL.pdf

[Fazackerley]

The Sutton Trust has published
research showing that clear writing
errors are three times more
common in the personal statements
of applicants from sixth form
colleges and comprehensive schools
than in statements of applicants
from independent schools.5
All
of the statements analysed were
written by young people who would
go on to receive identical A-level
results. The differences in the
written quality of the statements
were therefore more likely to be
the result of inferior support and
guidance than academic ability

Surely this is quite a leap? Writing a personal statement is vastly different to taking an A level exam? I agree spelling and grammatical mistakes might not mean a candidate has lesser academic ability, but it does mean that they don't have as good attention to detail as a clearly written, perfectly spelt PS?

[MariaNovella]

Thank you for that link, flamingnoravera.

Though are we supposed to be surprised that secondary school teachers are less well educated than university admissions tutors?!

[HarryTheSteppenwolf]

@flamingnoravera - That Sutton Trust document is very interesting. As a medicine admissions tutor I actually think the "good" example on p3 is poor, and would not offer that applicant an interview. For the medicine statement on p4 I agree with the teacher, not the admissions tutor, and am quite worried that a medicine admissions tutor thinks that is appropriate content for a personal statement for entry to an undergraduate programme.

There are a couple of issues highlighted here. The main one, which the report begins to address, is that having a big block of white space in which to write a personal statement is unhelpful: it is far better to have a defined structure so all applicants know what they are expected to write about. The other, as evident from my first paragraph, is that admissions tutors for the same subject at different institutions will have very different expectations. Consequently, writing one personal statement for four institutions can be more difficult than we will admit publicly. As most medical schools don't read personal statements any more it has become a bit less of an issue in that particular field, but it will still be significant for some other competitive courses.

[MariaNovella]

having a big block of white space in which to write a personal statement is unhelpful: it is far better to have a defined structure so all applicants know what they are expected to write about.

I disagree. Parcoursup (French equivalent of UCAS) now has four questions to write about (about extra curriculars, travel, civic engagement etc) and it’s too limiting.

[HarryTheSteppenwolf]

now has four questions to write about (about extra curriculars, travel, civic engagement etc) and it’s too limiting

It's not limiting if those are the criteria that they are assessing. There is no point in allowing applicants to write about other things if they are not going to be given credit for them. Part of the problem with UCAS personal statements is that applicants take up a large proportion of the space writing about stuff that is not going to be taken into consideration, and consequently provide insufficient detail about the things that are going to be considered. For example, in my own subject area, few - if any - admissions tutors have any interest in why applicants chose their particular A-level subjects, yet many will take up 20-25% of their space writing about this.

[MariaNovella]

Fair enough. Interesting you should say that, as I have never encouraged applicants to write a lot about their choice of school subject but it’s a common misconception in schools that the UCAS PS must contain an explanation of school subject choice.

[flamingnoravera]

I work as a mentor for yr 13 students who are applying to university. We use a model that tells students to write about why they chose the subject they want to study, a piece of academic writing related to the subject (these two to be 80% of the ps) then the final 20% or less to talk about relevant work experience and skills acquired in extra curricular activities. Our method has offered feedback from admissions tutors that suggests it works and one told us that one of our students produced the best ps they had ever seen (for nursing). Our approach is based on the Sutton trust research I linked to below.

[HarryTheSteppenwolf]

the final 20% or less to talk about relevant work experience and skills acquired in extra curricular activities

I'm surprised that worked so well for a nursing applicant. Certainly, for most of the medical schools that still read personal statements (apart from Oxford & Cambridge), that would be expected to be more than 50% of the content. For Edinburgh, for example, these are the only things that are looked for.

[Piggywaspushed]

Haven't RTFT but this was in the papers recently as something UCAS and universities deem unethical. They also commented on the number of students who have highly educated parents who write their PSs for them which I more or less did for my DS

In effect you would have to ensure that parents were not paying you in the expectation that you were basically writing the statement for their DC.

I helped a friend's DS with his and got an unsolicited bunch of flowers. I'd feel very uncomfortable charging and it hadn't crossed my mind.

[CostanzaG]

I don't like this. Feels unethical. Yet another advantage students with rich parents can take advantage of.

[Piggywaspushed]

Back, having read pages 2 and 3. OP, you sound frustrated about the inequalities in the system, and I agree with you : the reason I helped my DS and his friend is because his school (on variouos contextual offer lists) was entirely useless at the whole thing. Yet, you want to leave the system (your choice, fair enough) and coach presumably middle class, affluent children to write PSs. Does that not seem a touch ironic?

Perhaps seek work for an educational charity instead or specifically in outreach at a university (although the pay in outreach is shit)?