Year 12 Work placement

[pinkroseapp]

Have your DCs done any work placement in year 12 or 13 to enhance personal statements when applying university?

Neither of my two did, and both have done well on UCAS offers (maths and engineering, both got offers from very good unis). I think it's a great thing to do if you can bag a placement, but unis are getting wise to the fact that some applicants are enormously helped by family connections while others aren't, so in our experience at least it didn't seem to go against my two that they didn't do it.

DS2 did some online engineering thing with Samsung that was basically entirely open to any Y12 engineering applicant, but nothing else. Even with me and their dad both working in sectors that in theory would have been relevant for them, we couldn't find a single company that was willing to take under-18s - it's increasingly just not possible under various company policies (GDPR, safeguarding, liability insurance etc).

I wouldn't worry too much if you can't do it, but if you get the chance, why not?

Depending on what they want to study even if they can't get a placement worth asking teachers/looking for relevant eg competition ms to enter - DS (Physics) for example did the NSC space design challenge (with his school), DD (Philosophy) entered an essay competition run by one of the universities. Does help to have stuff that's related to their studies to talk about in the PS.

@pinkroseapp
It doesn’t have to be work placements unless the degree says they are a good idea. What do Dc intend to study? I’m assuming a career facilitated by a degree?

Look at career days at professional institutions, competitions, study weeks, get informed about what dc might want as a career, what interested Dc in the first place, efforts made to enhance knowledge of the subject.

A work placement might be useful and of course Dc can ring round local companies if appropriate. My DDs did this. We didn’t know anyone who could help them personally!