I’ve done the research, drafted the PS - is this normal?

[Weddedtomywashingmachine]

DS in year 12 asked me to help him research universities to apply to as his school was nagging at him to get the ball rolling. He knows what he wants to study and as it is quite niche, that narrowed it down.

I got obsessed with rather into it and have now spent many, many, many hours sifting through unis and drilling down into modules. I’ve given him a VERY detailed paper setting out the pros and cons of each course, of each uni that offers it, accommodation options and costs, travel time, graduate prospects, student satisfaction ratings and the like. I’ve also done a first draft of his personal statement and booked open days for us to go to. DS is very grateful and is looking over the paper over the course of the next few weeks.

When I mentioned this to a friend, she was horrified and said she just left her DS to it. Another friend thinks it’s wonderful and has asked me to help her DD.

Did I do the right thing? Uni is expensive and I want my DS to have the info he needs to make the right choice for him. I emphasise that where he applies to will be up to him but at least he has all the info he needs now without having to ferret around in the interstices of uni websites.

I am sorry but you are being ridiculous.

Mature enough to have made the final decision about what he wants to study, but not mature enough to look up the universities for himself?

Surely you can see those two statements are incompatible.

And @VioletaDelValle is completely right, who knows what would catch his interest or inspire him if he looked through the courses himself.

And considering many of the best MFL course are those which combine a language with another subject, he has literally thousands of options to consider, none of which will be considered, as you have done all the considering for him

I think you need to be very careful, in some unis, most students are studying their own first language as a MFL, meaning if you are not studying your first language, you will score far lower, and also get a degree which is not respected. MFL from Oxford may be respected in some circles, but is not respected in others

www.mod-langs.ox.ac.uk/news/2020/08/18/oxford-tops-qs-world-university-rankings-modern-languages-2020

I don't think many doors would be closed to people with an MFL degree from Oxford.

I'd also like to see (I've googled but can only find stats for A levels) figures supporting your comment that "most" people doing an MFL degree are studying their own language. If, statistically less than 20% (and that's the highest figure, for German A level) are native speakers, then "most" people studying German at university can't be native speakers. Unless they are ab initio which would defeat the object.

(No skin in the game, just curious, my degree is French and Spanish but from when dinosaurs roamed and we had 1 half Spanish girl on our entire course. I teach English now)

Why did he ask you to do the research @Weddedtomywashingmachine?

Those A Levels could lead to a whole range of courses.
Young people change their mind all the time. When I was working in school and colleges as a careers adviser I'd deal with young people who changed their mind as a result of research or after attending an open day.

My PhD research looked at how young people choose courses and universities and a significant number of participants told me they changed their mind during 6th form/college and some of these were young people who had been wedded to their choices since they were very young.

We want young people to make informed decisions and to do that they need look at all the options available to them.

You've totally missed the point that @VioletaDelValle was making, OP. Or else you have chosen to ignore it because it doesn't suit your narrative. Your ds might think he knows what he wants to study, based on the narrow experience of school, A- levels etc, but by taking over and doing the research for him, you have denied him a really valuable opportunity to properly consider and explore some of the other avenues that might be open to him.

I find myself wondering what you were hoping to get from this thread when you first posted. Why did you ask "is this normal?" and "did I do the right thing?" if you're clearly unwilling to entertain the idea that it isn't normal and that you did the wrong thing?

Were you expecting everyone to say that it's normal for prospective university students to be so incompetent that they can't do basic research for themselves?

Or were you expecting posters to be telling you what an amazing parent you are and how lucky your ds is to have so much help?

So-called careers advisors on here are jumping to conclusions about me and disregarding the fact that my DS knows precisely what he wants to do! Great advice not

I was going to ignore this dig..... but nah, I'll bite.

I'm not a 'so-called careers adviser' I'm a qualified, experienced careers adviser. I have a MA in Career Guidance, a PhD which looked specifically at how young people choose university and university courses. I continue to research and write on the influences on career decisions specifically the influence of parents on higher education choices.
I've also worked as an admission tutor and have taught UG students.

Your son outsourced his university research to you and you let him. Let's hope he doesn't expect to be able to continue 'outsourcing' when he's at university.

Yeah, @VioletaDelValle, but what do you know?

Nothing clearly 😂
Unfortunately careers advisers get a bad rep generally so I'm used to it!

@Nimbostratus100
There are native speakers on MFL courses. We knew that would be the case and it does make it more challenging for others. Some have been coached by a “foreign”parent for years! However DD chose the subject she was good at and which gave her the best platform to succeed in her career. She enjoyed the degree. Fortunately there was even less choice for GDL or the BPTC so even quicker than university decisions!

@VioletaDelValle that's really interesting. Dd was absolutely wedded to a particular profession and degree from year 5 to 10. Totally 100%. Then during year 10 - completely changed. Still art-oriented but total sea change - completely different degree I'd never heard of at places I'd never heard of. I admit it actually took me about a year to get my head around it. I would not have pegged her for being pro-active and organised enough to deal with this but she did and I'm so pleased about that.

PS - I'm interested in your research - will pm.

Your research sounds fascinating @VioletaDelValle

I teach (at an RG) in an Arts discipline that pupils can study at school, through to A Level; it can also be pursued via vocational/conservatoire style HE/FE. A lot of students come to us with a very specific notion of what my discipline is & what is involved in studying it, and what career (difficult to get into & badly paid, if paid at all) they want afterwards. But it's a very limited view of my discipline as an academic (or even vocational) subject. We spend most of the first semester of their 1st undergrad year in trying to broadening our students' minds about the discipline. If we're successful, most of them make radical changes in what careers they aspire to after graduation.

And this is a good thing. It's about growing up, broadening horizons away from school and family, and being exposed to some of the country's best thinkers in the discipline.

Broadening horizons is key ( or to use a theoretical term - expanding horizons for action) and is why most young people change their career ideas.
Young people base their career ideas on what they know or what they have seen ( and what they have seen other people like them do). If you can get young people to see or experience a wide range of career options than you are helping them make an informed decision.

Sometimes it confirms that they are on the right path, for others it opens up options they didn't even know existed.

Young people change their mind all the time

Yep. We thought DS1's choice of A levels was a bit odd for someone who wanted to be an English teacher. Turned out that they were perfect for someone now intending to study Biochemistry. And then Palaeobiology (or Dinosaur Studies, as I always think of it to myself).

Only from our experience as a school, many sixth formers in the last few years have set off for MFL degrees, and left and changed in the first month, as they feel disadvantaged and a long way behind the others, who are native speakers

Many universities, many languages, many years

We do warn applicants now.

as I said, a MFL degree from Oxford is respected in some circles, and not others.

@VioletaDelValle's research sounds absolutely fascinating to me and I think she definitely qualifies as an expert in her field! I always think it's amusing when someone totally ignores (or even tries to denigrate) a poster who is quite clearly extremely well-qualified and knowledgeable in her field because it doesn't fit with the narrative she is looking for…

What's that famous phrase? 'You Can't Be What You Can't See' – usually used in the context of how hard it is for women to enter non-traditional career fields when we don't see anyone in that role, but equally apposite in this instance, I think.

Thank you @thing47

What's that famous phrase? 'You Can't Be What You Can't See' – usually used in the context of how hard it is for women to enter non-traditional career fields when we don't see anyone in that role, but equally apposite in this instance, I think.

My students are sick of me saying this phrase!!

Is this other people's experience too?
Dd1 applying for MFL and it isn't her mother tongue. This has scared the he'll out of me. Not Oxbrdige either.

"I think you need to be very careful, in some unis, most students are studying their own first language as a MFL, meaning if you are not studying your first language, you will score far lower, and also get a degree which is not respected. MFL from Oxford may be respected in some circles, but is not respected in others"

If you don't mind, @Nimbostratus100 , can you name any of these universities? I help students prepare for many subjects at many unis, and MML or MFL at only the very top ones, and they all explicitly say that you are not invited to apply to study a native language. Ie, you're Peruvian, you are not supposed to apply for Spanish.

By the way, Oxbridge MML to graduate diploma in Law is a very well-trodden route, and highly valued by the big law firms. My son has done just this.

@Travelban no, that is not my experience

Two of mine are doing (different!) MFL. Neither can think of many or any native speakers on their courses, though ‘some people speak two or three other languages, and we have some Liverpudlians if that counts?’

The non-Oxbridge one is a sight more fluent than the Oxbridge one, who spends too much time speed-reading medieval literature to know how to ask for a sandwich.

The non-Oxbridge one is a sight more fluent than the Oxbridge one, who spends too much time speed-reading medieval literature to know how to ask for a sandwich.

So true!

Lol, so very true! I did some Italian at Cambridge as part of my degree (which was not an MML degree!) and I became very proficient in words for hell, misery and eternal damnation while being completely unable to order myself a simple pizza!

Good old Dante!