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.

“They can all use Chat gpt now anyway“

good point. Thank goodness PS being abolished from 2024 cycle

Spot on @Plirtle - congrats to your DD on training as a medic! Wow

I’m obviously a terrible mother. I did discuss with both children where they might apply but they wrote their statements on their own and went to open days on their own as did I, back in the day.

My dd is at a state comprehensive. Her school did offer feedback on personal statements once the kids had drafted them. Are you sure that your son's school hasn't offered any support at all? That would be pretty unusual.

They're not being abolished.
The process is being reformed but personal statements will still form part of the application process.

As has previously been said, I don’t understand why you wouldn’t go to the open days with him, especially if you’ve actually taken him! They can be beneficial to parents as well as prospective students.

Gosh do private schools trawl individual uni websites and search out module information for all the courses their students are interested in? Who knew!

Completely understand why you've done so much research .I did the same .
As you say ,you may have gone too far with the PS .

Ds did all the research and wrote his ps with the small amount of help college gave him. I checked the final draft through for typos. I didn’t even attend open days (although I know it’s not unusual for parents to do so). He also read through my ps for me (I’ll be in first year when he goes into fourth - God willing - different unis though).
I do think what you did is basically cheating. Also, according to ds, it was the spoon fed kids who really struggled in year one when they suddenly had to do everything for themselves (study wise and general adulting).

My dc didn't go to a private school. They didn't get oodles of help and they certainly didn't a prepared document for them to read with all the key points.

You're doing him no favours with this approach.

I didn't go to open days with them either.

“Another massive red flag that Mum is spending her time on the Student Room! Seriously OP, back off. And get a hobby. I recommend cross stitch or baking.“”

This snide comment says more about you @IkBenDeMol than it does about me.

Dc set up a shared spreadsheet for anything uni related. They looked at course info which was pretty standard across the board unlike say History and made initial choices of which universities they were interested in. I think they started by googling top universities for their subject and went from there. Together we looked at accommodation, and by together I mean Dh, Dc and myself as both Dh and I had been to uni and could talk about catered or self catered. Even younger Dc was interested as they too want to go to uni in the future.

We all filled in the spreadsheet but it was a joint discussion. It had costs of uni accommodation, how much money this would leave over from their loan plus parental top up, googling how much an average supermarket shop would be which handily is listed on some uni websites about costs, laundry costs, YouTube room tours, a day in the life of a student at that uni and uni hauls to see what people took and how to pack the car! We calculated travel time to each uni by both car and train and whether weekend visits would be possible either them to us or us to them. Dc actually discounted London unis and anything more than x number of hours away. Sixth form also gave links to good personal statements so we looked over those together too. Dc was glad of our input but then we are a close family who talks about everything.

I think what you did may be one step too far but it just shows you care. Somehow that seems to translate into him not being independent all from a teeny snapshot of you just helping out with his uni search, nothing about his day to day life. I think a lot of kids would be very glad of the help.

Ditch ‘your’ version of the personal statement. He needs to write his own.

Considered view (or unadulterated criticism) coming from someone who has never had any of the DC in private schools getting oodles of help.

I think you’ve gone a bit far. 😬

We did look at Unis and courses online with our son, although he had already researched them by the time we were really involved, and he knew the ones that he was considering. One of us went to open days with him as most parents seem to.

He read up on what made a good personal statement and his college were really helpful so we had very little input into that.

Our son would have hated having us doing it for him, he’d feel like we were babying him or that we thought he wasn’t capable.

After GCSEs, I think you need to take a step back. Be there for back up, but encourage independence.

I did sit up yawning for hours one night while DS, who had originally written his PS based on doing a techy subject, rewrote the whole damn thing and applied for English Lit instead, making coffee and suggestions for him to snarl at.

He’s lovely really. But the process of grudgingly writing the first PS made him realise he didn’t really want to do the subject.

Doing the PS is madness. You have let him down, not helped him. My kids would have hated this and would feel like frauds if they used your draft to apply.

Reading this has made me more proud of my kids. We are a close and supportive family. But my teens were determined to do their statements themselves and run the final draft by their school. They let me look at the final stage however and I gave some advice on reducing word count.

They did open days with friends, again their choice. They got into great universities by their own efforts.

All this parental micromanagement, research, spreadsheets etc!

I am quite surprised at how much help some teens have wanted and needed from their parents.

I think it's actually really disempowering for young people when their parents take over and do stuff like this, when it's obvious that they really ought to be doing it for themselves. What does it say about the confidence that you have in your son when you have written his personal statement for him. You are effectively sending a not so subtle message that you don't trust him enough to get on with it by himself. That isn't the kind of message that I would want to be sending to my dd. I am happy to help her with stuff when needed, but I want her to be confident that she can do stuff for herself.

As the parent who will end up funding my kids through uni, I did an initial trawl of Oxford colleges for DD who was applying there to make a shortlist of some that offered accommodation in all years. Selfishly driven to reduce my costs. She ended up applying to a completely different college but it helped narrow the open day visiting down.

I wouldn't know enough about their courses to be able to do a deep dive of modules though, that's a bit extra.

My parents gave me no advice at all about uni but I was the first in my family to go there. I offer support and they rarely take it.

My DD also wanted applied for a very niche course. That pretty much creates a longlist by itself, and I was happy to talk her through the factors which I thought would be important in deciding the final five for UCAS. I spent a few weekends looking at websites with her and making comparisons, but I'm not sure how that differs from collating the information and presenting it as a report! We then did a couple of open days (a bit Covid-disrupted) and she fell totally in love with one of the courses/cities. Which is where she now is. But, as a PP said, it's horses for courses; I suspect that my DS won't want my advice quite so much, and that's also fine.

Personal Statement is a different kettle of fish, though.

It's worth a parent going along to open days as there are talks for them too!

I think you've put your finger on why the OP is not doing her DS any favours, @PauliString Your story of your DC doing the work, in order to realise what he really wanted is quite inspiring.

It's the process of doing the research & writing, not just the results of the research, which prepares a young teen for the increasing independence they'll need to have in order to thrive at university.

And it's not just independence - it's also learning to develop good judgement and a sensible outlook on the world.

You've deprived him of an important learning activity @Weddedtomywashingmachine .

No she hasn't 🙄

I love researching stuff and am very organised so I would probably want to do all that but I'm going to have to hold myself back!

Why are infantilising your child though?

i don’t understand why you’d do it yourself rather than support his research skills and independence?

how do you think he’ll cope with actually studying at uni if he’s used to you serving up a pre-researched information pack

Are you going to write his essays too?