Ucas form - school reference

[mammatilly]

Does the student invite a teacher to provide a reference? Does the student get to read the reference?

Very concerned as DC personal tutor seems not very keen on DC!!!! Can we choose a teacher who is more supportive?

Schools normally allocate a teacher to this but no reason why you can't request this- although the teacher you choose may not be used to doing this and school may be reluctant.

If it is for 2024 entry I wouldn’t worry too much as UCAS are changing to a more structured approach so there will be little or no personalised content other than the predicted grades unless there are mitigating circumstances. Details here.

Great thanks for the link - but the optional statement still gives room for some negativity potentially- do tutors do this or do thry big up their students???

It is not really in their interest to do this. Students also can read their references via Freedom of Information legislation via UCAS, but most schools/colleges will give copies if requested because it is pointless to withhold them.

Hi, OP -

I am a former admissions tutor at an excellent Russell Group university, in a large STEM School. I have read thousands of letters of reference.

I don’t think I have ever read a bad one. Some are definitely terse, most are formulaic, and one does learn to read between the lines. But it wouldn’t be professional to write a bad letter except in the gravest of circumstances. A number of parents have probed this topic gently over the years, and whenever I have chased it up it has always come to nothing. (Not that I ever tell the parents, as I think the choice to do so lies with the writer)

We have always tended to ignore letters except for mention of contextual and mitigating circumstances. But the reason isn’t that some letters diss students: quite the opposite. Writers with the time and energy can and do give a fuller portrait of their applicants than writers with more constraints. It wouldn’t be fair to the pupils of the latter, who are the great majority, to downgrade them for this reason.

The new UCAS guidance is an implicit way of telling schools and parents the truth: puffery about the DC is a waste of effort. Teachers aren’t forbidden from saying more than the new guidance requests (as I read it) but it will look odd if they do. Desperate. I honestly don’t think you have anything to worry about.

If there is something grave in the academic history of your DS then scratch this; you need advice from someone with professional expertise helping students into university.

I am a sixth form tutor writing references and we would never be able to write a negative reference as they are checked by at least two other people before they go. We would be asked to rewrite if not suitable.

UCAS references take many hours, and are allocated, structured and timetabled as a major part of a staff members' workload, and are not subject to casual shuffling around.

UCAS subject references are always positive. They are provided by the various teachers and collated into a document along with a paragraph on the student's outside interests and activities. The predicted grades are also added at this point. We always tell our students to discuss their predicted grades with their teachers, show them the ref and provide them with a printed copy on results day. The whole process is rigorous and transparent and carefully considered in a professional manner However, the changes for next year will mean that individual subject references etc are no longer needed. Predicted grades will, of course, still be required from the school.

Ds's was read out to him before submission by his group leader. He had 4 teachers for 4 subjects who contributed and a few lines from his group leader too. It was more our cohort is this range and Ds places here type thing too as well as his general attitude to learning etc.