Tragedy Tale for personal statement?

[SmurfHaribos]

My DD is in Year 12. I was talking to a friend whose children have gone to university. She was saying it’s very important to include a Tragedy Tale in your personal statement eg a diagnosis of something, an experience of prejudice, coming from a difficult/different background etc etc. You then have to say how you overcame it/live with it and how it has made you more resilient and determined etc etc.
As it happens my DD has 2 tragedy tales she could include but she really doesn’t want to as she feels it’s private and she is still coming to terms with a significant medical diagnosis.
How important is a Tragedy Tale in a personal statement? Does everyone include one? Is she shooting herself in the foot if she doesn’t include them?
Thanks in advance.

Nope. My brother went to Cambridge and I went to one of the top London unis and neither of us mentioned anything about resilience or overcoming anything. We got offers from all the unis we applied to (except I messed up my Cambridge interview but I still got the interview off the back if my personal statement which had no tales of woe).

The fact your friends daughter wrote a tragedy tale in her PS is probably completely unrelated to whether or not she got an offer. This is why you don’t use a sample size of one.

Good grief, no! She’s confusing university applications with Britain’s Got Talent.

Saying that the interviewers haven’t read the personal statement is very different from saying it hasn’t been read. For medicine it will have been read…..just by someone else. So at my uni I read all the applications inc personal statements for my course and decide who gets an interview. But I rarely interview. The staff who do interview won’t have read the personal statement.

This is all hearsay. Statements are read, even if not by the interviewer. And if applicants are not interviewed, statements are used to help us make decisions on offers.

it is astonishing that posters here persist in believing hearsay over actual working academics

It’s really good to hear from people in the profession that PS do get read. They take up so much time and energy and for a Yp to feel all that work is pointless is awful. My DC got 5 offers and could have mentioned some really sad things she has had to face but didn’t. She wrote about what had made her interested in areas of course, some academic reading and research, some work experience and why she wanted to carry on her studies with long term aim at end. Within that she did share a little bit about her background because it was relevant but certainly none of the adversity stuff … she got 5 out of 5 offers and often says she was really pleased she invested in writing a PS which was really her…
now just a small matter of getting the grades…..!

@DollyParkin I have read this board for years and many academics have said that PSs are not read by those who 'matter'. Obviously someone at the beginning of the chain reads them, but it's frankly embarrassing to suggest that adding a "tragedy tale" to your PS is going get you admission.

Well I’m a programme lead so I hope I matter. 😁

I wonder if your friend is confused by widening access criteria? These are sometimes picked up from personal statements but that is in addition to tick boxes or postcodes so I wouldn’t rely on it. My dc is a young carer but didn’t tick the box on the UCAS form as he thought it was just for those taking their caring responsibilities to university with them. It was mentioned in his PS and reference but he got a standard offer not the widening access one which they say they offer young carers (he got it anyway).

Widening access criteria are narrowly defined not just random tragedy stories. Normally care experienced, refugees, living in areas of higher density housing where the average income is in the lowest 20% regardless of your family’s individual circumstance, attending one of a few schools local to the university with access programs, that sort of thing.

‘Tragedy Tale’ is horrible and the whole notion is pretty insulting to those young people who really have had to struggle to achieve their potential.

Your friend is advocating presenting as a victim to gain points, and it feeds into the whole trend for young people to validate themselves through identifying as a victim.

It also sounds horribly close to people who say things like ‘play the race card’ and similar.

No, don’t include it. If you’re from a disadvantaged background that qualifies for a contextual offer under widening access that will be done via other parts of the UCAS application. So there’s no need to do a tragedy tale.

From what I’ve been told, they’d only be interested in something relevant to the degree course. Hypothetically say your DC was a refugee and now wants to study international law and perhaps work for UNHCR one day helping refugees around the world due to their lived experience, it’s ok to mention that in passing as it is why they want to study that degree course and why they have a career goal. I know one student who’s father was in a horrible crash and is now an amputee, & wheelchair user and he wrote that as to why he applied for robotics engineering because his career goal is to further the technology of prosthetics for fellow amputees.

Is the term Tragedy Tale a 'thing,' or just something the op's friend made up.

My son needed a contextual offer for his university place. He did not over egg his story, but his educational progression has been very much impacted by his history. It'd not a 'tragedy tale' but an explanation of his situation.

Sorry, but that's just the biggest generalisation ever. How do you qualify "most subjects" and "most universities" ?

I'm sure if you were to survey those applicants to the top 20 unis for STEM subjects and Economics this year, you'd get a different response

Most subjects at most universities just send offers to everyone with the right predicted

i get over 400 applications to look at. They all have the necessary predicted grades. I have 30 places. I can’t make 400 offers

A personal statement should be relevant to the course and why the candidate is suitable for it. Anything else is irrelevant.

‘Tragedy Tale’ is horrible and the whole notion is pretty insulting to those young people who really have had to struggle to achieve their potential

Seconded. This must be a pretty unpleasant person. I'm also surprised that the OP thought it a good idea to repeat the term here.

I've read hundreds of PS as an admissions tutor and to be fair I skim read most of them because the majority are quite formulaic. Schools and colleges tend to encourage students to write to a particular template and often give so much support in the writing and iterations of the writing that I'm never sure if I'm hearing that applicants voice at all.

No, not unless it has a direct link to the reason for the chosen subject. Or demonstrates a set of skills gained from it. 'Was a in a terrible car crash and used the many weeks in hospital to learn coding' fine. Wanting to study English and trying to shoehorn in a story of a hosuefire would be odd

To be fair @ddamekindness , the UCAS website guidance for writing the PS is very formulaic/generic also, as are most of the examples provided on the recognised university application focused websites.

As soon as it's retired for a more prescriptive approach, the better

Reading with intrigue

I saw this tragedy tale thing in an article for US applications?

It is a big factor for US applications

Gordon Bennet. Who would be a Uni admissions officer?

My DC is in year 13 so just been though all of this and I have to say nobody mentioned anything about this. I went tomloads of open days with I'm and all had a session on PS writing, we read through loads of articles about it. Nothing about this. His PS was very positive and forward looking and was really just about why he wanted to study the subject and how he'd come to that realisation. He got all 5 offers in within a week. Bear in mind he's a MC kid from the home counties with no contextual factors at all. Indeed, he doesn't have any sob stories.

I suspect this is for people courting contextual lowered offers. He did get offered exactly as published for the course by the uni. My own position is that if you get in contextualy it means that you're competing against kids who got say AAB in their A levels and you got BBC, and it's not going to be ideal. So frankly we didn't even try to game the system.

I wouldn't unless their genuinely is an overcoming adversary story there that is relevant to the subject and why they want to study it. It can't be necessary either as my ds had none of that and, as I say, was offered all 5 at published levels, 2 RG unis, rest top 15 for his subject.

The uni admissions person at school will look at all personal statements and give advice - but my feeling is, leave it out. If a situation had a direct bearing on gcse grades or A level study many universities have a separate Extenuating Circumstances form. My dd was advised to fill in one of these as illness in y10/11 meant her gcse grades didn't reflect her ability. In the end she forgot to send it but still got the offer she wanted