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.

Asylum seeker, grown up in care, longterm illness so significant schooling missed - serious things like this that might reasonably have been expected to have affected academic performance are worth mentioning (briefly). Otherwise don't bother.

Mind you, we got a contextual offer anyway because we live in the hood 😂

No.
University applications are not X Factor auditions

Yes an American friend told me he had to do something like this for his Yale application. Not tragedy, but a very emotive story of personal growth.
I have done admissions in this country for an MA course and we read the personal statements quickly and in a very specific way, looking to check off 3 things (it was a vocational subject so we wanted work experience, clear reasons for doing the course and a realistic idea of what the job would entail). Tragedy on top of this would be neither here nor there. It wouldn’t make us relax any of our criteria because we felt sorry for them, because the criteria were there for their benefit as much as ours - if someone has had a hard life you’re not going to make it any better by admitting them onto a course that is wrong for them.

I imagine it will be different in different subjects but there is probably an equivalent set of criteria you are looking for for each course and you read the statements with those in mind.

You don't need to. And she certainly shouldn't if she feels uncomfortable doing so. It should be an empowering piece of writing. I have seen some good Overcoming Adversity statements, but the key to a good PS is to focus on why the subject currently engages you. It helps to focus on aspects of the course that you look forward to studying and why, on recent (not historic) demonstration of wider interest beyond A level syllabus, and to mention some potential plans for how you'd use the degree in future study or work.

Is it true UCAS are going to get rid of the PS from uni applications and replace with targeted questions? I hope so as I don't relish going through that potentially with 3 more children. I found it really tedious and it over-dominated the application process and general process of figuring out 'what do I want to do with my life' from what I saw. I remember a very stressful evening trying to help DS cut out superfluous words so that it would fit in the bloody box.

Oh yes @SmartHome it's the icing on the cake with the PS for the kids - having to dumb it down to fit the word count to then find it also still doesn't fit the UCAS line count

@SmartHome they are certainly talking about it, but as per the FAQs on the first link the "when" remains to be confirmed

https://www.ucas.com/advisers/guides-and-resources/adviser-news/news/personal-statements-will-not-be-changing-2024-entry

https://www.ucas.com/file/692816/download?token=LueoDrzn has the Future of Undergraduate Admissions report. The potential PS changes start on page 6 of the report.

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

They're not read at my institution 🤷‍♀️ Offers are made centrally and sent to all with predicted grades within two of our standard offer.

If you get an offer within three days you can guarantee no one's read the PS - it's just been output from a bit of code

You could (should? Depending on your offer/enrolment ratio) make 150 offers though. And you put your standard offer up a notch to wheedle out some applications. You could also make your 150 offers to those with the highest GCSE scores. Or predicted grades. (Once you've identified your WP applicants of course.) plenty of ways to make offers without trawling through 400 PSs!

This.

@titchy - does your institution make it clear on their website/prospectus that personal statements aren't needed / aren't read ?

@titchy i find it so depressing for our young people that it’s all treated like this. Why on earth make them do them if no-one reads them.. it makes me really angry. There is enough unnecessary stress in the whole totally random and unclear process.. why should young people put so much work into a process which is treated with such disrespect by many instituons..

Not sure what our prospectus says tbh. We're a recruiting uni though so can't afford to to that fussy to be blunt.

Why make them do it? Well they're not just applying to us - they're applying to four others as well, and one or two of those may use the PS as a criteria.

That aside, if you can't write a page on why you want to study x at uni for the next three years you have to ask is uni really the right route.

It’s not that they can’t - it’s whether there is any point at all in doing so if it’s of no use to the process.

Never ever heard of this before, so my guess is it's NOT very important! My DS has just finished his 1st year at university.

@titchy makes an important point about the difference between recruiting universities and selecting universities (and either sort will have some recruiting and selecting courses within)

At mine a coherent and grammatically correct PS is likely to generate an offer

You don’t get a contextualised offer by writing something in your PS. You get one by meeting the qualifying criteria set by the institution. They will require proof of this, usually through the school reference but sometimes they also require documentary evidence.

I know.

I have seriously thought I had heard it all on MN HE threads but this one is a shocker!

I saw this on Youtube though haven't watched it yet.

A

I do agree with this. But on the other hand, playing devil's advocate, the whole tedious PS process did get my DS to focus on what he wanted to do and why, irrespective of whether or not an admissions tutor read it, and it did help crystallise his thinking on whether or not he did really want to go to uni, rather than just assuming so because all his friends were. It was useful and valuable for him, although very tedious to get to that point, he does now have a side of A4 to remind him what he's trying to achieve and that he is good enough.

But yes, his application went in on a Sunday from the school and he had a RG offer (at stated grades) by Monday lunchtime so clearly that one doesn't read them very much. The other 4 were all received by the Friday including one with a scholarship offer on the Wednesday. I am not at all surprised to hear this is all algorithm generated and key word/point generated.

I do think they should make the contextual criteria more clear though. He knows boys that live in slightly deprived parts of South London adjacent to the highly selective school they attend that appeared to get contextual offers (eg ABB for Bath and BBB for Durham) which doesn't seem entirely right to me. I also don't know why one of the contextual question is do you identify as LGBT as I don't see what relevance that has.

Yes this is what I meant in my previous message. US undergraduate applications

I see this "trick" suggested on US TV/movies but my kids and I received offers from everywhere without a sob story. They applied to places that tallied with their predicted grades which probably helped the unis make a quick decision.
Do you know that the personal statement section is going in a year or two? I suspect that it's because it's only read in borderline cases or because ChatGPT/professional writers make the PS worthless.

It depends.

For some medical school applications, I have read really interesting accounts eg caring for a sibling with a life-limiting condition, written about in a medical rather than emotional way. However I tend to roll my eyes at, ‘I broke my arm at five and that spurred me on to want to be a doctor’.