Does anyone ACTUALLY read the personal statement?

[llareggub]

Genuinely, I’ve always wondered. If someone does read them, what importance is given to them? Can an amazing personal statement result in a lower offer? Surely there is a point where they are all really quite similar?

If they’re not read, and they don’t interview, how on earth do they decide who to offer to. Surely thousands of kids have the same gcse and predicted grades.

If university don’t read PS how do they select the students? School references and predicted grades only? Specially highly competitive courses

I have been told by a reliable source that at Birmingham for Psychology, they literally are only interested in the grades. This is because it is a hugely popular course attracting tons of applicants.

That makes no sense. If it attracts more applicants with the right grade predictions than there are places available, how do they differentiate between them? Unless they interview, the only option is to use the personal statement and/or school references.

If it attracts more applicants with the right grade predictions than there are places available, how do they differentiate between them?

They don't need to. Applicants typically apply for five courses, so even a selective uni will need to make more offers than it has applicants as 80% of those offered on average won't accept the offer. Add on the fact that of those who firmly accept, some won't achieve the offered grades, and again those that do, some will inevitably not turn up to enrol. Hence pretty much all who apply with the right predicted grades will get an offer.

@coffeecayk gosh they really do tie them in knots.
These are very very young adults who don't know yet.
How can they possibly say re practical and theory until they get on these things!!
Sounds like someone very fusty, rusty and closed minded to me.

Then it isn't as oversubscribed as your post suggests, and I'll edit my reply to ... "If it historically attracted more first choice applications with the right grades than there were places available, how would they differentiate between them? Unless they interview, the only option is to use the personal statement and/or school references."

As I said in a pp, the most oversubscribed universities and courses need to use them and the others are able to take anyone with the required grade profile, so don't need to use them.

Huge variation, I know DH always did but it was a science subject and labs can blow up. I did but my colleague never did and was quite proud of that fact, he really didn’t care and yes he was a prick. This was an oversubscribed RG University.

... "If it historically attracted more first choice applications with the right grades than there were places available, how would they differentiate between th

They interview or use other admissions tests! The reality is that scenario is rare outside of Oxbridge and Imperial.

Unis, even the most selective such as Oxbridge and Imperial, will always make more offers than they have places available, even based on historic firm acceptances, because kids miss their offers.

In Covid times when A levels were cancelled and kids all achieved much higher grades than expected, the majority were accommodated by their chosen uni. Not entirely successfully it has to be said, but there's no punishment for the uni if they do end up with 105 in Tort Law rather than the planned 100.

Many places make tiered offers. They start by making offers to the very strongest candidates, who have PGs well exceeding the admissions requirements.

I am not defending this approach

I worked at a uni very far down the league tables. PS were only used after results came out to find reasons to give an applicant a place they had missed the grades for.

My DS and youngest DD are both doing arts subjects, at different universities, Both acceptance emails made reference to things in their personal statements.
I've been a STEM academic (chose to go into industry after a spin-out) and we didn't use them unless we had a surfeit of candidates with identical qualifications and school references.

Everything changes this year anyway, so take the advice from the uni websites on how to answer each question.

Yup, for what it's worth, I'm fully aware of this - I was just questioning OnceAndFutureMum's anecdote about the "hugely popular" course - my point being that it clearly it isn't popular enough to be oversubscribed.

Yes, some unis do use admissions tests and interviews - and some use personal statements - and some don't need to use any of these things because they're not oversubscribed.

Lors of approaches, but there's only one ucas form for all courses.

Durham said they did take them into account and Bristol said no - offers based on GCSE’s and predicted grades - would only look if there was a decision between two candidates .

My son applied for law at St Catharine's College, Cambridge. They stated that they did not use the PS or predicted grades as they could not be sure the student had written the PS themselves (or how much support they might have had) and all schools assess predicted grades differently. For them, it was all on the interview.

Not this year. Next year.

But the interview will have been based in part on an extension of info in the personal statement. The PS at Oxbridge is probably unimportant in deciding who gets an interview, but gains importance at the next stage where applicants have to back it up. And if it has been ghostwritten then they're probably screwed.

I only know what I was told by a member of the academic staff in that dept. I wish I was able to elaborate on the minutiae of the process, because I'd like to understand it better myself, but unfortunately I cannot.

Yes. I used be a nursing lecturer and the sheer volume of applicants meant we had to go through every single one for nursing and midwifery , there was a marking pro forma and a scoring system . I’d say at least 1/3 of them didn’t get called. There were some excellent ones, and some were just badly or not thought through.
similar for medicine as I used be involved in their interview process too.

Every school or faculty will have a different answer but anything that requires an interview will have had the PS read .

I thought there was a move against personal statements as they favoured middle class students whose family could afford their children to do a wide variety of extra curricular activities?

There is also the near impossibility of verifying authorship and I am sure certain schools would 'help' quite a lot drafting the perfect PS.

Extra curricular activities aren't of interest to UK universities - they've only ever been interested in motivation and aptitude for the course, which is why the free-text statement is being replaced by 3 questions next year:

Why do you want to study this course or subject?

How have your qualifications and studies helped you to prepare for this course or subject?

What else have you done to prepare outside of education, and why are these experiences useful?

Ds was asked about something he mentioned in his personal statement in his Oxford interview. He got an offer. It was an interesting bit of personal work he’d done in his own time that was relevant to the STEM course he was applying for.

Actually not true in my son’s case. Both interviews were solely based on written material provided half an hour beforehand. They bent over backwards to be as fair as possible to candidates and the interview did not encompass anything related to their backgrounds, extra curricular interests and activities etc.