If your DC is doing early UCAS application, what's the school's schedule?

[ClaireBlunderwood]

Hello DD has done her A levels and will be applying to Oxbridge with grades in hand for 2026 entry. She was told to hand in a draft PS for the second week of term (ie last Monday), which she duly did and nobody's got back to her. When she checked they'd got it, they said, in so many words, chill we're busy.

When is your school expecting a first/second/final draft of the PS for the early mid oct deadline? For example, a friend's child in a private school has to submit her UCAS to the school for their references by the end of this week. What sort of support do they offer in terms of any additional lessons, interview prep, choosing the written work?

I completely understand that they're probably prioritising the y13s but she's feeling a bit abandoned. They made a big deal of saying they'd support post qualification applications but in some ways I'd rather they just said, you're on your own, if that's the case.

We did it without the school's help on the PS. The only thing the school did was write a letter of recommendation.

Send off when it suits you, and if you need to run the PS past someone first, I'd use an outside source like a tutor or a known teacher etc.

I think DS has to hand in his form by 25th September

Thanks for both of these, really helpful. I think you're right in that it might be better just to act independently re. the PS but make sure the UCAS goes from the school with the references etc. Also should make sure that there's no one else applying for same subject/college as it's a big sixth form.

What do you mean by the school checking no-one else is applying for same college / course? Surely they just apply to the course / college they want?

DD is year 13 and is applying to Oxford. Her school hasn’t asked for anything yet other than for them to have done a draft, but don’t think she has handed it in yet. She is busy preparing for the MAT test is 5wks time.

You don't need to worry about college/course overlap. This is a myth that a lot of schools seem to buy in to but has no real basis to it. I can understand that teachers don't like the potential fallout of two of their students applying to exactly the same course/college if one gets in and one doesn't. Your DD is on a gap year so that element of personal upset is removed. From the tutors' perspective, the fact two candidates happen to go to the same school is of no interest. There is no scenario in which Oxbridge tutors would say "these two candidates are among our strongest but unfortunately they're from the same school so we'll just have to pick one of them and reject the other'. In any case, if it's Oxford, there's a reasonable chance that she (or the other person from her school) gets reallocated to a different college anyway.

Gosh that makes perfect sense. I don't know why I'd always assumed it was an issue, but I can see this logic. I do know of two kids from the same school doing the same subject at a college - it was Oxford and I think one of them had got reallocated (so it shows how little the tutors think it's a problem).

DD is applying for a v small course so she's going to be in competition with anyone who's applying, whichever college it is.

And school has now responded and she's going in for a meeting.