Has anyone’s Dc applied for different uni courses at the same time on UCAS?

[OurLadyOfLeisure]

DD will be applying for uni next year, and wants to study a joint honours course.

The problem is that her two current favourites are different subjects (ie 3 subjects overall, favourite is subject 1 and 2 at Oxford, but second favourite is subject 1 and 3 at St Andrews).

She will probably apply for subject 1+2 at two other places, and 1+3 at one other place - but that might be affected by open day visits.

(Incidentally, second subject is a humanity/social science, third is STEM. They probably share some soft skills but basically are unrelated)

So when applying and writing personal statement, she could either:

• talk about all 3 subjects, and apply for them all at once.
• Talk mainly about 1 and 2 and just touch on 3, hoping that St A don’t pay loads of attention to PS; apply for all 5 at once.
• Just talk about 1 and 2, apply for just those initially, wait until she knows if she will get an Oxford interview/knows how it went. Ask the remaining 2 institutions if she can submit a new PS just to them, do that in Jan.

Has anyone else been in a similar position, and what would they recommend if so?

This is NOT recommended for high tariff universities where Personal statements matter. Your personal statement is why you want to do a course. And at Oxford and St Andrews they read them. No History department will want someone who might end up preferring Physics. So, my advice is to pick a horse. If she changes her mind, clearing is an option, particularly for the easier subject to get in for. So, apply for the main one (or joint honours but they need to be the same / similar for high tariff places) She can then try clearing if she changes her mind / doesn’t get in with her favoured subject. Some universities automatically reject if the PS is not focussed on the course. Even for less academic courses e.g. paramedic. Some only read PS for some departments. But, Oxford is very different and St Andrews is similar. Both reject a lot of applicants with high grades based on their personal statements.

They don’t see where else she has applied to so she could add one or two places in her other choice of subject and chance it but her PS must match the courses for most.

Former Russell Group admissions tutor here, highly competitive school though not quite so competitive as Oxford or St A’s. I agree completely with @Cismyfatarse

These are two of the universities that pay the most attention to the PS. Neither will be impressed by a candidate who does not know her own mind. One subject and one subject only is the best strategy, unless of course there is a suitable Joint Hons degree programme.

There is nothing wrong, at all, with being unsure at this stage. However it is a perfect reason to consider a gap year. Academics almost uniformly like to see candidates take gap years, as they are so beneficial. In no way are they perceived as concerning flags.

My DS had a slightly similar dilemma but it was a few years ago now and I have a feeling the process may have changed a bit sunce then. Plus his choices were not quite as different (or for such high tarrif Universities) so I'm not sure it's that relevant. But for what it's worth I'll tell you about his experience just in case there is anything useful.
He wanted to do a very specific engineering course which is only offered at 3 Universities, so obviously if he was going to use all 5 slots in his application he had to put something different down and he opted for more general mech eng at fairly middle of the road Universities. He was unsure whether to really tailor his PS to the niche course or make it more general with a nod to the niche. Fortunately he had quite a lot of work experience and supercurricular stuff which could be spun either way.
He had a long talk with the careers teacher at school about what he really wanted, how realistic that was, what he'd want to do if he didn't get offers, or if he got offers but not the grades etc. Ultimately he decided that he didn't want to risk not selling himself fully to the course he really wanted just to potentially slightly increase the odds of getting onto something that was very much his plan B, especially given that he'd be likely to find a plan B course in clearing or if he took a gap year anyway. His PS did include examples which could have more general applications but I'm sure anyone who read it will have been in no doubt where his main interest was.
As it happens he got offers from all 5 anyway so perhaps he overthought it, but better that than not thinking about it enough. I think the key things for him were that if he made his PS too lukewarm and didn't get offers he would probably be forever wondering if he could have sold himself better.Plus he came to the realisation that whilst starting university can feel like it is a one time only offer and that it would be the end of the world if he didn't go straight after A levels, that's not actually true, there are other options.
Of course he had the luxury of his plan B being a course that is offered just about everywhere so unless he hugely underperformed in his exams he would almost certainly find somewhere in clearing or the following year. I realise it's probably not that simple for your DD, but I'd be wary of a PS that is neither fish nor fowl as she may end up looking uncommitted to either.

Lovely post, @MrsAvocet

Does StA offer course 1+ 2? If so she could apply for this at and take course 3 as an outside subject in 1st year and then switch to course 1+3 degree at end of 1st year (worth checking likelihood of switch).

Agree with @Cismyfatarse . My son decided to go for A (in your example) because of the ps. He could have chosen B at other universities but that Oxford ps was the main one and it didn’t offer B.

He was rejected post interview for Oxford but did get his other 4 offers and has UCL as his firm (another which reviews ps’s heavily).

personally I’d go for A and not try to cover both; it’s really difficult!

DD applied last year for five different courses - rejected after interview by Cambridge, accepted for 4 RG courses. Got the grades, rejected first choice, and is going to a different RG to do an entirely different course in September.

FWIW, she did a pretty generic PS, making some dubious links between the different academic elements.

Are these Joint Hons courses, OP? I didn’t get that at first. If so, I think @FrancisBlundy ’s idea is excellent. But it must be verified that St A’s will allow the swap ahead of time, if this is crucial.

Thank you for all the advice.
Yes, they are two different joint honours courses, with the main subject in common and a different joint subject - both a fairly unusual combination. I don’t think there are even 5 places in total offering the course she wants at St A.

St Andrews doesn’t offer “subject 2” at all, unfortunately - probably she would just apply for that combination if it did - but perhaps she should just apply for “subject 1” at St A and then pick up modules in her other preferred subject in first and second year. But the problem with that is, they might already be full up with people who have actually applied for that course.

It’s heartening to hear others have been in a similar situation and achieved good offers.

Has anyone gone down the alternative personal statement route?

In my School it is harder to switch from Single to Joint Hons than vice versa without restarting, OP, because you have missed Y1 modules in the other subject. However with the Scottish approach there is a lot more General Education in Y1 so this may be less of an issue. DD needs to know before counting on anything.

Also, does the fact that 1+3 is rather rare mean that the St A’s programme is likely to be very popular? Full is full.

This idea has both potential and bear traps. I hope it works but would not want DD making assumptions. St A’s is popular with students for good reason and will want their students to be happy. But they will not necessarily share DD’s perspective on this.

DC1 was in this position last year. She applied for A and B at two universities, A and C at three.

She wrote mainly about A but also its links to both B and C in different ways. Oxford read the personal statement, but as you know it's just one part of a big picture including achieved grades, predicted grades, tests and interview. I also get the impression that for Oxford humanities part of the weight given to the personal statement is about how well you write and structure an argument, bearing in mind that churning out written work and discussing it at least weekly is a big part of the course.

Her 6th form college were quite negative about her approach to this, and thought that she should have "picked a horse" long before applying, but she got all five offers and is now at Oxford.

Best of luck to your DC with their applications !

UCAS advisor here. For more advice, knowing the courses would help. Switching within a school st SA is usually fine. DD went there and did that. But, for example IR rarely takes anyone who did not apply for it. Languages changes can be easy ( so from History and German to History and Italian) especially if learning the language from scratch.

It won’t work especially for top tier unis where they are looking for perfect fit students and talking about a subject they aren’t applying for equals not perfect fit. Some top unis such as Durham will allow another personal statement as they are well aware most applying will also be applying to Oxbridge.

Which highly competitive schools pay the least attention to the PS?

DD did alternative statements for Exeter and Durham as her main UCAS was focussed on acting courses.
Both unis gave her an offer.

Bristol is the one that makes a public point of uniformly paying the least attention - virtually none.

The University talks we went to said to avoid doing this especially if A was a very over-subscribed course and the alternative was very different as it basically showed lack of commitment & indecision. I get students can be undecided at this point in their life but maybe think what they can do to be able to make an informed decision be it attending more open days, researching more about the courses or trying to get relevant work experience.

DD applied for E&M at Oxford then Economics at 3 other universities adding them one by one.

In her personal statement she did not mention the second subject at Oxford (Management) at all and this didn't cause any issues and she got an offer. It did cause an issue for the LSE but didn't for the other two. The LSE would have known she applied to Oxford for a subject that required TSA (generally PPE or E&M if applying for Economics) and those are very different courses and there's only a 7% offer rate. Its quite subject / place specific on whether it will cause an issue or not though you also need to consider how settled are they on the subjects if they are between two very different ones. Its worth really thinking it through which they prefer and why they like both and consider could you tailor the personal statement to show an interest in both by relating them or not. Something like psychology and management could be easily combined, probably all sciences could be combined and related to a subject like management but other subject combinations maybe harder to link. Its normally considered optimal at the most competitive courses to pick a horse but you don't need 5 offers, you need 1 you are happy with and ideally a backup and better to get ones you want than to get 5 by selecting courses you don't want.

Schools? Universities rarely ignore them but some do. For example Glasgow only reads PS for some subjects (Law, Medicine) and some of my students get offers for universities within hours of applying.

I think that's exactly what the PP means by "schools" as lots of Universities have schools within them - Medical School, Law School, School of Engineering, Business School etc - and admissions processes are probably more likely to be common to the school than to the whole University.

Yes. This is the sense in which I say I was an admissions tutor for my School

Sorry. Missed that. Was wondering if it was a US contributor and advice might be different.

One of mine applied to three different courses with grades in hand - all involving two or more of history, politics, philosophy and economics. They did, however, deliberately apply for the same combo at LSE and Cambridge knowing these would read PS most closely.

With a bit of imagination I think you can make interesting overlaps between subjects but hard to say without knowing what A, B and C actually are.