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?

Dd has read all the posts.

I think her main takeaway is that there’s no point in 5 offers if you don’t want to take them up, and that she should go all out for the offer(s) she really wants.

She hasn’t actually seen St Andrews yet, so could change her mind anyway - we have already visited Oxford and Lancaster, which she loved (I really liked Lancaster too), and York and Manchester, which she disliked.

She is quite sanguine about being able to make some interesting connections between all 3 subjects, and liked the post that said part of the personal statement for humanities is about making a well-constructed argument.

And she is very pleased to hear about people who have been in the same position and had a successful outcome.

Out of interest, why did she dislike York? Was it the campus or accommodation?

Exeter made a point of saying that they don’t even read personal statements unless they’re rejecting the candidate (in case they’ve missed anything). They were very clear that the student should tailor their statement to the universities that do lend it weight.

Exeter definitely did not give that message when we went to the open day, perhaps that’s subject specific, or even year specific.
Seems daft though not to take advantage of the opportunity to write a second subject specific PS if it’s available and would strengthen your application - which is exactly when they would pay attention to it.

I don't believe Warwick pays much attention to personal statements.

You can’t really make such a sweeping statement. Universities are usually made up of multiple schools and departments. Some of those may place more emphasis on personal statements than others.

That’s interesting as we went to the open day a couple of weeks ago and that’s what the speaker said in the Admissions talk. Not doubting you, but interesting that we had different experiences - perhaps best to err on the side of caution then!

That was a generic talk as well, not subject specific.

I think she had built York up in her head a bit, and expected to really like it.
Obviously Oxford is a long-shot so she was thinking realistically York would be where she would end up. And then it just didn’t live up to expectations.

She went to a course talk and came out a bit deflated, then we walked round the campus and toured some accommodation and she was very quiet, and later said she hadn’t really been able to see herself there.

On the other hand DH and I both thought the campus was lovely - though agree the accommodation seemed both expensive and not as nice as other places. We didn’t go with her to the talk, which I think was the real sticking point for her. She has almost come dancing with excitement out of talks at other places.

@OurLadyOfLeisure Thanks so much for taking the time to reply...I think recognising a gut feeling is actually very important, as it's three years of one's life and a huge debt at the end of it. It has to be "right".