Challenges with Uni personal statement

[BeBraveAndBeKind]

DS has ASD. He wants to go to uni to study music production. He's passionate about music, has an encyclopedic knowledge, writes music, and plays drums and guitar. However, he cannot articulate why he wants to study it further beyond "to learn more", can't express what he'd bring to the course or what his ambitions are beyond it. The UCAS deadline is the 29th and I feel the time slipping away but nothing we do is helping draw this information out of him. He's so talented but part me is thinking that if it's this much of a struggle to get through the application, is this the right thing for him? And then I feel disloyal to him for thinking that way.

All of my friend's kids are NT and they just don't get it. His college are supposed to be picking up with him about it but haven't. I don't know what to do to help.

We had this agony with ds1 (also with an ASC) a few weeks ago (college set an earlier deadline) although he wants to do Physics not Music. He was meant to do it in June but did not get it finished until November! Anyway what he did was use most of the statement to give evidence for his interest and aptitude for Physics and kept the future goals very brief (because he does not have a clue what he wants to do long term). All he ended up putting in was one very general sentence "Doing a physics degree would allow me to further pursue my interests, and head towards a career in physics research" and then repeated that he had the necessary skills to be able to do this. He has had several offers so was obviously sufficient! If you google you will also find personal statements written for different subjects which we looked at to give him some ideas of what to write (obviously you can't copy exactly).

That's a good idea. I've had him doing some mind maps today to just get something down on paper. I had to reassure him that it doesn't matter if he changes his mind about a future career, it's a personal statement not a binding contract!

My son also has ASD and has applied for Music college. His personal statement was an adaption of an essay he wrote last year, which justifies his aspirations for his musical career, and the milestones in his life that impacted on this. Seems to have worked as we had an offer!

That's great news. 😊

He's had another go at it today and will see if his learning support worker can help him shape it a bit more tomorrow.

Could he just describe what he does musically, what he's produced already, which genres/other producers he likes and likes to play, what he enjoys about it and what he wants to do next (in an immediate sense). That would show the depth of his interest and imply that he's perfectly capable of continuing indefinitely.

I do uni admissions sometimes (but not for music); there are lots of ways of sounding sincere. I might actually be slightly concerned if someone of 17/8 had too clear an idea of what their future plans were and want them to be more open minded. If you think it's important, you could get your DS to do the descriptive bit and then add a sentence about hopes and aspirations of this leading to a career (that kind of cheating is perfectly justified here, I think). I've let plenty of people into uni who haven't mentioned anything beyond their immediate desire to study the subject.

Thanks Chaotica, that's good advice. Would you look unfavourably upon a personal statement that's short or is it all about quality rather than quantity?

That's a tough one. I think it might depend on the institution and the person checking it. A little shorter than the maximum word count would be OK, but any less than 75% and you might get someone who rejects for trivial reasons. Quality is more important, in my view though.

Okay, thank you. We'll err on the side of caution then and get as much detail as we can. 😊

Maybe this is a bit controversial, but can’t you just write it for him? Would hardly be unusual.

We've done a bit of both. He did a mind map and then wrote some bits and I shaped it and prompted some additional content which I typed in for him. It's not to the maximum word count but it's about two thirds which we've decided is good enough.

Neither DH or I went to uni so this is all new to us too.

I think the approach you’re taking sounds good.

We’re a few years from this stage so this is very helpful to know for the future, thank you. Gotta love these type of potential autistic sticking points - there’s always something, eh?

Although DD is a future planner and worrier, she has a very dismissive (pragmatic?!) attitude about her strengths, talents and aptitude which was very apparent when discussing sixth form college applications & interviews with her. So I can see the PS may take some extra work.

I’m assuming UCAS doesn’t offer any type of reasonable adjustments for autism for the Personal Statement?