Welcome

This blog is here to help you as you make your decisions about what to do after college or sixth-form. The blog was initially set up for use just with my own students at the McAuley Catholic High School, Doncaster, and some of the posts refer to details of that school’s particular processes, deadlines, and to sessions from the annual ‘LAMA Week’ (Life After McAuley) when year 12 students had a week of sessions on preparing for application to higher education, apprenticeships or jobs.

However, I know from the blog stats and from mentions of the blog on Twitter that it came to be read outside McAuley, and I have also found over time that posts written for a previous year group continue to be useful, so now I am ‘resurrecting’ the blog in my new context working in an FE college in South Wales, and over time I hope to re-organise the blog to make it easier for newcomers to find the information they need, and to edit some of the posts to make them more widely relevant . Obviously, this is a work in progress so do let me know if you have any suggestions for improvement.

You can use the links above to find pages on Researching and Applying. The Researching page has links to the key posts that give information about how to find out about and make choices of university courses and career options. The Applying page has links to posts concentrating on the UCAS application process in particular, and making job or course applications in general.

I hope you find the blog useful. Do feel free to discuss the information given, ask questions, or share your experiences using the comments boxes.

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Sutton Trust – Students are losing out as teachers’ and university tutors’ ideas about what makes a good personal statement are a “world apart”

My experience over many years as a tutor of students applying for university is that they often overemphasise the importance of extra-curricular activities, and fail to meet university admissions tutors’ expectations for strong personal statements to be specific and detailed about students’ academic studies and how these relate to the courses they are applying for.

Recent research by the Sutton Trust suggests that often the fault may often lie with teachers advising students without being aware of what universities are most likely to look for in personal statements.

Perhaps the most useful part of the research report from your point of view as students is the presentation of extracts from personal statements, comparing how teachers and universities commented and graded their effectiveness at helping the student to secure an offer of a university place.

For example

Extract from Personal Statement

Comments from Teacher

Comments from Admissions Tutor

[Here the student is writing about studying Flaubert’s novel ‘Madame Bovary’] “I researched psychoanalytic studies and was surprised at Ion Collas’ claim that ‘bovarysme’ is usually beneficial, while in Emma’s case it is morbid’.”

“More theory than analysis … Lots of opinion and theorising.”This Personal Statement neither increases nor decreases the likelihood that the applicant would be offered a place.

“Excellent evidence of intellectual curiosity… Good account of how the applicant responded to being stretched.”This Personal Statement strongly increases the likelihood that the applicant would be offered a place.

It is worth clicking through to the details of the report (see links below) for further examples that show how admissions tutors generally seem much more impressed by academic detail than students and their teachers sometimes suppose. The overarching message from this, I think, should be for you to genuinely develop your intellectual curiosity about your subjects so that you can write about specific topics beyond the core curriculum with detail and enthusiasm, rather than sounding ‘forced’ or out of your depth. The kind of extra-curricular activities and reference to generic skills such as ‘teamwork’ and ‘communication’ that often take up a large part of students’ personal statements should be no more than a little seasoning in, or icing on, a rich and well-baked academic cake.

The Sutton Trust’s press release about their findings can be found here:

Source: Sutton Trust – Students are losing out as teachers’ and university tutors’ ideas about what makes a good personal statement are a “world apart”

While the full report can be downloaded from this link : http://www.suttontrust.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Making-a-Statement-FINAL.pdf