Destination Education
00:39:22 · Barbara Lestak
[00:39:22] S1: Yeah, so they have often flirted with the idea of bringing it earlier. So almost during the UCAS process, either condensing it or just bringing it into almost sort of a year earlier than what it is now. The issue with that is, there's a number of issues with that. If you condense it, if you imagine universities get thousands and thousands of applications, if you're going to ask the admissions tutors who also teach and the administrative team to go through this in a much, much shorter time. It's almost impossible, know, they want to be thorough, don't want to make mistakes, to make sure that the places in the office go to the right students and the deserving students. So they have to go through that rigorous process. The second is that of course if you do it a little bit earlier, those students haven't, you know, they might have just started their A level journey. They might not yet be entirely certain where they want to go. So it's almost the onus on the student, the pressure on the student to go, come on, we need to know now. You know, and it'd be almost like asking a year nine student, okay, what do want to do for your A levels? Tell me now, tell me now. It's not, they're not quite there yet. You know, they've only just started their A level subjects. They haven't really kind of navigated massively, which is again where that earlier support comes in. If you can start earlier, fantastic. You'll be more certain of your pathway. But that said, that can change. You know, I've worked with students in year 10 and by year 11, they've gone, actually, no, I had this amazing conversation, or I watched this seminar, I did this, and now I want to go in this direction. It's not very fair on the student. It does make it a little harder and it does make it very exciting for students across the summer to sit their exams and then have to wait. But that's why that, you know, when you're making your university choices, make smart choices. So, you know, use all five, see where you get your offers across your five choices and then narrow down. So you have to make two choices out of the five. So first is your first choice and then your insurance choice or your second choice. And you have to drop the other three.
00:41:34 · Barbara Lestak, Ruth Benny
And that is also, you know, it's fair in the system because you need to allow for all the other students to also make those choices and then universities can say, okay, where are our places, etcetera. So it's interesting because it is something that I know they have toyed with and thought about the idea, but I'm not sure it's gonna happen. Certainly not anytime soon. [00:41:56] S0: As a parent of a child waiting for their results, I wouldn't call it exciting at all. That's not the choice of word that I would pick. [00:42:04] S1: Like school and just, [00:42:08] S0: Logistics, logistically, it's just so stressful, you know, trying to book accommodation for a university that you hope your child will go to, but you genuinely don't know until they receive their results. It's so, so late. Anyway, IB is earlier, which is a good thing. But I know there's a lot of talk about this PQA, post qualification admissions, whether or not they're gonna go for it, you're saying probably not.
00:42:08 · Ruth Benny, Barbara Lestak
[00:42:08] S0: Logistics, logistically, it's just so stressful, you know, trying to book accommodation for a university that you hope your child will go to, but you genuinely don't know until they receive their results. It's so, so late. Anyway, IB is earlier, which is a good thing. But I know there's a lot of talk about this PQA, post qualification admissions, whether or not they're gonna go for it, you're saying probably not. [00:42:36] S1: I'm not sure. They have flirted, it's not the first year that they flirted with us. You know, it's been a few years in the making and we have seen, for example, you know, the admissions tests have been pulled super early now. So they literally, students for Oxbridge, you know, they submit their UCAS application and then for some of them, two days later they have to sit their admissions tests. So it is sort of edging closer. Whereas a few years ago it would be sort of mid November, they start of November. So they had that little bit of time. That's not the case anymore. They are all set in October. So there is a slow speeding up, but I think you might get some pushback from the universities as well as potentially schools. It'd have to be really, really well designed and structured to be able to sort of maximize that.
00:42:36 · Barbara Lestak, Ruth Benny
[00:42:36] S1: I'm not sure. They have flirted, it's not the first year that they flirted with us. You know, it's been a few years in the making and we have seen, for example, you know, the admissions tests have been pulled super early now. So they literally, students for Oxbridge, you know, they submit their UCAS application and then for some of them, two days later they have to sit their admissions tests. So it is sort of edging closer. Whereas a few years ago it would be sort of mid November, they start of November. So they had that little bit of time. That's not the case anymore. They are all set in October. So there is a slow speeding up, but I think you might get some pushback from the universities as well as potentially schools. It'd have to be really, really well designed and structured to be able to sort of maximize that. [00:43:27] S0: Okay. Well, we do know that one thing is changing and that's the personal statement. They're calling it a reform, but I don't think it's that big of a reform, is it really? So just briefly, Barbara, because that's for people who are listening, if they are applying for 2026 entry, they will be the first to do the new style of personal statement. What does it look like?
00:43:47 · Barbara Lestak, Ruth Benny
[00:43:47] S1: Yeah, so exactly as you said, Ruth, there's not a huge amount to panic about here. So what they've done is they've helped, they've basically helped to simplify the personal statement. So the total character amount in the personal statement is still the same, including the spaces, etcetera. And the content is pretty much broadly the same, but with three guiding questions. And those three guiding questions are: Why do you want to study this course or this subject? How have your qualifications and your studies helped to prepare you for that? And what else have you done to prepare outside of education? And why are these experiences that you've done useful? That's it, those three questions. Now that should really help to guide and what they've done is they've said okay there's a minimum character for each of those questions of three fifty characters. And that is very clearly labeled for them in each box. But as you could have probably guessed, there's already, the questions I would say are weighted in importance. So you should be utilising more of those characters in some of the, you know, in questions two and three rather than in question one. Do you see what I say? So you don't have to balance out the characters, don't have to divide 4,000 by three sections, please don't do that. You definitely need to be talking about what have you done and you know, to show your passion for that subject and know, and talking sort of those. [00:45:21] S0: So the UCAS personal statement is changing slightly. Can you tell us about that?
00:45:25 · Barbara Lestak
[00:45:25] S1: Yeah, absolutely Ruth. So it's exactly as you said, it's only slightly so students absolutely don't need to panic. What they've done is they have helped them to simplify and to really kind of break down and focus in on the context of the personal statement. So what they have done is they've divided it into three questions. And those three questions are as follows: So why do you want to study this subject or course? How have your qualifications and studies helped you in preparing for that? And what else have you done to prepare outside of education? And why are those experiences useful? So every single one of those three questions has a minimum character count of three fifty characters. And that will be very clearly labelled in each of the question boxes with the character count. Now the personal statement as a whole, with answering all of those questions, will still have a total of 4,000 characters. It still has the same sort of structure and amount of writing that you can do as the old personal statements have done so. Every question is, I think slightly differently weighted so you should be spending less characters in question one and more characters in question two and probably even more characters in question three than you have done in one and two. Because those two questions in question two and three so how have your qualifications and studies helped you to prepare for this course and what have you done outside of education and why are they useful are the ones that are really going to guide those admissions tutors that are looking at your personal statement and understanding whether or not you are fit for this course. Is it something that you, you know, they imagine you studying this in their institution for three, four years off your academic life? Will you be a good addition to the student cohort? And is it genuinely something that you love? Can they see that? That's their first time that they meet you as a person. So it is really, really important that that sort of passion comes through.