UCAS considers scrapping personal statements for uni applications

This highly structured approach is going to make things very difficult for mature applicants who don’t have recent studies but have industry experience.
With a freeform PS they could use all 47 lines to talk about their relevant experience, with the suggested 6 questions they’ll have 1/6 of the space for that.

https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.telegraph.co.uk%2Fnews%2F2023%2F01%2F12%2Funiversity-personal-statements-scrapped-favour-middle-class%2F

So far it's only the Telegraph and Times that seem to have the story but supposedly UCAS are planning to scrap the traditional 4000-character personal statement for a series of shorter-form answers.

'Pupils applying for undergraduate degrees will no longer have to write a 47-line essay explaining why they are so passionate about the subject they wish to study.

Instead, they will be asked to answer a series of short responses to questions on topics such as their motivation for studying courses, why they are ready to succeed, and any extenuating circumstances that would help put their achievements into context.'

Do you think this is a positive or a negative move? If you've already applied, would you have rather answered three shorter questions than write a personal statement?

So a PS split into a series of questions, gotcha.

I really don't think scrapping it solves any problems. I understand the argument that the PS reveals inequalities, but i don't see how the questions will make it any more equal -- in fact i think it will make it less so. From going through 2 UCAS cycles, I have seen that while private school applicants may get more support than state schools (this varies massively school to school, person to person, teacher to teacher), from talking to my private school friends this 'support' is in recommending things to read/watch/think about, and not in the actual writing part. I think quite a big part of the PS is to show how you craft a piece of writing with a nice flow and story, and that is something that no one but yourself can really do, so it gives a chance for students to independently shine. And most importantly, it gives the applicant some control in their statement -- perhaps they have more to say about one 'question' than the other, or they want to approach it completely differently... stand out...

I think making the application process even more rigid and tick-boxy and even less personal gives a weirdly clinical and robotic feeling to the whole idea of the application. i mean they are called personal statements like why limit the only opportunity for the student to speak, especially in humanities and arts degrees, where those rigid questions will really reduce the quality of writing (and content)

I also think (from personal experience too lol) that students are a bit lazy (or overworked, or burned out, but I was both these things and also a bit lazy lol) and getting them to write a coherent 600 or so words about something vaguely academic is probably a good prerequisite to seeing if they are actually interested in Uni at all lol.

I think for younger applicants it's better (less stress). But take the point it may make it harder for mature applicants.

I don't see how this is any better for younger applicants. It's basically a PS cut into six pieces, except you can't showcase any originality or proper writing because of how the questions are worded.

That's what makes it better for many younger applicants

"Preferred Learning Styles – Which learning and assessment styles best suit you – how do your courses choices match that?"

Seems like a bit of an odd question to me. Presumably applicants read the course description and chose courses that suited them. Also, someone might prefer more coursework but still prefer their chosen course based on its content, for instance.

Yes this seems deeply weird as a question to put so much emphasis on, as if to assume that will be the primary deciding factor behind all applicants' choices, never mind tring to find something meaningful to say here if you've chosen based on content, location etc.

A 'why have you chosen these courses and locations?' would be more interesting, albeit I'm not sure if I'm genuinely in favoiur.

It all depends what course you are applying for. For something like vet med where there are very few universities offering the course, the location is only a minor consideration but differences in teaching and assessment style are very important. This may explain why the vet schools don’t use the PS and all provide their own questionnaires. Maybe the answer would be to ask each University’s admissions team to develop course specific questions.

Yes this seems deeply weird as a question to put so much emphasis on, as if to assume that will be the primary deciding factor behind all applicants' choices, never mind tring to find something meaningful to say here if you've chosen based on content, location etc.

A 'why have you chosen these courses and locations?' would be more interesting, albeit I'm not sure if I'm genuinely in favoiur.

This does seem to lead to universities developing their own personal statement requirements. It doesn't seem preferable however that students have to write UCAS responses and then 5 statements for each university choice.

I would have thought that filling in 5 short questionnaires would be preferable to doing one PS that for some applicants has nothing personal about it, especially where an applicant may want to apply for different degree subjects an up until now has had to try and right one statement to fit all.

Possibly, but a questionnaire runs into the same problems as the proposed UCAS format. Also, a questionnaire would not display writing skills.

That would be a better question, although I'm not sure how unis would weigh those as factors. Location may not be a factor for some students. Also, module offerings can change during a degree (or the content may not vary much between unis), and applicants' initial interests may change during their degree. It would be interesting to see the generic Oxbridge answers though.

It doesn’t demonstrate essay skills, but does differentiate between those that have a basic grasp of grammar and those that don’t. Not everyone is applying for law or essay based subjects. With individual questionnaires each subject department would be able to test the qualities required, including essay writing skills.

Yes, I think where this discussion will end up is in realising that it's quite hard to come up with a set of three questions that are equally useful for all courses, and that what would be really good is if you gave universities and candidates free rein to ask for and include whatever stuff they wanted, perhaps all in one longer statement so that they could use the word count as they saw fit.