Being rejected by all or most of your choices...
is an experience to avoid if at all possible. Careful preparation is the key, particularly if you are applying for highly competitive subjects like English, Economics, History, and Law. The point of this article is to help people to work out what, for them, will be their high, medium, and low risk choices. It is not about anyone being able to tell you what your chances of an offer are! Even a low risk choice can result in an unexpected rejection: the important bit is for you to have made informed choices, rather than find out after the rejection has appeared on Track that your application was unlikely to be successful for some very obvious reason. The things you can do to minimise your risk come under three main headings:
Choose your universities and courses carefully
- don’t be blinded by prestige – make sure the course content and structure is what you want and would find interesting
- look at the stated entry requirements bearing in mind that some unis (Edinburgh and LSE are good examples) are often looking for higher predictions than their published standard offer for competitive courses
- do not, absolutely not, apply for a course with a stated requirement (eg: Maths GCSE at A*; A2 French at A) that you don’t meet; those requirements are stated for a reason and all you will do is make the admissions tutor’s job very easy
- if the course requirements say something is ‘preferred’ or ‘recommended’ and you don’t have it, consider that choice by definition as ‘high risk’ even if you have the grades the uni seems to be looking for
- don’t pick five ‘high risk’ choices; a better balance is 2 ‘high’, 2 ‘medium’, and 1 ‘low’
- make sure all your choices, of whatever risk category, are places you would like to go to – if you can’t visit, at least make sure the course interests you!
- remember that you do not have to fill in all five choices at the time of submitting your application; you can add choices in later, and this is worth doing if you aren't able to find five you really like. As long as you have added them in by 15 January you will still get equal consideration along with everyone else (NB: this does not apply to anything with a 15 October deadline!)
Make sure your Personal Statement is as good as it can be
Apart from your teachers at school/college, there are plenty of resources around to help you do this:
- TSR Wiki provides guidance on drafting PSs, both general and subject specific
- TSR PS Help – this is confidential, only the PS helpers will be able to see your PS so it is safe from anyone who might want to copy it
- the UCAS website
- university websites quite often have general guidance on PSs (Oxford Brookes does) as well as subject specific guidance – check out the department websites too. When available, this advice will alert you to the particular things admissions tutors are looking for, and you can then make sure that your PS covers the ground
- Go on university open days: some admissions tutors will state here what they are looking for in a candidate
- try to be original in your PS, but at the same time don’t go in for fancy language that just isn’t ‘you’: simple language is usually just as effective, if not more so, and it is important to appear confident and capable without sounding arrogant
- reading around your subject is useful - you can get some ideas from course reading lists - but do not just list the books you have read: you need to show what you have gained from the exercise
- take your time with your PS: consider whatever advice you can get, whether from teachers, the PS Help forum on TSR, or elsewhere, and don't send it off until you are happy with it and it represents what you want to say
- look at the courses for the universities you are applying to: it's no use saying "I'm interested in X" if the university doesn't offer a module in X
Take into account the advice of others
Parents and your teachers do know you quite well, usually, and may understand you better than you think. I’m not saying you have to follow what they say to the letter, but at least stop and think about whether they just might have a point. In particular, don’t pressurise teachers/your referee into upping your predicted grades unrealistically as all this does is land you with a greater likelihood of rejections – (because the admissions tutors spot the difference between your AS grades and your predicted A2 grades and draw their own conclusions) or with offers that you are going to struggle to meet. Unis also quickly learn which schools/colleges consistently over-predict (or under predict, for that matter) and interpret what they get accordingly. Equally, if your parents are pressurising you to apply for something that they think leads to a "proper job" and it's not what you want to do, be firm. If need be, enlist the help of your teachers/referee if you can, to help you explain to your parents why you don't want to follow the path they have in mind for you. In the end, it's your life, and your education, so you must take responsibility for it.
[Note: Medicine/Dentistry/Vet Med are in a class of their own; although some of these principles will apply there are other points to consider, so make sure you check out the specialist forums and Wiki articles for these as well.]
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