Can anyone offer a worried parent any advice re UCAS Extra/Clearing?

Just on the Personal Statement query, even if you apply through extra and UCAS shows the same personal statement, you can contact the university admissions directly and ask if they will consider an alternative personal statement. I doubt they'll refuse, they don't usually.

My daughter applied for a midwifery degree this year - used all her 5 choices, got rejected outright by 3 and had interviews for 2 - for which she then received rejections. So effectively that is that on her original UCAS application. As you can no doubt understand she is very down, feeling dejected, deflated and upset.

She is now questioning whether she should look elsewhere or broaden out her search for something else, possibly general nursing or something else as Midwifery is so competitive. I know there is something called UCAS Extra but from what I gather you aren't allowed to change your personal statement so surely if she was to apply for something else, her statement may not be fully relevant so get dismissed out of hand and then the cycle of rejection carries on.

Can anyone explain how UCAS Extra works in practice when you are in a position of 5 rejections? Do you need to call Universities direct and explain the situation, do they have any places available on other degree courses - or it all done via Extra with no direct contact with the Uni's themselves?

It may even be she takes a year out to try and get additional experience to make her application stronger but she is concerned (understandably) that she could do that - apply again and then simply get rejected a second time around.

I know there isn't a straightforward one size fits all answer but I never went to Uni myself, she is our only child so we haven't any previous experience to fall back on so am trying to make myself more aware of what options there might be and how I might help and support her as I feel a bit useless at the moment.

Any advice would be gratefully received but thanks for reading anyway.

Kind Regards

I would strongly recommend that she writes to all of her universities to formally request written feedback. It's important to know if there's something fundamentally wrong with her application or whether she's good enough but not as good as other applicants.
Most universities will provide some level of feedback on request - and if she has been interviewed then she can request a copy of the interviewer notes as a subject access request (but that usually isn't necessary as the university will provide that information if requested in writing).

Depending on the feedback from that should drive her decisions about UCAS Extra and Clearing. Extra isn't just 1 additional choice - it's one choice that can be used over again if she's unsuccessful or decides she doesn't want to accept an offer.

There's currently 60 midewifery degrees open on UCAS course search https://digital.ucas.com/coursedisplay/results/providers?studyYear=2021&destination=Undergraduate&attendanceTypes=Full-time&subjects=Midwifery&qualifications=Bachelor%20degrees%20(with%20or%20without%20Honours)&vacancy=eng&entryPoint=1&postcodeDistanceSystem=imperial&pageNumber=1&sort=ProviderAtoZ&clearingPreference=None - some of those may well be closed if you ring/email them but that's a lot of options to explore before giving up on midwifery if that's what she really wants to do.

Shrinking that down to another 5 choices that she really likes and then applying to each of them in order from her favourite downwards would give her a pretty good chance of getting an offer (assuming there's nothing fundamentally wrong with her application right now)

Thanks - I suppose my concern was more around my daughters original personal statement was very focussed on midwifery so written accordingly - if she then changes it to read differently won't the University question why? Or is it commonplace for candidates to change their personal statement - especially it may have contributed to the 5 rejections in the first place?

It is not unusual (bah bah bah) for candidates to either apply to a different course in extra and require a separate PS or apply for 3-4 of the same course and then a slightly different one for the other 1-2. It will be a fairly routine process to have an additional PS and not absurd for it to be for a different course. In the new PS, your daughter may wish to impress on the reason for wanting to study the new course rather than Midwifery (other than "I wasn't successful), this may help her chances.

I’d also advise asking for feedback and looking at her personal statement again. If she wasn’t offered interviews it’s most definitely an issue with her personal statement. There might be something in it that unis didn’t like or think she doesn’t understand what it is a midwife does etc x

Thanks very much - she did have 2 interviews with 2 Unis but the last one basically said here is your feedback don’t bother asking for anything else as we won’t engage in correspondence - which was a little blunt - she is thinking of perhaps exploring a foundation course in more general nursing that might offer an opportunity to enter midwifery when she has more experience - a lot of those attending open days already appeared to be in the nursing profession so obviously had a wealth of experience to draw upon.

Even when universities state that it’s often possible to get more information. It’s usually just a case of finding the right contact details in the admissions policy to request further details in writing.

Especially where an interview has taken place then the interview paperwork and documentation exists and is subject to gdpr.