Online History Course for under 18

I'm a Year 11 student looking to take some online history courses this summer to boost my extracurriculars for my personal statement. I want to make the most of my break and learn something useful, but a lot of programs don't accept students under 18, which has made finding options a bit tricky!

If anyone has recommendations on good courses or platforms that allow younger students, I'd love to hear your thoughts. Thank you 🙏

Reply 1

Kanushi09

Original post

by Hosiz

I'm a Year 11 student looking to take some online history courses this summer to boost my extracurriculars for my personal statement. I want to make the most of my break and learn something useful, but a lot of programs don't accept students under 18, which has made finding options a bit tricky!
If anyone has recommendations on good courses or platforms that allow younger students, I'd love to hear your thoughts. Thank you 🙏

Spring pod has a range of online courses that you can do, maybe you could do research on there. Most or all are free, give you like an certificate after completing it (but I wouldn't necessarily print it out as it's never worked properly for me) and has no deadline either if you like that. I did Psychology, teaching education and psychology of males (subject spotlight).

Reply 2

Hosiz

Hi Kanushi,

Thank you very much for your advice. That’s so handy.

Reply 3

Kingston Jenifer

Official Rep

Original post

by Hosiz

I'm a Year 11 student looking to take some online history courses this summer to boost my extracurriculars for my personal statement. I want to make the most of my break and learn something useful, but a lot of programs don't accept students under 18, which has made finding options a bit tricky!
If anyone has recommendations on good courses or platforms that allow younger students, I'd love to hear your thoughts. Thank you 🙏

Hi there!

I did this during the gap between my A-Levels and Uni.

FutureLearn, as far as I know, does not have any 'age requirements' in any way. They have lots of free courses too from top uni's! Coursera is another one (I have not personally used it). Forage is a site that offers free internships and springpod is aimed at year 12's I believe.

However, when i was searching for biology related experience (I went on to do a degree in medical biology), there are some sites that require you to pay upwards of £400 for some experience - which in my opinion is not worth it. You will never have to pay for experience and these are most likely scams.

Also, volunteering (i did 4 hours a week in a charity shop) is quite good as a way to strengthen your UCAS application.

Hope this helps!

Kind regards, Jenifer (Kingston rep)

Reply 4

LJMUStudentReps

Official Rep

Hi @Hosiz

Sounds like a great plan for boosting your personal statement!

The Open University is one of the best places to start – they offer a wide range of free online courses, and many of them provide a certificate of completion or digital badges, which are great to mention on your application
https://www.open.edu/openlearn/free-courses/full-catalogue

FutureLearn also has some history courses. While I didn’t get a certificate for the one I did, you can still list it on your personal statement and mention what you learned or the modules you completed:
https://www.futurelearn.com/courses

If you're interested in reading more widely, The Conversation publishes articles written by academics in a really accessible way. It’s not a course platform, but it’s great for expanding your thinking and engaging with current debates https://theconversation.com/uk

You could also look into MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) – some universities even offer reduced UCAS tariffs for completing certain ones, which could be an extra bonus.

Hope that helps, and best of luck with your summer learning! 🙂

Megan (LJMU Rep)

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