As the number of students applying to www.ucas.com steadily grows, the competition for places at UK universities is becoming more intense. When my daughter applied to university in 2017, the process was largely the same as it is now (academic grades, personal statement, school reference, sometimes academic testing and sometimes an interview) and, even as a parent with 25 years expertise in university application support, it was a very stressful time for the family. I can’t imagine how stressful it is when the family is new to the process and therefore our university consultancy services aim to distill, demystify, and de-construct the application requirements through a bespoke approach to a family’s aspirations to ensure that all bases are thoroughly covered before the UCAS application is submitted.
Do you need university application support for your child?
Our university consultancy services are designed to take the stress out of career and higher education decision making, by building on careers guidance and research done in school.
A family approach
Some teenagers tend not to communicate on progress as much as parents would like. After all, the pressure of Sixth Form means that students are focussed on their academics and co-curriculars. Schools are usually dealing with hundreds of applications at any one time and often don’t have the capacity to keep parents in the loop. Deadlines can be looming, and we often find parents are in the dark. Our consultants offer a highly bespoke family approach and you, as parents, working alongside your son or daughter means you’ll be involved where you’d like input, as well as being updated on choices, goals, and the progress of the UCAS applications. For expat parents, we can offer detailed advice on fee status and costs of a UK university education.
Choosing courses and universities
Through our partnership with www.unifrog.org, your consultant will work with you as a family to ensure that your teenager has a strong, appropriate academic profile and an irresistible personal profile. We’ll conduct a psychometric style test and give detailed feedback and guidance and then we will work together over several months to match the student with the courses and universities campuses that best suit their profile and aspirations.
Crafting the application
With our university application support, we’ll assist you every step of the way through developing a personalised application timeline, ensuring that all deadlines for testing, personal statement and interviews are met and that your son or daughter is thoroughly prepared for each stage of the process. We’ll make sure you know exactly what is required for each university and course choice and we’ll support and guide you through the entire process from beginning to end.
Making the final choices
Towards the end of Year 13 (Upper Sixth), students need to narrow down their final choices to two universities and this is when we work with families to ensure that the choices are the best fit both academically and from a day to day living perspective where we look at accommodation choices and costs as well as the logistics of travelling home to visit family and friends.
Applying to a UK university through UCAS is a time consuming and demanding process and our most important piece of advice is to start early so that all the research and preparation is done before the end of Year 12 (Lower Sixth) so that the UCAS application can be submitted early in the first time of Year 13 (Upper Sixth). In the current climate, success is down to fine margins.
Our university consultancy services are on hand to take the stress out of applying for university. If you’d like further help from our education consultants, get in contact with us today.