Applying to UK universities

As university application season nears once again, high school students looking to study in the UK are gradually familiarising themselves with the UCAS application process. It is a stressful time for any student, whether they know what they want to study or not, and there is no such thing as preparing too early. Today, BartyED’s UCAS admissions consultants are here to answer the preliminary questions on every applicant’s mind.

What is UCAS and how does it work?

The Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) is a centralised system for UK university applications. Students who wish to study in the UK must be familiar with UCAS. Standardised for all subjects and universities (albeit with Oxbridge and Medicine applicants on separate, earlier deadlines), applicants are required to submit their education history alongside a Personal Statement, which will be sent to the list of universities to which they choose to apply. Out of these requirements, the Personal Statement is the capstone of the application and will also be the biggest source of frustration for students. The Personal Statement is a 4,000-character essay for which students must find the best way to distinguish themselves from their peers; it is often the determining factor for admissions officers.

How do I narrow down my choices?

Filtering through a sea of courses and universities and being able to shortlist the most suitable ones are difficult tasks for students to attempt independently. For students uncertain of what course they will choose or which universities they want to attend, the application process can be quite daunting and discouraging. Most students will feel this, which is why it is extremely important and rewarding to seek the advice of an admissions consultant; more often than not, an experienced admissions consultant will be able to make perceptive connections and evaluate from a spectrum of suitability factors that the student is not aware of. This makes the application process much easier and considerably less stressful.

Why are Personal Statements so hard to produce independently?

The urgency of producing a perfect Personal Statement means that students can easily end up producing one that does not strike the ideal balance between rhetoric and personality. This is one of the biggest challenges of the Personal Statement, as often students can get in their own way by following an incoherent structure or by making simple linguistic or organizational errors. The key to any good Personal Statement is that it must go beyond recounting your academic and extracurricular achievements and instead read like a candid self-portrait. Since this is such a general guideline and in practice requires a significant amount of advice and editing, students need to recognise that the right Personal Statement is almost impossible to produce without the feedback and criticism of peers, counsellors, and parents.

What does a UCAS admissions consultancy programme look like?

It can be very challenging to find a trustworthy source of advice, especially with such a significant task. With BartyED, students receive the individualised, comprehensive admissions consulting programme that they need, with experienced consultants that prioritise their welfare and academic development. A UCAS admissions consultancy programme with us involves in-depth discussions regarding your academic profile and interests. It demands continual evaluation of suitability alongside shortlisting potential universities by understanding a broad spectrum of factors such as extracurriculars, personality, environment preferences, learning styles, and more. Our admissions consultants put their years of experience to emphasising the unique personal voice of the student for their Personal Statement, and our admissions consultancy programmes are designed to perfect the candidate’s application into a compelling and cohesive argument for entry.

Our team of consultants comprises experienced admissions counsellors with first-hand experience of UK tertiary education, with successful placements in UK universities from Cambridge and Oxford to LSE, Durham, and Brighton. Find out more about our admissions consultancy on our website here, or reach out today for questions and advice.