My First Offer!

I got my first offer from university today! It caught me completely off guard, I usually check my email every day whenever I get the chance to see if there has been any changes to my application (this typically means that you’ve got an offer) but today it didn’t even cross my mind. It’s a massive relieve never the less, I was a complete nervous wreck every time I got an email and now I can relax knowing that all I have to do is finish this year with the grades I need and I’m off to uni!

I already went over this in my last blog but I seriously didn’t think this was something I was going to do, but that’s what has made it so exciting for me. Just because I want to go to uni I have found myself getting involved in things that I would typically avoid like volunteering and taking active interests in topics that I would have otherwise overlooked. So far the journey towards university has been a very eye opening experience and some would say it’s a way of avoiding ‘the real world’ but I strongly disagree. To me it’s a more educational method of learning to manage money and plan for the future.

I may be going off on a bit of a tangent but I’m just full of inspiration and excitement now. This is just the motivation I needed to keep pushing through mountains of coursework and revision :)

This is a bit of a short post today, I think that’s what I’ll keep doing because you guys seem to like these the most, see you in the next one!

Leave a comment or tweet at me if you have any questions!

Follow me on Twitter! - @Jayson__Knott (double underscore)

Applying To University (Already!)

Well guys, here we are. After a long summer of no posts (sorry guys) it’s come to that time where I have to start picking uni courses and the unis themselves. I’m not going to lie it’s a massive change for me, when I first left school uni was the last thing on my mind! But not look at me, applying for law in some of the best universities going! Without turning this into a sob story, I used to think I wasn’t good enough to go to uni. It just goes to show that our only limit is ourselves (sorry for the borderline cringy quote)

Well after a couple of weeks researching what university would be the best for me I managed to sift through about 10 to get to 5. This is the hardest part of the application if you ask me. I’ve managed to choose Manchester, Salford, BPP, Manchester Met and The University of Law. All based in Manchester, which for me is ideal because it means I can spend most of my time at uni and still come back home to see family and friends whenever I want to. I did originally plan on going to somewhere like London or Durham, but that was a step too far for me.

Skipping the boring stuff, it came to my personal statement. Wow, just wow. I never knew that having 4,000 characters could be so stressful! It seriously does limit what you have to say about yourself, because you’ve been essentially asked to market yourself to 5 universities in 4,000 characters. To put that into perspective that’s just under a page of writing. But the upside is that you have to be concise and put some real structure in there that means that you get everything you want in whilst reaching that character limit.

Having someone look at your personal statement is key. I personally think it’s a good idea to have someone who knows a lot about applications in relation to university and job applications. I had our careers adviser look through my whole application and personal statement, just to make sure I didn’t miss anything. Once she gave me the nod I had my personal tutor look at my personal statement. This is especially helpful because your personal tutor is typically the one who writes your reference, so this means that they can get a look at your personal statement and take some pointers for your reference. This would make you have a well-rounded application.

So this was my experience so far with my application, with a few little pointers in there. Obviously I won’t know if this works until I get offers but until then fingers crossed!

Jayson :)

Twitter - @Jayson__Knott