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

Taking Opportunities

Taking opportunities, what do I mean? Well you’re not stupid you know what I’m talking about. This is whenever you find something that is useful for you to do you do it and it can greatly benefit, but let’s be more specific. Almost all colleges have multiple opportunities for you to chase. They have their own programmes like at my college they have a student ambassador scheme where you apply for it and if you get it it’s almost like being a prefect but in college, you help with college events and you even help organize them. Keeping it brief it basically looks good for your UCAS application (so they say) and it helps you get somewhere with the experiences in the scheme. But that’s just one of many. They don’t just have their own schemes, they allow other organisations come in and talk about what they did, that’s how I found out about NCS and that was one of the best experiences in my life, but apart from it being an amazing experience it helped me gain skills that I wouldn’t have otherwise had.

Getting to the point, you should at the very least consider these kind of opportunities because your college is there to help you get somewhere, so if they are opening doors for you, get your foot in that door. The harsh reality is that if you aren’t making enough noise nobody will notice you. If you are just another person trying their look on their application for whatever it is and they compare you to people who took every opportunity that had put in front of them, chances are they will choose that person. I used to be that person that either could never be bothered or I didn’t think it would benefit me but in reality I should have been bother and it did benefit me. Now I just take anything that is put in front of me.

So what was the best opportunity that you have had or missed? Leave a comment or tweet me @Jayson__Knott :)