(no subject)
Yesterday I went and applied for some summer school thing which takes place at Oxford in July. It's all covered by a trust if you get in, and application is free, so I figured that, for a very tiny chance of getting in, I wasn't losing anything. Anyway, the site said lots of people who get rejected by the summer school end up being let into Oxford later anyway, and vice versa, so...
The application is made up of details about your GCSE grades (nothing about AS grades, thankfully) plus other relevant qualifications (the only things I could think of for me were music exams), and also a personal statement, half the length of the one which will go to UCAS. This is the first year that they require personal statements, so there's no help available anywhere online apart from the spartan FAQ and a handful of forum posts saying "I dunno man but good luck :DDD". All it said was that it had to differentiate you from all of the other candidates out there... so I just waxed semi-eloquent about how science is pretty awesome, then shoehorned in a reference to Oxford right at the end. But since that was essentially a pale rip-off of Carl Sagan, I don't think that will differentiate me very much. Oh well. At least it was sincere.
I don't know, it's not even close to a real university application, so I shouldn't worry about it, but I'm worrying anyway. In any case, it's sent off now - nothing to do but wait in hope for a couple of months.
The application is made up of details about your GCSE grades (nothing about AS grades, thankfully) plus other relevant qualifications (the only things I could think of for me were music exams), and also a personal statement, half the length of the one which will go to UCAS. This is the first year that they require personal statements, so there's no help available anywhere online apart from the spartan FAQ and a handful of forum posts saying "I dunno man but good luck :DDD". All it said was that it had to differentiate you from all of the other candidates out there... so I just waxed semi-eloquent about how science is pretty awesome, then shoehorned in a reference to Oxford right at the end. But since that was essentially a pale rip-off of Carl Sagan, I don't think that will differentiate me very much. Oh well. At least it was sincere.
I don't know, it's not even close to a real university application, so I shouldn't worry about it, but I'm worrying anyway. In any case, it's sent off now - nothing to do but wait in hope for a couple of months.