What’s next for personal statements?
Long the shop window for UCAS applicants, personal statements are set to disappear.
What is happening to personal statements?
UCAS have recently announced several changes to the personal statement as well as other elements of the admissions and selection process to Higher Education in the U.K.
It’s important to note that these changes will not apply to those doing 2024 entry but instead more likely the changes will be confirmed for those undertaking 2025 entry.
What’s the current problem?
For those from 2025 onwards, UCAS will be announcing a raft of changes, with suggestions that they might lean upon shorter written and video answers. The hope is to crush this perceived advantage so long taken by savvy applicants and to broaden the diversity and equity of the UCAS process.
As UCAS outline “Feedback shows fears that students who do not have access to high quality advice and guidance will not be able to use the statement to shine in the same way that their more advantaged peers can”. This quotation and other information in the blog is available from their report here.
Students are also not clear on how the personal statement is used in the assessment process. Moreover although 72% of respondents to a 2022 applicant survey felt positive about the Personal Statement, 83% responded admitting a personal statement is stressful, with 79% agreeing that the statement is difficult to complete without support.
So, what might the ‘new’ personal statement involve?
UCAS have spent a while working with providers and students to develop a new assessment model in a bid to retain pupil voice but reduce the stress that naturally comes with the process. Thus far, and it’s worth saying these changes are not finalised, the six key areas have been defined by UCAS as:
Motivation for the course – Why do you want to study these courses?
Preparedness for the course – How has your learning at school so far helped you to be ready to succeed at university?
Preparation through other experiences – What else have you done to help you prepare, and why are these experiences useful?
Extenuating circumstances – Is there anything that the universities and colleges need to know about, to help them put their achievements and experiences so far into context?
Preparedness for study – What have you done to prepare yourself for student life?
Preferred learning styles – Which learning and assessment styles best suit you and how do your courses choices match that?
Is anything else changing?
Students face a broad range of choices for life after school and, at present, the UCAS system is unable to overly personalise the support and advice it gives individual students. This is especially true for students from disadvantaged backgrounds.
There is a real range in the quality of the advice on offer and the volume of data is overwhelming to make the right decision. For example, it has been shown that students may put unnecessary weight on options which are recommended from the experiences of their immediate peer group. UCAS has gained access to new and unparalleled data which shows the correlation between qualifications taken at school, choices for higher education and can then match those to graduate outcomes.
As a result, UCAS are developing increasingly personalised recommendations for students making post-secondary choices including The Career Quiz which has had over 1.6m users since its inception in 2021. UCAS are building on this to create the prototype for a personalised course recommendation tool which aggregates a huge amount of data including subject area of interest, career goals, grade profile, willingness to travel etc... to make recommendations on courses. The aim is for the tool to expand choices and present options that students may not have considered. In their first trial with 300 year 13 students, 91% agreed the recommended courses were of interest, and only 39% said they had already seen the courses. 69% said it helped them consider new options.
UCAS are looking to expand the trial of the course recommendation tool to see how it can be developed and used at scale.
Widening access and participation
UCAS are also making moves to help widen access with more and more students applying to university from disadvantaged areas.
There has been an increase of over 30,000 more students from the most disadvantaged areas applying in 2021 (a percentage increase of 66% applying since 2007), resulting in those students now being twice as likely to progress to higher education.
In 2022, there was a 23% increase in the number of students from the most disadvantaged backgrounds placed in HE compared to 2019.
Unfortunately, however, this progress has slowed in recent years: the Multiple Equality Measure equality gap has narrowed by an average of 1.1% year on year since 2015 versus 4.4% across the previous five years.
As UCAS says: “the journey to a million higher education applicants in 2026 – and increased demand across the full range of post-secondary pathways – presents further challenges, as increased competition risks disadvantaged students losing out”.
In response, UCAS have launched both the Fair Access Programme and the Outreach Connection Service which will help schools and students navigate and connect to the opportunities offered by HE providers and third-sector organisations.