Sixth Form UCAS Personal Statement Writing Day

On Monday 3^rd June 2019, Lower Sixth participated in a UCAS day in order to launch our university application process.

The day was a huge success for our year group as many of us felt that it had lifted the initial pressure and anxiety of crafting our UCAS applications.

We were guided through the morning activities by an external speaker, Meg, who helped us through the various parts that make up a good personal statement.

We had to record why we had a passion for our chosen subject, what we had done academically to support our interest in our chosen subject and which extra-curricular activities demonstrated transferrable skills and attributes. By bullet pointing our thoughts and then transferring them into written sentences step by step, we made it much easier for ourselves in the afternoon (which we used to write up the first full draft of the personal statement).

Many of us were surprised by the ease with which we were able to write about all the exciting preparation we had done for our university courses. This year a new scheme was introduced to the Lower Sixth students, known as ‘The Neligan Programme’ (named after Croydon High’s first headmistress). This programme encouraged us to complete activities which would be useful for our personal statements such as MOOCs, tutoring younger students in our A-Level subjects, attending lectures, volunteering and taking part in super-curricular activities (e.g. Young Enterprise).

This made it much easier for many of us to craft our statements. On the whole, I think I speak for everyone when I say that Lower Sixth truly benefited from this day.

Milla, Lower Sixth