h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Don't get me wrong - I do like my job, but it's nice to have a change once in a while, and today I'm off to London to do a school visit. It's the first time I've done anything like this off-site, so I'm a bit nervous, but one of our students is coming with me for moral support, so I hope it will be OK.

It's a big comprehensive school which takes all its Year 12 (Lower Sixth) pupils on an 'away day' to talk about university applications, and they are having lots of different speakers from (mainly) London universities to talk about various aspects, e.g. demands of University, UCAS & personal statement etc. and I'm doing a small group workshop on Cambridge interviews.

Watch this space ...

Good luck with your workshop, Annie!
It's incredibly interesting !
I'm doing career and educational options/job requirements etc (as a language area, of course) with my 16-year-old Russian students these days. We are looking at the current situation in Britain, comparing it with what we have in Russia. Could you direct me to some online material on the subject? e.g. Cambridge requirements and interviews?
BTW What's UCAS and personal statement?
If you could share any materials from your workshop, I'd post my e-mail address in my PS.
I hope you don't mind my asking Thank you anyway. It isn't every day that one meets a person from Cambridge...
Elena

Thanks Elena - I'm afraid I didn't use any special materials, and all the information I gave the students about Cambridge applications and interviews is available online on the University of Cambridge website: http://www.cam.ac.uk/admissions/undergraduate/. There are also some videos of (mock) interviews at: http://www.cam.ac.uk/admissions/undergraduate/interviews/
and at: http://www.emma.cam.ac.uk/admissions/videos/

UCAS is the central organisation which handles university applications in the United Kingdom - in order to apply to any university or other higher education institution, you have to apply through UCAS: http://www.ucas.com/

When students apply through UCAS, they have to write a 'personal statement', explaining why they want to study their chosen subject, and how their school studies and other experiences have prepared them for this.

Well, it went OK, although the student who was supposed to come and help didn't turn up! It was a bit embarrassing, as there was a group of school students who were interested in her subject (English) hoping to be able to talk to her.

But I had an interested group of about 15 girls (and 1 boy - the school is mainly girls, but has recently started admitting boys in the sixth form), and we had a useful session talking about the Cambridge admissions process. It was supposed to be about interviews, but actually they had so many questions about the way the whole procedure works that we didn't really spend so much time on the interview itself.

And it was a lovely sunny day, so at the lunch break I went and sat in the little local park - there are some lovely green spaces, even in central London! And the whole thing was over by about 3.30, so I made the most of being in London and wandered off down Marylebone High Street, where I discovered the most amazing bookshop. It's called Daunt Books, and although the front of the shop is like a normal bookshop, at the back there is this huge area where the books are arranged by country. So in the same section you can find: travel books on all regions of France, French history, French cookery, French literature in translation, etc etc. Wonderful!

I'd got a travelcard which meant I couldn't travel back to Cambridge between 16.30 and 19.00, so I texted a friend from when I was working at UCL and met her for a drink when she finished work. She had contacted another former UCL student I knew, so we had a jolly time catching up on gossip and I eventually bus-hopped back to King's Cross to catch the 21.15. Maybe as a result of the two large glasses of wine I consumed, I didn't really feel like getting up for work this morning ...

Thanks a lot, Annie
to look at the links...
And, yes, Central London does have some lovely green spaces - I remember them from my only visit back in 1989. I was surprised by lots of flowers in window boxes, flowers in pots attached to lamp posts, lots of evergreens in the front gardens, green squares. But that was in July...
It's nice to think that it's green already...
BTW this net thing is amazing, !!!

Annie this is really interesting - hope you enjoyed the experience. Offspring is just beginning to get think about university but seems to be working from a fairly narrow perspective i.e. based only on the AS he's doing. He's got a broad spread of maths, a science, a performing art and a humanity but that doesn't make one course jump out at him. Keep telling him that an employer looking for a range of technical and person skills would be relatively happy and that there is often more than one way into a particular area of employment.

Find the personal statement odd though: I applied for different courses at each of my choices so I'm not sure exactly how I would have made just the one pitch for consideration. As for interview techniques: hadn't a clue!

Glad you found it interesting, petal - yes, I did enjoy it, and I think the students found it useful. One of them very sweetly came up to thank me at the end!



Yes, that is a problem of the personal statement, and it's why we have a special box on the Cambridge Application Form so applicants can write an extra bit if they've applied for a course at Cambridge that's different from their other university choices (e.g. Anglo-Saxon, Norse & Celtic with us, English elsewhere).

Re interview technique, I'm sure I didn't know anything about it when I was applying either, although it was much more usual for universities to interview in those days. The talks we give to schools are much more focussed on dispelling the myths about Cambridge interviews. There are commercial organisations around (which I won't name) claiming to be able to coach people for Oxbridge interviews - our interviewers are very good at spotting applicants who have been 'coached' and we always tell school students that it is absolutely unnecessary.