Summer’s here, but students have to top up CVs and not their tans
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Version 0 of 1. Who doesn’t envy a school student with the slothful days of summer ahead? Carefree, work-free and with only an enviable social calendar to worry about – the last responsibility-free gasp of childhood. But if that’s the picture that school holidays conjure up in older minds, then increasing numbers of stressed-out teenagers would like to put the record straight. As schools break up this week in Scotland and with less than a month to go before pupils in England and Wales are set free, more 16- and 17-year-olds than ever before are concentrating on curating their curricula vitae rather than chilling out. Related: How do you make sure your CV is saying the right things about you? “I don’t think, ‘tops, the exams are over, it’s time to chill’. The pressure is still on,” said Daniel Hall, 17. “Big time. It’s like, what are you doing to get a job? What are you doing to get work experience? Write a letter here, write to these people. Then a mate will have got something because their dad works in a big company and you feel you’re being left behind. You get a bit scared and it’s like you’re under pressure to try harder. “We’ve got to start working on our Ucas personal statements now, and you have to have something to say to back up your application. My mum works as a hospital cleaner, so not much doing there. You get told if you haven’t got things to put on your CV, you won’t get the place at university, and if you don’t get into university, forget about a job.” Hall, from near Epsom in Surrey, says he has sent out 13 CVs to local companies and had one reply – a rejection. “I was too young,” he said glumly. Sixth-formers have until the end of the year to make a personal statement for Ucas, the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service. The Ucas chief executive, Mary Curnock Cook, has urged people to be more realistic with their summers and to use them to enhance their suitability for courses they want to do. Related: MyInternSwap site 'locks out less privileged pupils' The scramble for relevant experience has led some to question whether today’s teenagers are competing on anything like a level playing field. Children of well-connected parents are better placed to snap up internships and impressive work-experience placements. Last week there was controversy over a new website, MyInternSwap, which listed opportunities within the BBC, BP and ITV, among other desirable workplaces, for those whose parents had an equally impressive profession. “Internship auctions” held by and for charities are booming. In February, Harvey Weinstein’s film company auctioned a three-month unpaid internship for £16,000, marking an extreme in another trend that has attracted criticism for giving leg-ups to the wealthy young. Intern Aware, the campaign for paid internships, is disapproving. “This novel way of raising funds represents a growing trend and is certainly effective – but does it prey on desperate unemployed young people and give unfair advantages to those whose families can afford to pay?” asked the group’s trustee, Libby Cole. Sites such as Internships Abroad offer teenagers opportunities, with a price tag of more than £1,000, while many of the companies that offer CV-enhancing trips to help out in community projects in the developing world charge enormous sums. Related: How to find and make the most of your work experience Rob Evans, head of admissions at the University of Sussex, said: “The personal statement can be critical. We look at all personal statements when reviewing applications, but how much it is used does vary between courses, and even between applicants. “One of the key parts of the selection process is to try to match the right student with the right course, so one of the main checks with the personal statement is to ensure that the applicant shows a keen interest in the subject as taught at Sussex and understands what the discipline involves. “They can be especially important for applicants whose academic results are more borderline. If, for example, someone has slightly lower results than our offer level, the admissions tutor will look very carefully at the personal statement and it can make the difference between an offer and a rejection.” He said there could be extra significance for more professionally focused courses such as social work. “What is important is not just to tell us in the application that you have done work experience, but to reflect upon what you have gained from that experience and demonstrate what you have learned from it. “The best personal statements are analytical and reflective, not just descriptive. If you do undertake work experience (or, similarly for more academic subjects, if you have undertaken wider reading), explain how this has changed you and your expectations of the subject area or profession.” Universities Scotland, the umbrella group for the country’s 19 institutions, said admissions staff understood that not everyone had access to the same sorts of opportunities. “Universities will consider a wide variety of experiences provided applicants can reflect on what they have learned from them. This is particularly important for a professional or vocational programme where institutions recognise that not all students have equal access to directly relevant experience.” At Warwick University the advice for teenagers is to “take it easy”. “Cramming a load of extra activities or work experience in is just piling on extra stress. We read all the personal statements and the teacher’s statements, but we want to know who you are as a person,” said a spokesman. That is music to the ears of Emily Mason. Aged 16, she has just finished 22 exams for her GCSEs and starts her A-levels at Queen Mary’s College in Basingstoke in September. She dreamed of having a few weeks off to “watch Netflix”, but she feels that she should be out looking for a job. “I’ve applied for basically every part-time job I can find and looking for jobs is taking up a lot of time. It’s really difficult because the government scrapped work experience [for year 10s] and you need experience to get a job, but there’s no way of getting that experience. Also I’m not old enough to drive, so I have to find a job I can get to and the buses here are pretty bad. “I feel like I should get stuff and do experience so that I can get a job and go to a good university, but there aren’t really that many opportunities out there in Basingstoke. The application is definitely in my mind, but I don’t really know what I want to do. But it’s obviously something really important that I can’t just forget about. It’s daunting.” Hannah Dearden teaches media and communications to sixth-formers at Northampton College. “I feel quite sorry for them. It’s really difficult. They’re told they need to build up work experience from the age of 16, but then many places won’t take them until they are 18. There’s a lot of pressure on them, and for some it’s easier than others if they have the right parents and the right connections, which of course isn’t really fair.” For those with connections and those without, the school summer holidays just ain’t what they used to be. HOW TO MAKE YOUR STATEMENT PERSONAL ■ Personal statements can run to a maximum of 4,000 characters (including spaces) or 47 lines on the online application form – whichever limit you reach first. The minimum length is 1,000 characters. ■ Searching for help on writing a personal statement brings up more than 200m hits on Google – and almost 20,000 videos on YouTube. ■ Ucas runs all the statements through plagiarism detection software, so candidates should never be tempted to copy someone else’s statement. ■ Deadlines for Ucas applications are generally in January, although some courses – and all applications for Oxford and Cambridge universities – have a deadline in October. ■ Although the personal statement has grown in importance over the past decade, it may still be ignored by admissions tutors in the more academic subjects, who place greater emphasis on examination results. ■ Ucas says the most common opening phrase in personal statements is: “I am currently studying …”. The second most common is: “From a young age I have always been interested in …”. |