8 replies to this topic

[sarahlouise]

Ok so I have a few miscellaneous questions about applying to university in the UK and the US. (I'll probably add more if I think of more)
Some of them may be a bit silly, but bear with me please!

US -
Firstly, does applying for financial aid affect your chances of admission at all if the US college is NOT needs-blind? I've read conflicting reports on this. (If it changes things, I'm an international student).

Secondly, is your predicted score as important as your final score? Or is it less important but still important, or not important at all?

Also, with the common application EC bit, what if the hours that you've done things have varied a heap - should you just average it out or something?

Lastly, with the GPA, what if your school doesn't do it? Should you leave it blank, or just approximate it? Or should a school counsellor know how to work it out? (the system is different here, so it's hard to work out GPA since year 9 (freshman))

UK -
With the UCAS personal statement, you write one that's sent out to all your selected universities, am I right? What if you apply to say, history at one but history and politics at the other. Either you skip over the politics bit completely, or a university (to which you're applying for only history) reads irrelevant stuff about politics. Or can you write another one and adapt it?

Thanks in advance!

[Vol de Mort]

 sarahlouise, on Jan 08, 2012 - 05:01, said:

US -
Firstly, does applying for financial aid affect your chances of admission at all if the US college is NOT needs-blind? I've read conflicting reports on this. (If it changes things, I'm an international student).

Yes, very substantially.

 sarahlouise, on Jan 08, 2012 - 05:01, said:

Secondly, is your predicted score as important as your final score? Or is it less important but still important, or not important at all?

They're both not very important. Your predicated would be more important I suppose for admissions. Your actual would be more important for credit.

 sarahlouise, on Jan 08, 2012 - 05:01, said:

Also, with the common application EC bit, what if the hours that you've done things have varied a heap - should you just average it out or something?

Yes, I would do that.

 sarahlouise, on Jan 08, 2012 - 05:01, said:

Lastly, with the GPA, what if your school doesn't do it? Should you leave it blank, or just approximate it? Or should a school counsellor know how to work it out? (the system is different here, so it's hard to work out GPA since year 9 (freshman))

Let your counsellor do it. Leave it blank on the common app.

I dunno about UK.

[Arrowhead]

 sarahlouise, on Jan 08, 2012 - 05:01, said:

UK - With the UCAS personal statement, you write one that's sent out to all your selected universities, am I right?

Yes.

 sarahlouise, on Jan 08, 2012 - 05:01, said:

What if you apply to say, history at one but history and politics at the other. Either you skip over the politics bit completely, or a university (to which you're applying for only history) reads irrelevant stuff about politics. Or can you write another one and adapt it? Thanks in advance!

There's no writing "another one" in terms of Personal Statements. This is one reason that you're expected to be extremely sure about your University course choice when applying to the UK. If you're applying for History and Politics to one and History to another, then it will be your responsibility to be able to outfit your Personal Statement in a manner that is relevant to both courses. If you don't mention Politics at all, it will hurt your chances when applying to the History and Politics course, so do say something about it. But perhaps consider talking about Politics in a historical context and how this particular part of history, intermixed with politics, you find particularly interesting. Most people go about this problem in different ways, the result being that their PSes end up coming across as vague and general instead of the hard-hitting specificity that Unis are looking for.

Edited by Arrowhead, Jan 08, 2012 - 05:47.

[Desy Glau]

 sarahlouise, on Jan 08, 2012 - 05:01, said:

With the UCAS personal statement, you write one that's sent out to all your selected universities, am I right? What if you apply to say, history at one but history and politics at the other. Either you skip over the politics bit completely, or a university (to which you're applying for only history) reads irrelevant stuff about politics. Or can you write another one and adapt it?

Thanks in advance!

write one personal statement for history and politics.

I applied for maths and compsci at some universities, and compsci only at one uni and even software engineering at another uni. I mentioned maths&compsci in my personal statement, although my intro focused more on compsci. I did mention quite a lot about maths too though. and in my last paragraph I did mention both.

in my case, maths is relevant to compsci so it wasn't so much of a problem to me, but I believe you can try to relate politics to history, like what Arrowhead suggested.

try to talk more about history, but still talking about politics.

note that you DON'T have to mention the name of the course you're applying for, if you don't want your uni choices to know you've applied for a different course at another uni.

PS. I've heard of people sending a separate personal statement to some of their university choices because of that ^ problem. so I think they asked the uni first whether they mind them sending another PS, and if the uni agreed, they sent the other PS to that uni's admissions officer. I don't see the point though. it would be much better if you could squeeze everything in your UCAS PS.

[sarahlouise]

So would it be okay to mention, for example, that the Cold War is my favourite history topic/era, mostly because of the complex political relationships at that time, and then elaborate on that? That way I mention both, but politics just subtly

[Arrowhead]

 sarahlouise, on Jan 08, 2012 - 21:52, said:

So would it be okay to mention, for example, that the Cold War is my favourite history topic/era, mostly because of the complex political relationships at that time, and then elaborate on that? That way I mention both, but politics just subtly

Yeah I can see that working rather well. Just make sure you have many people read it thoroughly and get a lot of feedback to be on the safe side.

[sarahlouise]

Thanks for all your answers, and I have one more question.

When does the Common Application update for Fall 2013 entry? :3
It might be a silly question, but I don't know.

[erganizer]

 sarahlouise, on Jan 23, 2012 - 21:54, said:

When does the Common Application update for Fall 2013 entry? :3
It might be a silly question, but I don't know.

That's not silly at all, I do believe they're a bit vague about that on the site... Actually, I can't find it anywhere on there...

Based on when I recall friends applying in the past, I'm pretty sure the common app opens up at the end of July or early August of 2012 for students looking into entering universities in the fall of 2013.

[nonstop]

Your predicted score is just as important as your final score, if not more. What use is getting a 43/45(final) if you're only predicted a 30/45 and didn't get into a university that takes 35/45? In fact, the conditional acceptances that you receive after submitting your predicted scores actually allow you 1-2 points worth of slack.