Did you have a glowing UCAS form? (UCAS - any good?)

Member Name: JacintaZoo

Product:	UCAS - any good?
Date:	28/11/00 (35 review reads)
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I am very much at odds with the entire system of application for university entries.

Students who wish to go on to higher education must apply through UCAS. You have to fill out a form with details of your educational achievements and this is just about where the facts end and the fiction may begin.

For you must also write a personal statement giving reasons why you wish to study the course you have applied for. Universities use this as a serious indicator as to how much you know about the course, what kind of student you are and what you will have to offer their institution.

Who is to say that what is written here is factual? Some courses such as medicine and dentistry will offer students an interview so they will be able to root out any untruths and gain an idea of the student for themselves which is more acurate.

What of those who do not? Whilst the personal statement is not the only thing upon which their judgement of whether to make a student an offer a place is based, it clearly forms a vital part of their conclusion, else it would not be requested that a student writes one.

This is assuming that they do write it themselves, which is another area which cannot be fairly regulated by either the UCAS system or the universities.

Moreover, the back of the form contains a section where the student's tutor writes their own assessment of the student and lists the grades which they predict that the student will achieve. It is assumed that:

a) the tutor will make an accurate prediction
b) the tutor knows the student well enough to make an accurate prediction
c) the tutor is fair and unbiased (and will not enhance nor deride the student's personality or capability)

This is a lot of assumption to be included in a system which is meant to be scientific in it's calculation and it's execution. There ought to be no margin for human error in a system of application for university pl
aces which are equally available for anybody who is applying.

In my opinion, the only indicator of the student's ability which is free from bias is the grades which they actually achieve. Many students are made offers of university places based upon fictional predictions of what they will achieve, only to have them fall short of these requirements.

Often the universities will still accept those students, leaving those who actually achieved the relevant grades out in the cold, lining up to get into university through the clearing system. And why? Because their UCAS form may not have been up to scratch in the first place, or the person looking at it could have been having a bad day.

This desperately needs to be re-assessed.

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