Farewell, Ucas personal statements: I won’t miss your hackneyed, cliche-ridden prose | Max Fletcher
Saturday 20th July 2024
These hated essays are going to be scrapped. It’s good news for those who can’t afford private tutors – and for those who had to read them
Every autumn, as the fruit fills with ripeness to the core and the small gnats mourn among the river sallows, my inbox fills with requests for help from parents whose children have been tasked with writing an essay of 4,000 characters in which they explain to their prospective universities why they want to study a given subject. Except that, unable to articulate why they want to study English at Nottingham, they have begun to question why, when it comes down to it, they do anything at all.
Obviously, this is good preparation for the working world. This all-consuming angst will return in later life whenever they write a cover letter for a job. But for the time being they have me on hand to cobble their thoughts into some kind of structure, sprinkle in a few platitudes, and have them sounding impressive in no time.
Max Fletcher is a London-based writer
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