Re your article (Farewell, Ucas personal statements: I won’t miss your hackneyed, cliche-ridden prose, 20 July), while I was the director of an interdisciplinary (combined honours) programme at a Russell Group university, the most common question I received at pre-application open days was: “How should I write my personal statement if I am applying for both single- and joint-honours programmes, and your programme?” It was clear that personal statements were the cause of great stress for applicants – and people advising potential applicants.
But this was a question I was never able to answer, for the simple reason that no one in charge of running the programme ever saw any of these personal statements. Admissions had been centralised in my institution some years before, taking individual programme directors out of the loop. The only people who ever looked at those statements were administrators and bureaucrats, never academics or people actually involved in the programmes. I wonder how many students ever knew this.
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