Options Solutions would like to thank Warwick’s Regional Officer for North America, Sarah Jamieson, for her engaging and interactive Why UK? presentation on Saturday, May 7th. Sarah led our Options’ families through an overview of admission at UK institutions, infused with specific information about the University of Warwick. The presentation gave an excellent overview of elements of the UCAS application and very specific hints about writing the personal statement. Sarah ended the presentation discussing trends resulting from Brexit (including more merit-based scholarships!). Options would like to give a GENUINE and HUGE thank you to Sarah for giving us time on her Saturday evening and for being one of our favorite sources for all things UK.
Some tidbits and takeaways:
- The UK has 160 universities and colleges.
- UK students love public transportation, so you won’t see many cars on campus.
- Nearly all UK universities receive public funding, so they have a regulator to oversee them. One of the things the regulator does is guarantee that students are getting value for their money (so they really track graduation outcomes and student feedback and then release this information/data publicly).
- The UK loves vacation, so summer break is three months, the perfect amount of time to get an internship.
- Sarah says that the University of Warwick feels like UBC: without the ocean (Sarah used to live in Vancouver).
- UK institutions really respect and encourage a gap year.
- A UK post-secondary education requires a lot of independence and self study.
- Selective universities are looking for: academic qualifications, intellectual ability and potential, a good reference, and an interesting personal statement.
- Your UCAS personal statement is run through plagiarism software and also given an originality score.
- The 2023 deadline is the 25th of January.
Sarah shared her personal site of self-serve resources with us. You can find it here:
