Facing the terror that is the university personal statement

TRYING to help your teenager market themselves to others can be a worrying experience.

What should they say and what should they leave out in the dreaded Ucas university personal statement – with a maximum character count of 4,000?

Teenagers are more used to communicating their thoughts and triumphs in no more than 140 characters.

Advising anyone on how to write anything more complex than a shopping list is taxing at the best of times, but when you are called upon to assist with a document on which their entire future might hang, it’s time to reach for the biscuit tin.

Whatever the final draft says it will never please everyone and you know six different people will tell you in 10 varying ways why it should be altered.

The whole thing is a nightmare. What one university may be looking for another may not. It is as mysterious as the Turin shroud and just as messy.

You only have to attend a few university open days to know some want a fully fledged individual with numerous strings to their bow which they can talk about at length, while others don’t seem to care if they drink blood and never leave their rooms, provided they get three A*s at A-level.

So, if your child can bone a chicken, row across the Atlantic single-handed, raise £1m for climate change and still pass their A-levels at top grades that’s great. But it’s not required.

Perhaps someone could have told us all this at the start of school and we would have saved money on the Duke of Edinburgh Award fees, Girl Guide camps and football training. Not to mention theatre trips and music lessons which were, frankly, lost on a family not known for its instrumental prowess.

Instead, we should have stuffed tenners into a drawer and locked the children in their rooms telling them to mug up on their schoolwork instead. That way we might have had some spare cash to cover the insufficient student loans.

But then again, if you do nothing, what can you say in a personal statement – and how many words is 4,000 characters anyway?

That, of course, depends on the word. But shouldn’t some of them, at least, be long – or is pithy and succinct the way to go?

Once a first draft is tapped out, the next hurdle is deciding whose advice to listen to and whose to discount when tweaking it. And when should tweaking extend to ripping up anyway?

When the first teenager wrote her personal statement two years ago, three different teachers had opposing ideas on what to say and how. People with some knowledge of the subject she wanted to study, and who had taught and lectured themselves, also disagreed. If the professionals weren’t sure how could she be?

Sweating over endless re-writes was harder than studying her A-levels, she declared at one point.

So here we are, back at the drawing board with teenager number two. It starts off lighthearted with her jokingly asking if she can say she’s a “sandwich artiste” as she has a Saturday job in a cafe which requires making sarnies.

“I could even mention Charlotte Church came in the other day, but I didn’t recognise her,” she adds.

We’re not sure whether this is a plus or a minus but think it might be more entertaining than saying she has a “passion” for her chosen subject. “Please don’t say that word,” I beg, covering my ears. We’ve seen a successful personal statement from someone who opened with the lines “I have read from a tender age” so maybe it’s OK to be cheesy? As a parent you are expected to be expert in careers advice, personal statement writing and university application, when in reality you know nothing in a rapidly changing world. Perhaps the best advice I can give is that I don’t know what she should write.

We go to Google and pages of hot tips, videos, photos and chat room discussions pop up. Just deciding which one to follow will take an entire evening to research.

I can imagine the bored admissions tutors sifting through piles of applications and wonder whether a story I heard at school is true.

A candidate went into his Oxford interview to see a tutor reading a broadsheet newspaper.

“Surprise me,” the tutor said in languid tones. The candidate struck a match and held it to the newspaper which went rapidly up in flames.

“You’re in,” said the tutor as he doused the fire.