Last minute applications: things you should know

Making the most of your opportunity in a short period of time.

Plans and priorities can change quickly, and this can leave many students scrambling to submit an application to study at university without the normal amount of time to prepare for it. If this applies to you, don’t despair – this article will provide you with a few simple tips to follow to maximise your chance of success.

Making the most of your experience

You may have heard from careers councillors, friends and teachers that preparing a strong academic CV to study at Oxbridge, the G5 or Ivy League universities can take more than a year and in truth, this is often the case. However, if you already have some experience there is a lot you can do to expand this in your written submissions. The key to doing this well is to ‘build out’ from what you already have. If you have read a book on a certain topic, make this the focus of your personal statement as you already know something about it. If you have done any small amount of work experience, this is about all the ways in which you can link this to your chosen course or university. At this point you won’t have lots of time to add experience, so use what you’ve got!

Use your time wisely

In the time you do have, identify what is achievable. If the deadline is tomorrow, you obviously don’t have time to add any project experience. If however, the deadline is not for several weeks that does actually give you time to enter a competition or do some academic research. Searching online or speaking to an education advisor is the quickest way to see what projects are available. Pick a short reading list and decide your structure early to make it easier to write. Remember, at this point, you are only doing the research so you can put it in your statement.

Don’t submit until your happy

This may seem obvious, but every year I have students who want to submit their applications as soon as ty can, even if that means it’s not perfect. There is no point in submitting an application that you are not happy with because it will get rejected. If the application is already very late then an extra few days won’t hurt. Spend your time wisely and make sure all of your experience is down accurately, you have a clear structure and there are no spelling or grammar mistakes.

Remember to personalise your applications

Even when time is tight you still need to personalise each application you make so that it fits the criteria that each individual university or course is looking for. As with our previous point, if your application isn’t right, there is no point submitting it and unfortunately this means putting in some extra time to make sure you have adapted your PS or cover letter to address the specific requirements of each course properly.

Some helpful examples

Here are some helpful examples of Libra students who have submitted their G5 Masters applications late. Mark received his offer from Oxford in May, whilst Claire got her UCL offer in August. It’s never too late!

Mark

Subject: Modelling for Global Health (Masters)

Accepted by: The University of Oxford

Background

Mark had never studied medicine or any related sciences and yet, with our help, managed to apply to Oxford for a medicine-related course. Not only this, but Mark also only submitted his application in April, and didn’t receive his offer in May. Against all the odds, Libra Education was able to secure Mark a place on his dream course, at his dream university.

Our first step was to give Mark numerous lessons in fundamental science knowledge to give him the skills not only to apply successfully but to actually be able to access the lessons once he took up his classes. Mark worked hard and learned a lot in a short space of time from our tutors.

With this new knowledge in hand, we lead Mark to complete two academic projects in medicine that we were able to publish in several online medical forums. This enabled us to create an Oxbridge-worth personal statement for Mark to use.

The final elements of the support with prepare Mark for the interview. We coached Mark on his technique over several tutorials and mock interviews. Perhaps the biggest help we offered however was, in finding out who the interviewers were to be, we taught Mark the content from the professor’s most recent research papers. It turns out, that the whole interview was based on one of these papers.

In summary, we taught Mark medical knowledge, crafted his personal statement, and give him an inside route on the interviews, all between March and May.

Libra Education Action Plan

Taught all medical knowledge from scratch.
Completed and published two projects for Mark.
Crafted Mark’s personal statements.
Predicted and taught answers for the interview.

Claire

Subject: Management, Finance and other associated courses (Masters)

Accepted by: LSE, UCL (two offers), KCL, The University of Edinburgh

Background

Some students apply early, some apply very late. Thankfully both can be successful! Claire submitted her applications between January and May because she was working on meeting the IELTS requirement for her courses whilst completing valuable projects to include in her application. These certificates definitely helped her application but it meant she was almost 6 months later than normal in submitting some applications.

Nevertheless, she received amazing offers. UCL was her dream school and she secured an offer in August. She had only two weeks to arrange her visa, flights and accommodation. With our help, the admissions team kept considering her until the very last minute.

Claire wanted to follow in those footsteps but had many challenges to overcome:

Not yet achieved the required IELTS grades.
Was not meeting the university GPA requirement (85% or in some cases 90%).
Little prior experience in the chosen fields.

Libra Education supported Claire to build her confidence and re-sit several key GPA examinations at her university providing the training for her to do so. Libra built an application strategy that delayed applications until the last moment. This enabled her to make an application successfully to all of her top-choice universities by including an increased GPA and the evidence of her IELTS result.

Libra Education Action Plan: