In April 2021, UCAS published their ‘Reimagining UK Admissions’ report, which was informed by 13,000 UK students and outlined several possible reforms to the UK university admissions process, including proposing radical changes to personal statements.
Currently, the personal statement is a freeform essay of 4000 characters which allows students to promote themselves to prospective universities. However, this process has been identified as a mechanism to “widen the gap” between students. This report presented fears that students without access to high quality guidance will not be able to present themselves as well as their more advantaged co-applicants with easy access to this advice. It also explored concerns that students did not fully understand how universities used personal statements.
In addition to this, personal statements have been seen as a point of large amounts of stress for students with 83% expressing that they found writing their personal statement stressful and 79% admitting the process is difficult without support.
These ideas are supported by a HEPI (Higher Education Policy Institute) research paper which found that within 164 personal statement drafts of students from underrepresented backgrounds, 83% of the drafts did not provide an evidence-based opinion on a relevant academic topic and 35% of applicants failed to write cohesive paragraphs within at least one of their drafts.
In light of this, UCAS has made the decision to replace the freeform essay with six questions applicants will be asked to answer. These will be based around the students’ motivation for the course, preparedness for the course, preparation through over experiences for the course, extenuating circumstances, preparedness for studying the course and preferred learning style. The official questions have not yet been released as UCAS is continuing to revise them.
There are many positives to this change, with the new system hopefully providing a simpler format and being less stressful for students who do not have expert support. There is also hope that it will increase students’ confidence that they have included everything they need to. This format should also be easier for universities to compare students by making it easier for them to identify the information they need.
However, there has been some criticism of the questions with people taking particular issues with the question around preferred learning style, which has been viewed as ambiguous. People have also expressed concern about the application still favouring students from higher income families by providing the opportunity to mention any additional experiences the student has had, many of which are often only available to higher income students.
It is yet unclear as to when UCAS intends to fully introduce these changes, with their initial intentions for it to have been used in the current application cycle. However, it is considered unlikely that they will introduce this change before Autumn 2025, meaning it will affect those applying for 2026 entry.
SOURCES:
Five steps UCAS is taking to reform the undergraduate admissions process | Undergraduate | UCAS
UCAS Personal Statements to be Removed in 2024 (uniadmissions.co.uk)
Changes to Personal statements confirmed by UCAS (schoolguide.co.uk)
UCAS Announces No Changes to Personal Statement for 2024 & 2025 — The UK Study Expert