Top tips for navigating the Higher Education application process

We asked our Head of Sixth Form, James Ralphs, for his advice to pupils who are navigating their way through the Higher Education application process.

Life in the sixth form is an exciting period in every pupil’s life and a time when you decide where you are going to study and live for the next three to four years, away from the clutches of your hsm, tutor and even matron! However, these choices can be daunting and difficult; therefore it is sometimes tempting to put them to the back of your mind rather than be proactive.

To combat this, here are some tips for applying to university:

1.    Choose your course first

It is essential that you decide upon a Higher Education course that suits your needs before you start looking at individual universities. You will be studying for a further three to four years, therefore it is important that you chose a course which you are interested in. Is there a subject which you have been studying in the sixth form that you would like to continue with? Do you need a vocational degree to enable you to fulfil a career aspiration?  Would studying a combination of subjects that complement each other be of interest? Spend your A3 year exploring all of these options, using the BridgeU website to ensure an informed decision is made.

Key terms:

BA (Bachelor of Arts): Includes the arts and humanities subjects, such as English, History, and the social sciences.

BSc (Bachelor of Science): Includes more scientific subjects. Admissions requirements usually include Maths or a science subject at A level or Higher Level IB.

Joint honours: These degree courses allow you to study two (or more) subjects conjointly, as one degree e.g. French and Management

Foundation degree/Foundation year: Either a stand-alone qualification that can be ‘topped-up’ to become a full degree at a later date, or the first year of a four-year course (often in e.g. Engineering-related subjects).

Sandwich course: Four-year degree courses, where some of the studies take place in industry or abroad.

Vocational degree: A degree that allows students to study for qualifications for a particular profession. For example; Medicine, Law (LLB) or Architecture.

Degree apprenticeship: These level 6 apprenticeships are joint ventures between an employer (who funds your degree and your training) and a university. They are increasingly available as a form of employment, especially in the finance and technical sectors.

2.    Don’t be a sheep

Once you have chosen your subject area (in discussion with your tutor), the next task is to decide where you will study. It is easy to be tempted to follow your friends or siblings to their chosen university. However this decision needs to be based on your own preferences. Would you prefer a campus or city university? Does the size of the class matter to you? Would you like to be based close to home, or have easy access to sports facilities? Check league tables to find the best universities for your subject area. Remember to look beyond the Russell Group; you may be surprised by some of the universities that rank highly for particular courses. The Complete University Guide website is one useful starting place for research, as it allows you to filter the universities by subject.

3.    Go and visit the universities

Before deciding upon your five chosen universities you really should go and visit them. They will offer a variety of open and taster days throughout the year. It is wise to take your parents along with you. You may worry that they may cramp your style but they will probably pick up on some of the points you miss and ask those embarrassing, but important, questions. Try as much as possible to do this during the school holidays. Missing valuable lesson time will make achieving the entry requirements even more difficult.

4.    Immerse yourself in your subject

Some courses can be very competitive. Make the most of your A3 year to build knowledge and experience that will allow you to stand out as an applicant. The Bryanston Higher Education Guide includes reading lists for a wide variety of courses. Speak to the head of department for your chosen subject for advice on how you could improve your academic profile. Are there any talks or courses you could attend to gain insight and emphasise that you would be an excellent candidate for your chosen university? Remember, universities are interested in you as a well-rounded person as well as your academic results.

Detailed guides on preparing for Higher Education, choosing your course and applying through UCAS can be found on the Higher Education page of the Bryanston website.

Golden mean

It’s that time of year again where lots of the media is shrieking at us about detoxing. The saturnalian month of December is over; puritanical January is with us, and with it the annual call for self-flagellation. Saturnalia (feast) and puritanism (fasting) are, in my opinion, two sides of the same coin and both great for feeling satisfied, or even smug, with or about yourself. My view is that both activities demand a pretty unpleasant level of self-absorption, and as I get older I find both more and more questionable. It may be that I am turning into a follower of Cicero.

Cicero, the modern world’s godfather of Stoicism, is a fascinating man in many, many regards (not least the political life he led), but it is moral letters, his philosophy, based on Zeno and others, which interest me most at this time of year. He knew a thing or two about those ‘two imposters’ of Kipling’s famous poem, and dealt with triumph and disaster in barrowfuls in his own life. The most moving of all his letters for me are those dealing with his profound grief upon the death of his young daughter Tullia, and making sense of that grief as a stoic, a follower of the Greek philosophical school of thought which argued that you should learn to take both the ups and downs in life with comparative calm and aim always for a ‘golden mean’.

Cicero is an example to us, not just because of his very considerable professional and political triumphs (rather too loudly self-proclaimed for modern ears), but more so because of his disasters, personal and public. As a Stoic he aimed not to ricochet from the negative to the positive, and vice versa, but to keep an even keel throughout all that life threw at him. And it threw a lot. Not just the death of his Tullia but also the turning to ashes of his (utterly naïve, with our advantage of hindsight) plans to save the Roman Republic from men such as Pompey, Mark Anthony, and Octavian.

Did Cicero learn from his mistakes? Can we learn from ours? Is a golden mean achievable or is life forever a roller-coaster of success, disaster; happiness, disappointment; excess and fasting? Is the answer to live a life away from all fear of the negative? Should we, like Epicureans of old, withdraw from difficulty and keep ourselves safe and secure from the world?

No. That’s an impossible option, particularly nowadays in a world which is so very much more interconnected even than when John Donne wrote his famous line, ‘No man is an island entire of itself’. I think the answer to living a happy and successful life is that we accept that we make mistakes, that we learn from our mistakes, that we grow stronger from the difficulties hurled at us, that we share our experiences and support one another. We celebrate all the joys of life and don’t nag ourselves for doing so. And we don’t weigh our worthiness by how many pounds we have shed in January or how many perfect mince pies we have baked in December.

I recommend at this time of year a healthy disregard for those who want to make life a misery and who take superficial things too seriously. I recommend aiming instead for that very old fashioned virtue, humility, and for an acceptance that an awful lot of the concerns we are invited to care for are about as trivial as one could dream of. I recommend Cicero and Stoicism in times of trial. I recommend looking outwards and eschewing self-absorption. The minute you can see your life as part of something more important than just yourself, then this seems to me to make much more sense of the lumps and bumps in life, and of the joys too.

So my resolution for 2015 is to be less self absorbed. To learn from my mistakes. To embrace difficulty. To aim for humility. To weave my life’s thread in amongst those of others’. To keep on learning.

I wish you all a wonderful 2015.

Widening horizons

Ni hao! On the afternoon of Tuesday 7 October we shall be hosting a now annual event wherein international universities send representatives to Bryanston to talk to interested A3 pupils. Our hope is that every sixth form Bryanstonian will consider carefully whether they would like to study abroad, in the States or the Netherlands, Spain or China. The world is not confined to this foggy island off the coast of Europe and the wiser and braver amongst us will look outwards not inwards, however beautiful the campus and engaging the company here may be. And they are.

This outlook is one of the reasons I was so keen that we offer the International Baccalaureate (IB) in the sixth form. The IB diploma demands that pupils keep up their modern foreign language beyond sixteen; further, its learner profile describes the principal virtues required of any learner. These virtues are qualities with which it would be hard to argue. A sense of and conviction for international mindedness is also an important element throughout the whole diploma; the IB programme sets out to produce students who will understand the need for their playing a role post-18-years-old in an international world.

I decided to put myself outside my comfort zone to test my own bravery and wisdom this term: I attended my first Mandarin lesson this week. I did it partly to see if a Classicist can approach learning a language of huge suppleness and tonal complexity; partly to see if I can still learn anything at all at my advancing age; and partly because I hope that by learning admittedly only a glimmer or two of the language, I might understand more about a country I have always found fascinating in terms of art and culture. I have to report that I am likely to be a very slow pupil as my ear is, I fear, made of tin. But I really enjoyed trying to discipline my tongue to make noises I could barely recognise aurally and my brain to accept new ideas and frameworks, some of which I found surprisingly attractive. I will let you see my end of term report on the basis that most of you have to read termly those I write upon your own children; I think I should balance things with some humble pie of my own.

If I had my time again I am pretty sure I would still want to read Classics. After all both my daughters have followed my footsteps in this regard. But I think I would want my younger self to be braver about the range of opportunities than I dared to be when I left university in 1984. Many of those opportunities now lie abroad, and many of the opportunities at home in the United Kingdom (I might not have been able to say that if the Scottish vote had gone differently) are open to well-educated, experienced, talented people from around the world. The world will not at any point soon be standing still or become entirely Anglophone or Anglocentric. It’s to my mind essential that Bryanstonians see clearly their way ahead beyond Bryanston and allow themselves to be happy and successful in this evolving habitat. We will try to do all we can to help them to do so here, including nudging them in new directions.

The best is yet to come

The summer term has come to its normal busy conclusion with a hugely enjoyable Speech Day and Leavers’ Ball; all the pupils have departed, and before we know where we are the school is full of small visitors on their All Sports Club course and rather larger visitors in the form of Dorset Opera, who have arrived to rehearse for their fantastic double bill of Aïda and Fidelio, which they will be performing 22-26 July. It’s what keeps us young.

Each year there is a real tinge of sadness as well as joy when the summer term is over and we have waved farewell to the departing A2s. How shall we manage without those sterling young men and women who have been at the top of the school and supplied so much talent, not just in the classroom but also in music, sport, drama, art and so much else?

The fact is that each year we manage because other talented young men and women step up to fill the gaping holes. And anyway, we would be a very creepy school indeed if no-one ever left. The metaphor might I suppose be of the land of the Lotus Eaters, for the Homeric and Percy Jackson fans amongst you.

I talk a lot to the pupils about looking forward and keeping your eye upon the horizon. I vaguely remember being 17 and time did have a different quality. It seemed to go so slowly and I for one could not wait to escape school and set off to new territories. This is what I want for Bryanstonians too and I am deeply sceptical of the sort of rueful nostalgia that can infect some institutions. Indeed on Speech Day this year I urged the leavers to see their school days as NOT the best days of their lives (how ghastly, aged 18 to have lived one’s best times) because we at school wish them so much better than that. I asked this year’s leavers to remember us with affection if they want; we certainly shall them; but always to think and plan forward.

I am allergic to the idea that anyone leaves Bryanston with a sense of entitlement. The world does not owe anyone a living; instead those who have been fortunate enough to have such a solid start in life owe their talents to this exciting world of possibilities and new adventures. Study after study reveals what we already know - that you are a happier and more fulfilled human being if you are involved with your fellow man. Or as Teddy Roosevelt put it in one of my favourite quotations: “The single most important ingredient for success in life is the ability to get on with other people”.

Hopefully that’s just what all A2 2014 will go on to do, and I wish them all the very best of luck in their plans and ambitions. At Bryanston, we shall carry on focusing on what we think is important, in the form of a proper education, and hope that we shall see more of them soon.

But not before I’ve spent a week up a very steep hill outside Lucca and reminded myself of reading for pleasure, not just for information. Homer beckons…..

Raising sights and spirits

Earlier this term I had the most pleasurable dining experience with pupils in my 27 years of teaching when Sophie Duncker, IB Co-ordinator, invited the first cohort of IB pupils and their teachers to a dinner in recognition of their being about to sit the first ever IB exams at Bryanston this May. It’s easy to talk about camaraderie, team spirit, and pioneers in this context. All would be true, but it was great fun too: the company was outstanding, not least in the form of Sam Freud’s (A2) closing speech and I think all will remember the evening fondly for some considerable time.

The IB is a rigorous, enjoyable international way of matriculating at the end of your school career and those who engage in it are, in my view, the better for it. Sam spoke of the CAS (Creativity Action Service) element in particular and of how it had encouraged him to get to know many more of the staff, teaching and support, at Bryanston and how he felt more a part of the school because of it.

From Saga Christmas 1941

On 21 June we shall be hosting our reunion for the classes of 1964 and prior. These are men who were, and remain, part of the school over some remarkable years and under some remarkable leadership. Reading the old editions of Saga (the original school magazine from 1928), particularly those over the war years, underlined for me the nova and vetera of both then and now.

From Saga Summer 1944

It is with some sadness that we recognise that some of our old friends will not be able to join us on 21 June. I recently attended the memorial service for Andrew Stuart (C ’47) who spoke so eloquently at the last Coade Years Reunion at Bryanston in June 2009. Andrew’s memorial service was a privilege to attend; his life was full and hugely well lived with a career spanning the Foreign Office to headmastering and from Vanuatu to Atlantic College (which incidentally also offers the IB). I have kept the speech Andrew made then because it remains a deep part of keeping me straight in terms of what it is to be a head and of my never losing sight of our pupils’ place in the world. Andrew spoke briefly and intelligently about Thorold Coade (Headmaster 1932-59) having himself done the job elsewhere. He talked about how Thorold Coade “tried to raise our sights”. Of how Coade thought education was “not merely to teach boys to pass examinations… but to awaken in them the innumerable possibilities of life, and try to reveal to them in successive stages what is man’s true relationship with his two-fold environment – the physical and spiritual universe”.

From Saga Summer 1939

I read to the school some years ago, and will read again this year, a piece of Andrew’s speech. It covers the idea of the need for a school to be outward-looking not navel-gazing. Here’s a short slice of the speech and why the job of education is such an important one:

“When I was working in Africa, I used occasionally to go as a volunteer instructor at the Outward Bound Mountain School on the Kenyan slopes of Kilimanjaro. This was a difficult time in Kenya. Mau Mau was still going on and racial tensions could be lethal. Outward Bound tried to show that there was another way. As I was walking through the forest with a group of young Africans, Europeans, Asians, Arabs, and Seychellois, who had been working together in the mountains, we saw some monkeys in the trees beside the path. One of the Europeans turned to the African next to him and asked. ‘Why don’t you go over and talk to your cousins over there?’ I nearly had a fit, thinking all the good work of the past weeks would be destroyed. But I should have had more faith. The young African merely turned back and said, ‘Oh they wouldn’t understand me – they only speak English’.”

It is hard to argue against any of the sense of Thorold Coade, a headmaster in times of a World War, or of Andrew Stuart, a diplomat throughout the second half of the 20th Century. This does not stop the necessity of our confronting these matters fully and head-on in 2014. From bananas on pitches to the rhetoric of nationalism across Europe, the need for an understanding of our “true relationship with our two-fold environment – the physical and spiritual…” is just as important as ever. I very much hope that Bryanstonians, and not just our pioneering band of IB pupils, will leave ready to play their proper and full part in this exciting and rarely straightforward world.

Not to do everything but to do something

‘Do all the good you can. By all the means you can. In all the ways you can. In all the places you can. At all the times you can. To all the people you can. As long as ever you can.’

John Wesley might seem an unlikely hero for a girl sent to a convent school as a small child but his famous saying is fantastically clear and keeps us straight. It would perhaps be easy otherwise to take refuge in that unpleasant First World phrase ‘charity fatigue’ as we watch the world from our comfortable armchair in Dorset. But thankfully Bryanston pupils are keen not to stand by. This term alone there has been the Nepal Fair (raising funds for Child Welfare Scheme and Right 4 Children whom we have supported for 12 years), followed by a Frugal Lunch for the children of Syria, and more recently by a day we called “Jeans for the Philippines”.

Contribution to the world we live in can be in this charitable form. And so it should be, both when there are disasters and emergencies which require all of us to respond and when we are continuing to support our long-term chosen charities. But contribution goes beyond this. Contribution is a frame of mind.

It’s about noticing others around you and looking outside your own needs and ambitions. It’s about being outward not inward looking. It’s about real life and real activity rather than a virtual version of both. Schools like Bryanston thrive on this way of living. Sport, music, drama and all social engagement are based upon this outlook on life. I strongly believe that you are not a fulfilled person without this sort of engagement and contribution to something larger than your own small orbit whether to your team or in the orchestra. I also believe this way of living can lead a child or adult to the realisation of the need for the emotional and spiritual wellbeing of others as well as themselves. Which might, for all kinds of reasons, be the most important lesson ever learned in school. All of this matters a very great deal to me.

The theme of our all being connected, even to those we might well not choose to be, by a common humanity is not a new one. John Donne was writing of this in the 1600s and before him Homer too composed epics of great scope and understanding that put victor and victim in the same humane focus. In the dark days of December, remembering what it is that really matters and looking forward to a Christmas holiday of joy and contribution can at least begin to make sense of our conflicting and complicated duties in this fast-changing world.