Post-exams week

On the week starting Sunday 3rd June, the first after Study Leave finishes, Year 12s will be devoting the whole week to preparing for the next stage of their career after A-level. For some this will mean planning placements, experience or applications for full-time employment, while most will be planning a conventional university application. (Even so, the changes to fees have made the “automatic conveyor belt” to UK universities for British-passport-holding students no longer such an automatic choice, and everyone ought to be considering worldwide universities.)

The week will be devoted to

• choosing universities
• writing personal statements
• organising work placements to enhance CVs

To aid students in making these choices, we have organised two trips in the week – to DIAC (the universities in Dubai), on Tuesday - and to NYU in Abu Dhabi on Thursday. Both trips return before the end of the school day and cost 40AED each for transport costs only. Download the letter, including the booking slip, and complete and return it (cash only) to the Head of Careers as soon as possible – there is some competition for places.

Not only will the visits enable students to get a good “feel” for universities (the facilities, the lifestyle, the workload), to ask relevant questions of Admissions Directors and meet real students, they will provide a refreshing break in the week to enable students to think clearly and continue to develop their choice effectively. I strongly recommend all students go on both trips – but make sure you book at least one. (Students not attending a trip on a given day will instead be working at school with staff supervision on their personal statements.)

Dubai Universities Fair

There’s a Universities Fair in Dubai next week – suitable for anyone of about age 13 upwards who may be planning for the future. It’s 5-9pm Thursday evening and 3-9pm on Friday and Saturday at the Dubai International Convention and Exhibition Centre.

The phone number to find out more is 04 3355001

Study outside of the UK?

I’ve talked before about the importance of considering study outside of the UK, and indeed have specifically recommended Holland, where fees are much lower now than the UK and yet courses are still taught in English and internationally well-recognised.

Looks like the news caught up.

With fees now as high as they are, even British students preparing to make a university choice ought to consider Continental European university options.

High-grade challenges: know the field

If you’re considering any of the really super-competitive routes in Higher Education – say, any course at Oxbridge or any top Law course – take a look at the following useful articles:

• turns out the secret of getting into law is not specific legal knowledge but the power of your critical thinking and ability to apply it to new material
• getting into Oxbridge still looks a bit loaded against you if you’re from state schools in the UK, no matter how bright you are - justifiable or not (I think it’s not and there is bias in the system) you need to learn to play this by interviewing well

Bear in mind that AAA is the minimum for either of these routes and A*AA is now the common offer. Come talk to me if either of these routes are of interest to you.

Year 12s starting their future planning

Whether you’re intending to go to university or straight into employment, and no matter which country you’re thinking of university-wise if that’s your route, this whole process is about two things:

• selecting with great care exactly the right route for yourself and making those applications, and
• using the excitement about your future to motivate yourself to be the best you can right now, because you are facing raw and brutal levels of competition from right across the world.

You can download and review the powerpoint from the PSHE session on 7/2/12, or find out how to book a meeting with me to talk about your future. (Note that you can also invite your parents to meet with me if it helps them or you think through the process.)

In the meanwhile, make sure you’re following this blog (use the sign up by email feature on the right) and that you’re already using your spare time to start to look at universities online. Most will have their prospectuses as downloadable PDFs.

Why not start at the Guardian’s 2012 league table of British universities?

Oxbridge and Ivy League success!

Two significant firsts for DBS this month: for the first time we’ve got year 13 students into Oxbridge and Ivy League universities. Congratulations to Charlotte Ryan, off to study Land Economy at Cambridge (Newnham College) and Head Boy Michael Ayad, destined for Johns Hopkins to study Pre-med. Both had tough interviews in which they would have had to excel – for the first year this year we were able to provide in-depth interview training beforehand, a development we intend to continue in future years. In fact, for current year 12 and 11s we’re already planning a longer-running preparation programme so that our most able students have Oxbridge and Ivy League universities in their sights from much sooner, and thus are able to prepare better.

It’s difficult to over-emphasise how few students get into these extremely elite universities and how effective the preparation may be – so if you’re a very able student as young as year 9, or a parent of such a student, feel free to make contact and ask about how to get on this path to success.

We’ve also not had students go on to Medicine courses at other prestigious UK universities before, but have a number of applications currently awaiting outcomes of interviews or application this year – again, careful preparation, close support by relevant subject and pastoral staff and interview training has been provided in full. We hope to have yet more positive news to report in this area very soon!

A-level options evening

Here’s the powerpoint for year 11s from today’s assembly, on how the options process works for A-level. Look particularly at the first “Careers issues” page, which gives you some sense of how certain subjects link to certain careers.

Remember that this is just the first, cursory, overview summary of things. Much more detail will be available from Miss Kelly in the Options Evening this coming Wednesday.

In addition – book a slot to come and chat privately to me about your options before then. You don’t need a concrete idea what you want to do in order to have a Careers Support Meeting – in fact, they’re often just a chance to think aloud with a trained adult as a sounding board for your ideas.

Your parents – as I will say frankly to them at the Options Evening – are both the best, and the worst, source of advice. They have oodles of knowledge about their industries, the process of applying for and doing jobs, the ability to construct a career, the sense of what real companies need, and the real-world practicalities about salaries and living costs. At the same time, their knowledge of the education system is often very much out of date, gleaned from (politically biased and misrepresentative) newspapers, and whilst they are usually excellent judges of you as people, may not always be a good judge of you and your prospects as a student. It’s critical to talk and listen to them – but with a pinch of salt, and combine their advice with teachers and near-peers in older year groups.

Above all – come to the Options Evening, and make sure your parents come too. See you there.