IF YOU ARE in the sixth form, you will probably be battling with your university application at the moment. What uni would suit you? Could you get into Oxbridge? What subject is best and what work experience or holiday reading might impress your interviewers? And most urgent for those in year 13 — how do you write the perfect personal statement for your Ucas form?
Just ask Natalie Lancer. She has been an assistant head for three years and has advised hundreds of students on their applications. She herself is a graduate of Oxford, King’s College London, Yale and Middlesex University and has taught in both the independent and maintained sector, so she has a wide range of experience. She is also the author of Getting into Oxford and Cambridge (Trotman).
Natalie gives tailor-made advice on your personal statement, with a face-to-face consultation to help complete the first draft and a full email service for subsequent drafts, leading to a statement that is distinctively yours. She also offers subject-specific mentoring, especially helpful for courses such as medicine or law.
Workshops to help parents support learning at any stage are available, as is career-change guidance. For Natalie’s blog, free advice on pre-paring a personal statement and more, visit www.myuniapplication.com
For GCSE or A-level teaching in small, focused classes, Wentworth College, in Golders Green, is ideal. It offers a supportive and hard-working environment, with an emphasis on pastoral care and a special focus on helping students who have transferred from large schools where they felt “lost”.
Exam preparation is one of Wentworth’s great strengths and it offers the option of accelerated courses (one year) alongside two-year courses. On the two-year A-level programme, the first year is carefully designed to ease the transition from GCSEs to A-levels. GCSE subjects range from maths, English and science to Jewish studies, drama, photography and film.
Wentworth students will also enjoy a full programme of extra-curricular activities.