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Managing Your parents

7/21/2014

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Ahem.  An embarrassing topic.  Daddy wants you to be a lawyer.  Mummy has always dreamed of you fulfilling her thwarted desires.  Rushing to the gym, having competitive coffee mornings where she drones on and on about your achievements until you wish the ground would open up and swallow either her or you.  You only took History to please your father.  Your much prefer English, but spend all your spare time either playing the guitar or practising spoken Spanish with that lovely boy from Madrid.

Back in your world, you'd like to study music, after maybe a gap year travelling in South America, perfecting your Spanish.  Music and Spanish maybe?  Spanish with Music on the side?  

It can be hard to tell your parents where to get off.  Maybe the whole issue of student funding might help you: remind them that though you are grateful for any support they may be prepared to give you, the tuition fees you are likely to be paying if you are UK resident are taken off your tax bill, not theirs.  It's your life, and your job prospects are much better if you get a first class honours degree in Art or Music because you love the subject, than if you get a 3rd or drop out from Law because you hate every minute of it.  

What's more, some of the best lawyers took a first degree in something completely different anyway.  

We trail round the country going to careers conferences, listening to what employers actually want.  Creativity, design ability, enthusiasm, excellent communication skills are highly prized.  Office drones, the merely mindlessly industrious are not going to cut it any more.   

Do what you love, what you're good at and if you're being berated by anxious parents about 'doing something with good job prospects', point them in the direction of Chapter 3 of our book, How to Get Into University, available free on iTunes.  

And do remember, your parents only want the best for you really.  All kinds of funny things go through parents' heads: they try to live through you; they subconsciously do the same things to you that their parents did to them, even though they always swore not to; they worry about finance and try to protect you from the struggles they have faced, but in the end, it's your life and you have to live it.  Go for it.  
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News from UCAS Progression to HE Scotland

11/7/2012

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Picture
Straight from the horse's mouth: 

'in the future it will be easier for independent school pupils to access our courses'  - the horse being a spokesman for Scotland's universities, clearly not impressed by the skills-based approach of the Curriculum for Excellence.  

Some good news for Scottish students too: the astonishingly mean maintenance loans available until now (falling to £916 a year if you earn more than around £40,000) has from next academic year been changed to a right to all, regardless of parental income, to a loan of £4500.  Better than nothing, and more in line with the arrangements south of the border, though Scots will have to start repayments as soon as they earn just shy of £16,000, unlike their English fellow students who don't start repaying until they earn £22,000.  

Talk of the AAB+, now ABB+ and the potential for this to be dropped further in subsequent years creating a market free-for-all was interesting.  For those not familiar with this scheme the implications for students are best summarised as follows: 

Applicants to English unis: get ABB or the equivalent and you will be treated much more favourably this year by universities as their funding arrangements favour you over less high-achieving applicants.  

This does not help the scots however: if you can afford it and can satisfy the residency requirements you have a much better chance of getting a place by being an English resident.  Remember the cost of tuition is not up front - many students and their families think it's debt - it isn't really it's a tax, which you only repay if you earn over the threshold.  Your chances of landing the big job are greater if you have been to the right university and studied the right course.  

Don't make educational decisions based on money or parental pressure: choose the university and the finance will work out longer term.  


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