Why do you need a consultant when entering a foreign university?

We, Paradise Education London, have been offering an admissions service to UK and other foreign universities in Europe and America for 27 years. We would like to share with you what we are doing to improve the chances of children who are studying in both Chinese schools and international schools in English.

We tell you how our expert maximises the chances of success and literally works miracles: helping applicants get into educational institutions they dreamed of, and sometimes could not even dream of.

Xenia Starostina is an expert on universities and a Master's student at the London School of Economics. She will be able to help anyone who would like to maximise their chances of getting into a British or any other foreign university, maybe American, Italian, Dutch or even Finnish.

Many people go to university without understanding the vast ocean of universities that exist. There are 5,000 in America. Most of them are not worth your attention.

So it is very important to get into the university that will be the best option for your child. And sometimes we have situations among our clients where people say, "Wow! How did we even get there?" How did we do it? And we did it thanks to the "creative designs" that our expert Xenia creates.

We will tell you how and in what way we increase our students' chances of getting into the best universities they may not have even dreamed of. I mean, what goes on behind the scenes?

What's the point of a really cool counsellor?

A counsellor or expert who guides your child on the path to university is like a personal trainer. Of course, you can coach yourself, either online or in groups. Again, coaches are different, you can hire a UEFA coach or a coach who prepares athletes for the Olympics.

Our Ksenia is the kind of coach who prepares for the Olympics. The decision is yours: you will prepare for the Olympics or you will prepare for some regional competitions. We always make our own choices, and they determine our destiny.

What are the benefits of Paradise for students?

There are three different types of students. The first type are those with ambitious plans and great grades. They want to go to Oxbridge or other top universities. We know that it is the top students who have the most competition.

Sometimes parents ask before we start, "Why do we need a counsellor when my child is an excellent student and does well on his own?"

And we know that these kids need a counsellor especially. You have to realise that the competition for the top universities is unbelievable. And that means that all the kids who apply there, they are all excellent students, they are all doing something in school. And you need to distinguish yourself not against the background of those who are not good at something, but against the background of all those who are good at something.

Here is an example from practice. Not so long ago we had 2 students who both wanted to go to Oxford, let's call them Mark and John. They both went to very prestigious boarding schools in the UK that are in the top 50 schools, so they are big names that are hard to get into. They both go into science, and one of them comes to us and we work with him to strengthen his profile.

And the other one tells us after the fact how it was, and they don't call him for an interview. But our student Mark is called for an interview.

And it's like the grades are the same, the track record at the school is also the same, the format of the school is also the same, basically the same, but one has an interview invitation and the other doesn't.

Why is that?

The thing is, based on what was in the school, Mark and I worked very carefully and systematically. What did we do?

Firstly, it was a research internship at the university. This immediately sets a student very much apart from other candidates. It was the University of St Andrews, a few weeks with a professor, where Mark learnt in the laboratory how to do different experiments. And he could talk about it all in his essay.

To clarify, this occurs between 12th and 13th grade. That is, a 16-year-old student has entered England, for example, in the 12th grade. Accordingly, he has the summer before his senior year to do an internship. And an internship is something you can't buy in a shop, and something that is not advertised on websites.

You can't pay for an internship like you pay for summer school and go to study. It is exactly the expert's knowledge of which professors take students, how to approach them, how to organise it all. This is what Paradise does for its clients.

And then there are the credit courses that we recommended to Mark. Credit courses are not those where you get a piece of paper at the end saying that you have taken a course, but where you get a grade. Which, by the way, is critical, for example, for American universities.

And with such steps: internships, courses, and what books he has read, and how he presented all this with our help in his personal essay - at the end we get that two, in general, equal candidates, but one has an invitation, and as a result then an offer to the university. And the other one doesn't.

One little drop can tip the scales. And you have to know what that drop is.

The thing is that if we talk about Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial, then all the students there are excellent, all the students there are great, you can basically take anyone there.

To draw an analogy with sports: in most sports at the same level, fractions of a second make the difference. And whether to rely on chance, what if I can overtake, or to do the right things to maximise that chance is a choice that parents and students have to make.

Unfortunately, very often students talk to their parents. But they are still teenagers, they are maximalists, they say, I will do everything myself, I can do it. And parents say: yes, I trust you. But they don't trust their teenager to build a house, for example. Because they know it probably won't work out well. So how do they trust him with a project he has absolutely no experience in? It's the same thing. Especially with a child's fate at stake here. A house, after all, can be rebuilt when you've seen at the foundation level that something is going wrong. But here it's everything.

You got into something, and that's it. What's next? You can't keep getting bachelor's degrees forever. The last chance to make something up is a master's degree, and that's not a sure thing. You can't just let it go.

Many times we have encountered that in such a situation, a student builds a plan, and then comes to us and we say, "Why is it like this? What was the logic behind it?" And he says, "Oh, a friend of mine decided that way, and I decided to do it that way.

We had a client who entered the US with a golf scholarship.

In unique situations, if a student is really academically strong, or if they're an athlete, especially if we're talking about going to North America, you definitely need support there too. Because you can get a full scholarship on the way out. Full tuition. For example, in sports, our student got a full tuition, an academic scholarship.

Another of our students received 35,000 Canadian dollars at the University of Toronto. These things are there too, but you need to approach them intelligently.

A question that parents sometimes ask us at the beginning of our work. I have a child who is independent and doesn't need help because he will do everything by himself.

But just as the coach doesn't do everything for the athlete, but controls the athlete, teaches him/her and shows him/her what to do, so we do the same. The student is fully involved in all of

this. You can say that he works much more than how much he does if he does it on his own. The workload increases.

Let us tell you how Patadise has helped Kira, who is now studying to be a film director. She says with delight that she herself was surprised to find herself in such a university, because here someone has already made their own films and they are shown to the general public. Someone has even been a judge at a film festival, which is already the level of a student.

Kira is a great example, she had incredibly high exam results, over 38 IB points (out of 45 maximum). She was a fully responsible person who knew exactly what she wanted, her previous profile was basically going there too. Here it was a question of cutting this diamond, turning it into a diamond.

This was done through a number of things. Firstly, the right choice of programmes. Not just random ones that are advertised somewhere. There are the right programmes, where there are strong links with the industry, and where, as Kira said, there are guys who are energised, who are sharpened, who have experience. Especially in creative fields, it's very important to have that networking with the teachers, with the experts that come in, with the guys that you study with. Because in the beginning you do a lot of projects for free, for example, you make films where you will be my lighting, you will be my voiceover, and I will be the director. Because they need to build up a portfolio, with which they then go out somewhere.

And consequently, if you don't have a great contingent to do it with, your portfolio will suffer too, no matter how talented you are. So it's great to be in a strong environment.

Through portfolio preparation with Kira, through personal statement, through choosing the right universities, she has found herself in a place where she can fulfil her potential, her talent, and a place where she simply still feels great and enjoys learning.

Let's tell you how we were able to help Kira through help with writing a personal statement and portfolio.

Let's start with a few examples to make it more illustrative. Let's take biology as an example. There such a classic but boring personal statement will start like this: I have loved biology since childhood, it is my favourite subject at school, I am especially interested in the topic of energy in cells. I read a lot about it. Full stop.

It seems okay, but there's no depth, there's no detail, everybody reads, everybody learns that subject school if they're going to apply for it. Again, you're no different from any other candidate then.

And if the essay begins like this: after reading the book Selfish Gene, I became interested in how genetics influences the development of this and that. And having done an internship at such-and-such university, and having tried to split genes myself under the guidance of such- and-such professor, I realised that science is my calling.

It's different orders of immersion and depth. Even if you set aside internships and just focus on what you can, for example, take from home, because that happens too. Now there are a million options of different online programmes and competitions that we always advise a student to participate in, match them up. For law, it would be essay competitions, of which there are a lot, for example, when some legislation changes, which students can participate in.

Or there was even a case where a guy entered a poetry competition even though he was applying for maths. But top universities, especially fundamental ones like Oxbridge, like this unique combination of exact science and something fundamental. Of course, we take into account the interests of the students first, because it's about the student, and we tailor the competition to them.

What else do we do for strong students who are already in the process. For example, let's call the girl Anya, she's applying for Fashion. She is passionate about it, she has been working for a long time, she has a portfolio - everything is great. We give her an expert we've been working with for many years. She is a graduate of Central Saint Martins, the most famous design school, who already has her own successful brand. She won a bunch of competitions when she graduated and she does her own shows.

And it gives her insight into this world, into the fashion industry in the UK and the vision of the Saint Martins school. Because if we are not talking about scientific, but about creative areas: architecture, fashion design, fine art, that is, painting, then each school has its own very clear view of the world, its own stylistic vision and its own stylistics. And, accordingly, its own artistic vision.

And you have to understand, if you want to get there, first of all, do you fit that vision? And if you say yes, so that you fit this vision.

And it's not just the motley list of work that students at this age usually have. Because they did well here at art school, they drew flowers here. Then they started A-levels at a good school and it's more serious, but you have to combine it all somehow. That's what we're helping with. How to separate it all out, how to present it in such a way that the student has a chance. And what else you need to add to get accepted there.

There is another case of student Maria. A popular field for our students is architecture. And here we give our students insight from Admissions Studio from Cambridge. It's more rigorous nowhere else. So if you get comments for your portfolio and realise how relevant you are, it will help you with admissions to many, many, many places.

That is, in each university, even if it is architecture, the course will be taught completely differently. Plus, accordingly, a lot depends on the professors who teach. Not to mention art colleges, there are completely different sensations. And the student has to match those feelings and those techniques that are used there in order to learn successfully.

Shall we tell you more about the student Zlata, who went into womenswear management? She had a lot of experience, a lot of experience, and you had to extract from it what was suitable and explain how it all worked, prepare her for the interview, make a proper portfolio.

And, of course, it's good if it's an industry expert who knows very well what direction to take it all in to find a job, to find internships - this gave our client insight. Which the school, no matter how good it was, just wasn't able to give her. Because that's not what school does.

The school teaches students basic subjects. It does not deal with the fashion industry and, in fact, other industries as well.

And this is where clients have a question when they first come to us: "We have college counsellors at our school. Our school helps us with admission". Yes, really good schools do help with admission, they are good, they do everything right.

But it's like, to continue the analogy, group sports, and in a very large group, when you have, let's say, one counsellor for the whole year, and yes, you will have a meeting with him, but it will be in the format of five minutes at certain intervals. During that time, you can't sort out individually what the student needs, what they want, how to enhance their profile. It will be a kind of polishing of the existing, but it will not be the creation of something new, and it will not be this kind of problem-solving, problem-solving at the level that we have, as it happens with us, as it happens if a student gets into such a situation.

Especially there is no such frequent communication when you can ask the consultant you are working with at any time. And there are a million questions. It's not like you're going to catch the school counsellor. You set up an appointment with him, and yes, some schools, small schools especially, have as many as 18 appointments in a year. What is that, up to 18 appointments in a whole year, that's considered a lot. It's not like you're going to sit and chat with him for two hours.

And the most important thing is that you're not going to be cooked and pressured to do this and that.

Many students don't take the help of a counsellor and decide to step out into this raging sea on their own. And then they naturally fail. In most cases, fail at what? They get in somewhere, but not where they wanted to go. That is, their ambitions are not satisfied.

This is a crucial moment in life, what if a student doesn't have a very reliable support and a hand to guide you. That is, if you don't have that push, you can just expect wild disappointment.

The investment is enormous, especially for those who have finished school here, and of course they will continue to pay for universities.

How much does university cost? From £100k minimum and £150k for three years with accommodation. What's the point of saving money for a consultant when you can feel like you've at least maximised your chances. That is, you've done everything you can to get your child to the best possible outcome.

Now let's talk about the second type - average students who are not bad at school, but not top students either. They are the most lost because they don't know where to go at all.

And they often have some sort of predicates. Predicts are the grades that you get in England after 12th grade, and you enter the school according to them. So these are the grades that are predicted by the teachers. Here there is another perfect system, that is you enter not after graduation, not after the last year of study, but before the last year, after the penultimate year. And you need to get these grades, and on the basis of them, and also on the basis of your work, the teachers at school will foresee what grades you can get in the final exams. And according to them, accordingly, they apply to universities.

Some predicates are good and some are not so good. And the task of Ksenia and her team is to creatively approach the process and turn these "not so good predicates" into "very good" ones.

Firstly, the schools here are very strict in giving grades, because they need to make sure that there is no discrepancy. So that they don't overestimate everyone's grades, and then de facto students do not pass the exams well. That's where the problem arises.

Since the school has a lot of students, they care more about how the school looks in general before university, they will not inflate a particular student's predicates too much for the sake of him getting these offers. The student says, "No, I'll get better I'll do well in school!" The school tends to be pretty adamant about that, and often it puts the student in front of the fact: no, it's like this.

And the thing is that if you have a very low predicament, you can only apply to universities of the second tier. That is, where you meet the minimum requirements. Yes, you can still take the final exams for a higher score. And you can participate in clearing, which is a procedure that takes place in August, when students have already received their grades, and when universities publish vacancies where there are places left.

But the thing is that if we talk about a lot of sought-after universities and sought-after programmes, there will be no places there. And therefore, it would be better to get an offer there right away. You cannot get a conditional offer there at once, if you have low predicts. So you get such a vicious circle.

Let's use the Charterhouse boy as an example of how we do it so that the student does get into a good university. We expected his grades to be A-A-A during his previous studies, and then something went wrong, it happens, it happens in his studies, and he gets A-C-C predicts. A-C- C-C is very hard to get into a decent university. It's a low predicate, especially for such popular majors as economics, for example.

What did we come up with?

Let's start by saying what the school did. The school didn't want to increase the predicate. The school meets with the parents and the boy. They say, no, based on the way you've been performing lately, that's the maximum we can put you in. And schools, especially strong schools, usually take an even tougher stance on this.

So what did we do? Firstly, we explained to the family how to talk to the school, what they need to say and how to solve this issue with them. Secondly, we realise that the boy's EPQ is almost finished. EPQ is a research project that a high school student can do on a subject that interests him. And then the student gets an "A" grade on the EPQ.

"A" is a good grade. There are a number of universities that lower the general requirements for some programmes with this grade. So if the general requirements are A-A-B or A-A-A, and you

have an EPQ with an A grade, it becomes A-A-B? So you get this kind of grade discount. That's one.

Next we're giving him A Levels in Russian. Again, it didn't occur to the school, the school didn't offer it to him. The point is that for a native speaker it is possible to pass the exam with rather short preparation. Preparation will still be necessary, because the exam is serious, it's not Russian in terms of speaking. It's more like Russian literature. There you have to watch a film, read a book, you have to know what the marks on the exam are for.

We add him, and the school immediately gives him a high predicate in this Russian language. And in some incredible way, through these pluses, he manages to raise one grade, and he gets quite real predicts. I've already got an offer from one of the Russell Group universities.

Once again: we took the EPQ, added Russian and got a great result.

And we have a lot of situations like that every season. And how many times have we had situations when people come to us, having already chosen subjects, having already started studying in Sixth form with certain subjects, and it turns out that these subjects do not quite fit their programme. And we also negotiated with the school, we tell them how to do it, we try to help them.

Why can't even good schools keep track of this? Because the school's task, its main activity, is to teach the student. To educate him, to teach him to work independently, to give him this beauty and variety so that he gets good grades in exams.

But the student is still the one who has to go to university. He'll be an adult by the time he graduates. But without this experience. And even, by the way, with experience, when someone in the family has already entered, still the requirements change, the faculties are different. And you still need the help of a specialist.

There are cases when a person still gets lower grades in the final exams than he or she would like. Stress, excitement, it's a very stressful time.

An illustrative case is a student who got into Bath University. We had a situation not so long ago where a student received an offer from Bath University, which is a very strong university, for a very competitive programme. And they liked her personal statement and her profile so much.

And even though they couldn't take her on the basis of her low grades that she got, because when it's so competitive, they can't give that kind of exception. But they said: we liked you so much that we'll take you next year if you retake this one grade and we'll hold a spot for you. You'll get an offer. It's a unique situation.

Or if a person has gone to a university, what university to go to? Panic starts there, because time goes on, places are taken, there are some universities, but how to choose one? Because universities are different, and there are those that are not worth choosing. And if you are not involved in it, if you don't know it, if you just look at their website, it is very difficult to choose.

Let's also say that when we offer schools to clients, the websites always have a list of universities to which graduates are admitted. And from time to time parents send very strange remarks, saying, "I looked at the universities, and they are not very good. Firstly, there is no such thing that all universities are not very good, even in the school, maybe with the least high results. There's still going to be some universities that are very cool and some that are average and some that are, respectively, even lower. And here they give such a radical assessment, saying that they are not very good.

There was this situation: 80 per cent Russel Group. And we realise that parents have a very vague understanding of what good universities are. It is not at all necessary with the specialisation that a student has chosen to go to a particular prestigious university.

We know that industrial design is best at Brunnell, which is not at all in the Russell group that everyone aspires to. Those nuances need to be understood too. And how will they understand them? But that's like assuming that starting to study medicine will make you a doctor after a month of that study.

This is exactly the kind of situation where a completely random factor comes into play. Why include it? Given the time, financial, mental investment, such an important moment in a child's life.

For example, any investor who has even a hundred thousand pounds, let alone a larger amount, he will think, where am I going to invest this money. He has a different level of perception and appreciation of the situation than most people. And it would seem that we work like this with investments, but when it comes to education, we don't always consider it an investment, so we don't think about the situation from all sides.

And university is a real definition of destiny: what you will do in your life, how employable you will be, what your chances are. Will you be happy in this life, will you be really engaged in your work, waking up in the morning with the feeling that life has been successful. I think you're buying a huge chunk of life here, which is one. I think it's such an important moment in life roughly like getting married or having kids. Even though you can get married a second time, but I don't think it's a good idea to study for a bachelor's degree twice.

This is especially true for those who study on a student visa, because according to immigration rules you can study at the same level for a maximum of five years. That is, you can't do two full- fledged bachelor's degrees. You can go, but it's not desirable. So there's also a restriction in terms of visa regulations. There is no right to make a mistake, to redo and redo.

Let's tell you about the third type of student. These are students who, to put it bluntly, are quite a lot of students who do not study very well. Either they don't pull their weight, or they simply don't want to study. And, accordingly, these students find themselves in a situation where they may end up in third tier universities or in a poor one in general. They often say out of hopelessness: "Oh, I'll go into business". And nobody understands what happens next.

In 2020, there were 150 applicants for one business job. Because business is such a thing, about nothing. You have to specialise if you want to go into business and be a specialist in something.

Paradise's work is invaluable in this situation! Let's tell you how we help children who are not very hard-working to end up in great universities.

Here the work goes in several directions. In these cases, it's largely also organisational work in terms of time management, in terms of support, motivation, tracking, because there are deadlines, when things need to be done. And so there's a lot of learning going on, a lot of things going on. And if a person doesn't have good self-organisation, then they have a bad time.

Especially for these students who have trouble with it, it's super helpful and super relevant to them because we take them in our hands. Gentle but firm. And then we don't let them out of there until we have the right university for them, with their interests and with their opportunities. But with maximisation, so that it would still be decent, so that it would give them a chance to get a normal job afterwards. Not just some incomprehensible bad universities.

Choosing universities and programmes. The same personal statement, preparation for the interview, for example. And then again, if something goes wrong, we support them until the very last moment. Until the child is enrolled, we do not give up on him or her, we do not stop working with him or her. Our work ends only when the person has already started studying at the university. And we give him a compulsory session where we tell him what to pay attention to, what to be afraid of, what not to do.

Some of these things are a surprise to the student, like about turning in student papers or about plagiarism. That is, we tell you the ins and outs of the steps.

Let's tell a case that we had not so long ago, when one student studied in a strong school, but he had to leave there because he completely failed A-level exams. And he started the IB programme as a more versatile programme, where you can try more different things. But he didn't do well on it either for a number of personal reasons. But as a result, we found him a small private university with a much more personalised approach. It was absolutely optimal for him. And he is now studying there quite successfully, because this person is not suited to a large school with thousands of students, where basically nobody cares what happens.

I should make a remark here that British universities will not chase after you. There is no such situation there, where parents can call the academic department and say whether their child has been to a lecture. This is impossible here. Here, in principle, no one will talk to parents at the university. Only the student can discuss his studies once he has already entered the university.

Accordingly, for this particular student, an environment where it was controlled, where it was possible to receive more support, was more suitable. And still the grades were not enough to get into this chosen university. And as a result, an interview with the dean was organised, we prepared the student for the interview. Because if you come to such an interview and say, "My maths teacher was bad, that's why I failed maths. The outcome will be unfavourable, you can't say that.

You can't blame others for your own results. You have to take responsibility for what you did and somehow process it constructively and explain why you won't get into that situation next time. What is your plan to avoid getting into that situation next time. That's what we help with.

We have just talked about Britain, but of course it is all applicable, and in some ways even more relevant if we talk about other countries. And if we're talking about British universities, British schools, it's the same country. But if we are talking about the United States, if we are talking about Canada, if we are even talking about Holland, it is a completely different story.

Here is another example from life, when a student comes to us and says, please help me. I kind of got accepted to a Dutch university that I really wanted to go to last year. I applied myself through the school. But then they turned me down for some reason. I didn't realise why.

We take the application, we start looking at it, and we realise that he hasn't filled in certain forms that he had to do at the end, which he thought were completely unnecessary because he had already been accepted. And Dutch universities have their own peculiarities. Some universities want you to write your own curriculum for some programmes. And this is not a trivial task, you have to use a certain amount of knowledge and imagination.

And it seems to be some kind of formality, it's not on the list of mandatory forms, and the person is not taken at this last stage because of this. As a result, everything is fine, because we have started to work, these forms have been filled in again, there are offsets.

This is a very typical example of how the school could not track it, and the student himself could not track it. As a result, a place was lost and the person could have studied from this September on that programme.

We had a student in the Isle of Man, Kate, who was academically weak, who we helped. It was a situation where you had to pick the very right institutions and just lead by the hand. Not to give the opportunity to forget anything, to miss anything. From writing essays, to filling in all the forms. As a result, now a person is successfully studying and everyone likes him.

It's important to emphasise that we work with all students with the same pleasure. We are happy to help super students who go to Oxbridge, but it is just as rewarding for us when someone comes in with an initial C-C-C grade and we manage to get an offer to a great place and the student is successful.

It's no less a success story. We look at the situation that is there and then our job is to maximise the option that is available and choose the best fit. So that the student there can start a new page or continue what they have been doing or start with a clean slate. Because the university gives an opportunity to start from scratch, because then employers or masters look at the grades at the university.

Shall we talk about the personal statement? Sometimes we read it through the eyes of the university, and it's bad. One of the popular lines is something from the category that "I am the chosen one, so I should be taken to the university". This thought should be a thread running through the essay, but not in this form, that's for sure, but showing what you have done, what you have achieved. It can be hard for a student to rock out to answer essay questions on their own.

In American universities there is also often such a situation, because American essays are very personal, and there you have to tell your personal story. And, for example, "I taught my sister to

ride a bicycle". And this essay can be submitted to an American university. And it starts: okay, why did you do that? What did you learn in the process? What did it make you feel? And how did you help your sister? And before that it was, "I taught her how to ride a bike. My parents praised me." And it's three and a half sentences, and we need 400 words. How do we get from that to this? But we have the know-how to get from one to the other.

Reflection and the ability to analyse suffer in many students. When we interview our children, we often ask them to look around and say, please tell us what is in the room. That is, the maximum we hear is: I have a table, a chair, I don't know, there is a carpet. And that's it. And I understand perfectly well what the American university wants, it wants to understand how this student thinks, what he worries about, what skeletons he has in his wardrobe, maybe what he has under the carpet. And a lot of people don't realise that this is necessary.

Students are often very smart, educated, very cool at maths, which everyone is very proud of. But the problem is that it's not enough for the university. And so you are just telling them what the university wants to hear from them, just as we prepare them for interviews with schools.

It is very important to prepare your child for the interview, just as it is important to help them write a personal statement or to help them get their case right in general. Exactly the way the school wants to hear or the university wants to hear and read it.

Our job is to teach, to coach, how to do it right, to have that very chance.

Let's say a few more words about clearing. Firstly, let's explain what it is. How do enrolment take place in British universities?

If you have a child studying in England, when he/she passes the final exams, he/she already knows where he/she is enrolled, because he/she has already received a conditional offer of a place a year or six months ago. Accordingly, when he/she has got the necessary grades, this offer becomes unconditional.

But the problem is that a lot of people don't get the grades they expected. And this is where you go for this clearing. That is, you go into the system, and you see which universities still have places left, and which are ready to take you with these not-so-good grades. Sometimes there are very cool options, and sometimes not so much.

It's very important to move forward quickly here. And the problem is that the moment you get bad grades, you are under a lot of stress. You don't know where to go, because you were aiming for one thing, and then you have to make some other decisions, and you are afraid of making the wrong decisions.

I think that's the situation where a counsellor helps, and it's great to have a counsellor because it's like a lifeline. Who leads you by the hand through this system and says, "Let's go here, and let's also go here".

Firstly, all universities have different procedures. Some have a phone number, some have an online form. Secondly, specific assessments are important to see if I pass the requirements. Because sometimes it's also depending on what qualifications have done it, what your situations are. There's specifics there, it's not always obvious.

If I call them, what should I tell them? How do I proceed? What forms do I need to fill out? There's a whole series of actions, technical, conceptual. It's a difficult situation, if you don't get your grades, your dreams fall apart, you panic, where am I going to study? It's a very difficult time and you need support. Our goal is to minimise stress for parents, for children, to make it as stress-free as possible, and to make it as effective and efficient as possible. And stress doesn't help with these things. It just makes things more difficult.

We've had quite a few clearing situations this year and everyone is learning.

Here is an interesting example with one of our students. He really wanted to go to Holland to study. There is an interesting peculiarity in Holland. In Holland it is difficult to get into some good universities for strong programmes, there is a big competition and many elements of admission. There are even additional assignments from the university. In general, there are peculiarities.

That said, the requirements for final grades are low. Much lower than in the UK. So you can get into a very strong university with grades C-C-C, which is unthinkable in the UK. If you've already got an offer. And unfortunately, our student gets grades A-B-D. Yes? That's two grades higher, one of them noticeably higher and the third one lower. Dutch universities are very principled in their rules. Flexibility is not one of them. If it says C-C-C-C in black and white, that's it. If it's not C-C-C-C, even if you have two A's and one D, you're out.

As a result, I had to urgently look at options back in the UK. As a result, the person is studying at a very good university on a strong programme. We quickly resolved all of this. So, unfortunately, such situations do happen, but the good thing is that we know what to do in them.

Clearing is a uniquely British system. In other countries there is the possibility of later application for certain university programmes, but clearing is uniquely British.

We emphasise that for successful entry, it is best to do everything in advance. The best time is at the end of the GCSE programme. This is optimal, because then you can check whether you have taken the right subjects and use the summer wisely. Our fees do not change depending on whether you apply in Year 11 or at the beginning of Year 12. And so our clients get a bonus for the whole of this period.

GCSE is a programme that ends just at Year 11, when a pupil is 15 and should be 16. So this is the best time to apply. You can start work.

We have mainly talked about pupils from British schools. But if it's pupils from other schools, then what we've said still applies. There are very similar activities, there are complexities that clients need help with, if it's a non-standard qualification or less straightforward than, let's say, you're doing 3 A level, then you need to find out, check it all the more.

University requirements change, and you have to be very careful here. We always contact universities directly with a particular student's case and check whether something has changed, because it happens. Let's say that last year it was like this, and this year it is like this. You have to be very careful here, you can't always rely on your family's past experience, for example. If, for example, the eldest child enrolled many years ago, and the rules have changed. One has to check and what is now. Clarity is never unnecessary.

It's important to remember the deadline for UK universities.

This year (2024) is the end of January, 31 January, but they don't usually let anyone in there anymore. Basically all applications, unless it's Oxford, Cambridge, medicine, veterinary dentistry, are sent in mid-October.

American universities have different dates. For example, one of the earliest, it's 30 November, it's UC system universities, University of California. There are a lot of deadlines in early January. In mid-January, in early February there are rolling admissions, that is, you have to look specifically at what and when.

As for Germany, Holland and Ireland, the deadline is a little later. It is necessary to look individually with a particular university. Holland in the middle of January. If we are talking about private universities in Europe, which make programmes in English, because we do English- language programmes, they often set their own deadline.

In any case, December-January is a good general guideline. Sometimes earlier, sometimes a little later.

Canada is basically like North America. You can focus on January, and then you have to look at what university and what programme. But, again, it is better not to apply at the last minute, for obvious reasons.

For those who want to do things the normal way, really understand, make an informed decision plus improve their chances, we recommend two years in advance. The cost will still be the same. But at the same time, the client will have the opportunity to keep in touch and ask questions.

You are buying a great opportunity to get absolutely any kind of help and counselling. Maximise the chances for your child, make sure that he or she gets the best of everything and, as a result, is, firstly, happy and, secondly, well employed and self-supporting.