Privately educated teenagers are using family connections to produce outstanding personal statements and win places at universities, research suggests. Boasting about prestigious work placements, or expensive pastimes, appears to help independent school leavers secure more places at leading universities than state school applicants with identical A-level grades.
Research published today by an academic at Manchester University’s School of Education shows huge differences in the content and style of personal statements written by university applicants, depending on where they went to school.
Steven Jones analysed the statements of 309 students who applied to the same university department and achieved identical A-level results.
While 70 per cent of the independent school pupils ended up studying at a leading university, the same was true for only 55 per