pre-University Counselling and Application Services

by Bogdan Lepadatu

Dear Enquirer,

Congratulations on your decision to consult our academic counselling services!

You were right in thinking that choosing the best path for your academic development – on which your entire professional career depends – is no trifle. As for those who thought otherwise, maybe it is not too late to think again. Yet, this would have to be done pretty quickly as time is of the essence especially for those who are about to take their International Baccalaureate, this year.

As you are lining up at the start of the fast and furious race to adulthood it may be appropriate to consider some fresh (or, at least, fresher than your parents’ taglines, allegedly) ideas on how to avoid potential pitfalls along the way.

Rather than giving you the standard, fill-in-the-form type of user's guide to University study in the UK, this introduction to British University life and culture will familiarize you with this life-changing process and enhance your general awareness of what constitutes proper academic counseling.

Compared to other (rather costly) academic counseling services offering prospective students standard advice recited by purposefully trained, non-native English speakers – who might not have had first-hand experience of the UCAS application system nor graduated from a British University – our one-to-one counseling sessions will give you an authentic taste of what it really is like to live and study in the UK (rather than just visit the country every now and again) and how to integrate successfully in the multicultural British society. 

Yet, before what can only be a brief introduction to such academic counselling, it may be useful to add here a few general if relevant considerations.

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In an ill-defined globalization process which appears to be on the verge of undergoing major qualitative changes to its seemingly insufficient paradigms, the UK's insular, liberal heritage offers an oasis of stability enabling tangible accumulations of knowledge and self-development.

Other than the obvious opportunity to perfect your English language proficiency, there is plenty of scope for raising your intercultural awareness and for developing your relational abilities across different international backgrounds enabling all the while your adaptation to Britain's cultural environment specificity.

Take, for instance, the student-centred approach to teaching... This has to be the most specific, qualitative difference to the continental, teacher-directed type of lecturing – which is being done in awe-inspiring cathedral-like auditoriums teeming with undergraduates that are hardly given a chance to distinguish themselves under the duress of extrinsic motivators (such as grades or the rest of the carrot and stick system of rewards and penalties) as they are toiling away to achieve extrinsic curricular objectives, set up by langue de bois-speaking bureaucrats.

There is solid evidence to suggest that progressive education promotes social capital. And while social capital (fundamentally concerned with the way in which people interact with one another!) is being transmitted through schooling, choosing Britain to continue your education appears to be a sensible idea, given the virtues of horizontal teaching (where teachers are acting as facilitators for their students, who are working in groups at their 'own' discoveries) rather than vertical teaching (where teachers spend far more time lecturing students).

Brand X Pictures

The way in which teaching practices affect social capital is analysed in a new study by Yann Algan, Pierre Cahuc and Andrei Shleifer, titled: "Horizontal vs. Vertical: An International Comparison of Teaching Methods".

One of the most interesting contentions in this study concerns the correlation drawn between teaching methods, the levels of trust and government effectiveness. 

Whereas the students' trust in their teacher's fairness appears to vary according to the teaching practices employed – with the Mediterranean and East European countries favouring vertical teaching practices which generate insufficient levels of trust, compared to the Scandinavian (with the exception of Finland) and the Anglo-Saxon countries where horizontal teaching practices appear to generate much higher levels of trust – the authors' conclusion is that the "subordination to teachers as a student leads to a feeling – and perhaps a reality – of subordination to bureaucrats as an adult."

Moreover, this study's authors argue that for those countries where vertical teaching methods are employed there tends to be a greater incidence of dysfunctional governments as a result. "... government effectiveness is lower in countries where vertical teaching predominates. The correlation patterns are statistically significant and economically sizeable. Vertical teaching alone can explain 18.3 percent of the cross-country variation in government effectiveness."

This conclusion alone might give international student prospectors plenty of scope for reflection and it would be rich of me were I not to admit to encountering similar difficulties upon returning to my country of birth, Romania. Whereas the differences in the two systems of teaching may be exacerbated by the absence of a powerful network of support enabling the eventual changing of traditional practices (something which may even force you to live as a British expat in your country of birth!) there is no denying that this British experience is likely to shape one's general outlook in a definitive way. So much so that its permanence would be ensured even if travelling back in time were suddenly to be made available.

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It is time now to make the promised introduction and sketch a general outline of the counselling sessions' format.

As time is and will always be of the essence, it is advisable that a personal introduction be prepared in advance to enable the proper customization of the counselling session. 

Afterwards, depending on the end user's level of familiarization with the UK's Higher Education system, specific queries will be answered, ranging from presenting the alternatives in choosing a study programme and listing the best universities for that particular programme, to initiating the application process. 

As regards teaching and learning methods, key motivational strategies (which are designed to maximize the effectiveness of study) will be explored. These will provide students with the tools needed to identify their own optimal learning styles and strategies with a view to the training of effective habits and patterns of academic study promoting learner autonomy and self-reflective strategies.

Support will be provided along the way to help you understand the academic structure and (administrative) system at the university of your (first, second or third) choice – all of which lays the groundwork for the eventuality of post-graduate studies to enable you to further your career opportunities following the completion of your undergraduate studies.

Moreover, these academic counselling services will help users understand themselves (and their own needs) that little bit better. It will help them look into the future to envisage the day of their arrival there and getting them prepared for the early days of their lives as 'freshers' and, of course, prepares them for life beyond academic study, in the shape of the good old British student culture. The social pressures and/or antisocial behaviour that may be encountered on such occasions will also be simulated.

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Here are a few useful tips and questions you ought to know the answer to (so that you may prepare your personal introduction) before attempting the drafting of the four thousands-odd characters and forty-seven lines personal statement to that end. 

First of all, it is advisable that you undergo a thorough PESTLE and (personal) SWOT analysis:

Political: Is the country liberalising? What are the private sector opportunities that you can identify? How big is the state sector? Is political turmoil likely?

Economic: What is the current state of the economy [unemployment, GDP, GINI etc.]? How fast is the country growing economically? How big is the demand for professionals with UK academic credentials?

Social: Is there a developing middle class? Are fashion trends dynamic? What is the country's population age distribution? Opportunities? Services sector in demand?

Technology: Mobile phones and internet availability? Business and/or training opportunities?

Legal: Is there a safe environment? What legal protection and types of working contracts are available? How easy and/or profitable is it to set up and run a business? 

Environmental: What green technologies are available? Renewable energy development? How does the carbon emissions legislation influence new businesses?

Warning: With regard to the laws of supply and demand, please consider very carefully whether there may be an oversupply of qualified professionals, such as doctors, engineers, business graduates or people with MBAs in the country where you intend to practice?

and...

Strengths: What are you good at? What do you like doing? What inspires you most? What are your positive qualities?

Weaknesses: What aren't you good at? How important is it for you to improve in those areas? What don't you like doing and why? What are your negative traits?

Opportunities: In what ways do your strengths help you take advantage of the opportunities you've identified in your PESTLE analysis?

Threats: In what ways are the weaknesses identified before a problem for adapting to and taking advantage of the opportunities assessed/identified in the PESTLE analysis?

Now that you have completed all the groundwork that was required of you, it is time to consider the following matters:

What are your reasons for applying? Are there more 'push' than there are 'pull' reasons behind your decision to study abroad? Why should you get a place and not others? Why do you want to study in the UK?... and many, many more. 

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Some final considerations... In the Anglo-Saxon world, adulthood begins once you leave your family home to go to University. From this moment onwards you are, largely speaking, on your own and even your family visits are generally expected to occur far fewer times than there are Red Letter Days in the calendar (or even ‘scarlet days’, at some of the more prestigious UK Universities!).

If you are dreading that particular moment occurring in the not-so-distant future, well, think again how difficult this may be for your parents. They say that: "Parental love is infinite. Not infinitely good or infinitely ennobling, just infinite – and often, infinitely boring." Whether or not the growth of middle-class manners is what makes child love so obsessive, sound advice on how to cope best once their children leave home will be given to those parents planning to send their offspring to foreign academic environments that are beyond their immediate reach!

The above said notwithstanding, should you, on the other hand, consider that you are not quite ready yet for the next step in your life, longing instead for a break from academic study, either before or after going to University, there is always the option of challenging yourself by going away on the adventure of a lifetime. 

Should you have a few weeks to spare over the summer or are just struggling to find work, taking a gap year and going away to far-flung destinations might be a welcome break from the building pressure. Such a move is guaranteed to work wonders for your quickly degrading confidence. It will help you find new friends as you will experience living and working to make a difference to peoples' lives and their marginalised communities. Moreover, such a challenge will help you build genuine skills while making your CV stand out from the crowd.

Alternatively, should your coping mechanisms with your impending adulthood be intact, it would be rather useful if you could find the time in your already busy schedule to review things such as your academic vocabulary or the use of word combinations (of nouns and adjectives or of verbs and the words they combine with), of prepositional phrases and fixed expressions or the ways in which a student will be expected to talk about sources, facts, evidence, data, numbers, statistics, graphs or diagrams, or about causes and effects, about how to express opinions and ideas, about reporting what other people say, talking about points of view or degrees of certainty and much more...

Good luck!