I went to a parents’ meeting at my youngest son’s school last night to advise us about his university application which has to be submitted soon. Yes, how did the years fly by so quickly!

This presumably hadn’t been a problem for my eldest son as he was offered a place at his preferred choice, and I didn’t even get to read it before it was sent off via UCAS. I don’t recall us having a discussion about it.

But I have become panicky after learning last night that there are so many “dos and don’ts” to be aware of when cramming all the potentially life changing words into 4000 characters which make up the statement. This is what an expert on this subject told us:

“If you read in the paper about the student who gets four A*s and is turned down by university, the chances are it is because the personal statement was very poor. If in clearing there are 10 places on a course and 20 applications all with the same exam results, then the personal statements will be deciding factor.”

The crucial point, we were advised, was to make it personal and our little ones should not to tempted to copy off the internet as universities use plagiarism software which picks this up; one hilarious example given was when 800 applicants for one course wrote that they had all experienced “a dramatic chemistry set incident aged eight”. That was too much of a coincidence for scrutineers to swallow, they are not daft.

Our expert concluded, “If they can’t write a personal statement, what are they doing applying for university?”