Our bi-annual Kusuma University Talks took place this week at Bayside and Westside Schools. The focus of the talks was to provide advice to Year 13 students who are preparing personal statements as part of their university applications. Jane Marshall from Optimising Futures returned to Gibraltar to facilitate a series of five subject-specific Personal Statement writing workshops, as well as one-to-one sessions for students applying for Oxford, Cambridge, medicine and dentistry. Additional sessions were also offered to Year 12 students who plan to apply for Oxbridge and medicine, dentistry and veterinary next year, as well as an introductory session for all the Year 11 students to get them to think about the importance of their GCSE results and what they need to study at A-level in order to be eligible for their chosen degree subjects.
As part of Kusuma’s support for local students, we have also purchased 200 books from the Oxford Very Short Introduction series for the shared school library. The books provide concise, expert introductions to individual subject areas, and are the perfect foundation for evidence-gathering to include in personal statements.
Jane Marshall commented; “my sincere thanks go to Kusuma Gibraltar for supporting this extremely worthwhile event to help students with their future pathways and I look foward to returning in November for the one-to-one interview sessions.” and a Year 13 student attending commented: “I attended the S.T.E.M. subject talk which I personally found to be useful, as well as interesting. I found that the talk was helpful while also remaining interactive enough to keep the majority of, if not all of, the students who attended intrigued. Along with this, the information that was given was new to me at times, thus allowing me to better my personal statement and my knowledge of my chosen course. I also appreciated the extra time at the end where we were all able to ask questions.”