Ensuring Effective Preparation For Your Child’s University Application

No matter where your child is applying to, it’s essential that they prepare for their application effectively. In this guide, we’ll explore why this isn’t always easy and how you can ensure your child is making the most of their time and doing their best to secure their offer.

Last Updated: 20th March 2025

Author: Matthew Amalfitano-Stroud

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Ensuring Effective Preparation For Your Child’s University Application

Is your child applying for university? If so, they are likely working hard to ensure they get their offer. Depending on where they’re applying to, they may need to go through a lot of steps to be considered, all of which require time and effort to prepare for.

To stand a chance at being admitted to one of the top universities in the UK, they’ll need to put the work in, which isn’t easy to do. During this process, it can be easy for applicants to lose motivation, become overwhelmed or not make the best use of their time, which leads to a weaker application and a reduced chance of getting their offer.

In this guide, we’ll explore where your child’s university application may go wrong and how you can ensure they stay on track and prepare effectively. Let’s get started!

Where Do University Applicants Go Wrong?

Although most university applicants will start their preparation with big ambitions and strong motivation, there are a number of reasons why that motivation could break down throughout the process and reduce the quality of their preparation. Even high-performing students can feel the pressure – in fact, they have their own unique set of problems to deal with. Whoever the applicant is, this could either be a single reason or a culmination of problems, but it’s important to understand and help fix them.

Time Commitment

University applications are a big time commitment when they are taken seriously. Not only is there the UCAS application and supporting tasks to complete but there’s also a large amount of research that should be happening before anything is submitted. With open days, course research and more all being recommended, the average university applicant can spend many hours a week ensuring their application is going well.

All of this preparation is in service of a large reward that will come later on (their place at university), but the human mind is programmed to favour short-term rewards, which are often sacrificed for the sake of preparation. This can cause some applicants to lose motivation or begin cutting corners to get things done faster, which is naturally going to diminish the quality of their application and negatively impact their chances of success.

Difficult Tasks

Although the UCAS application is fairly simple, some applicants may struggle to put together a compelling Personal Statement. It’s the hardest part of the standard university admissions process, although this process can get much harder depending on where your child applies.

For those applying to medical school or highly competitive universities like Oxford, Cambridge and Imperial, there are more steps that applicants will need to complete in order to be considered. These include admissions tests and interviews, both of which can be difficult and time-consuming to prepare for.

Only the most dedicated applicants are able to effectively prepare for these tasks, so your child may feel that they don’t have what it takes to make it through this extended admissions process if they aren’t achieving the desired results during their preparation.

Strong Competition

As well as having more difficult application processes, many of the UK’s top universities are also highly competitive, meaning applicants have less chance of getting their offer, even if their application is strong. The acceptance rates at Oxford, Cambridge and Imperial can be as low as 5% for some courses, which is likely to demotivate any applicants who don’t have complete confidence in their abilities.

It’s good to know the offer and acceptance rates for these universities, as it gives applicants a realistic understanding of how likely they are to actually get in. However, seeing such low success rates can sometimes make applicants want to quit straight away.

Ineffective Preparation Methods

In some cases, an applicant may be properly motivated but isn’t utilising their time in the best way to ensure they’re building a strong application. This could be due to a number of reasons, including the resources they’re using, the techniques they’re implementing or the environment they’re working in causing distractions.

A big issue that many applicants will face is ineffective planning. Creating a clear schedule of what they should be preparing for and when is essential for any applicant, especially those who need to do more than the standard UCAS application. Without a plan, their preparation will be directionless and they end up putting off tasks or forgetting to do things.

Doubts About Direction

Lastly, your child may just be having second thoughts about the direction they’re going in. This is pretty normal but may or may not be something that should be explored further. Sometimes, your child will just need some reassurance that they’re doing the right thing, but if they really feel that they’re making the wrong decision, there’s always time to stop and change course.

Of course, any course correction that may be done needs to be realistic. For example, an applicant can’t suddenly decide to change from Law to Medicine and expect to get an offer. Application changes will need to be more minor than this to ensure they’re still qualified to study the course they’re considering.

Alternatively, they may decide that they don’t want to attend university at all. Higher education isn’t something that should be forced upon your child, so if they want to go in a different direction, such as starting their career early or taking a year to pursue something else first, then their decision should be respected within reason. If they aren’t sure what they want to do, work with them to create a life plan that works for them.

These are just general examples of why your child’s application preparation may not be going well, but there are plenty of other reasons why this may be the case, including any personal reasons within their own life.

However, practically all of these issues can be solved, so let’s now explore how you can ensure your child is preparing effectively for their university application.

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How To Improve Your Child’s University Preparation

As you would expect, all of these tips ensure your child is preparing effectively by remedying the issues we listed above. Some of these are direct solutions while others general things that you should be doing regardless of if your child is struggling, so let’s see how you can help them boost their application:

Boosting Your Child’s Motivation

First and foremost, your role during the application process is to be the morale boost and surge of inspiration that your child may need when their motivation begins to slip. Whether that’s by offering advice, helping them find information or just telling them they’re doing well, your input could make the difference between them wanting to quit and pressing on through the difficult parts.

There’s no specific way to boost your child’s motivation, so it will be down to you to communicate with your child, determine what they need and adapt to meet those needs. While you can’t do everything for them during this time, you can ensure that you’ll be there when they need help in one way or another.

Supporting Your Child’s Preparation

Beyond keeping their spirits up, there are all sorts of ways that you can help them with their application in practical ways too. We have a whole guide dedicated to how you can support your child through their application, but some general examples include reviewing their Personal Statement drafts, marking their mock admissions tests and conducting mock interviews for them. All of this will help them prepare in a way that can’t be done independently.

Creating an Effective Plan

As we mentioned, a lack of planning or scheduling during their preparation can lead to a lot of wasted time for your child. With so many things to consider during the admissions process, applicants need to balance their time properly in order to ensure they complete each part properly while also keeping up with their school work.

In a good preparation plan, your child should highlight every step of the process they need to complete, what they need to do to prepare for/complete it and what the deadlines are for each step. This should run through everything from open days until the final application deadline, plus potentially extending to their final exams.

Once everything is outlined, they then need to plan out when they want to work on each task, considering how long they need to spend and when it would be best to tackle it. As their parent, it will be helpful for you to join them in this process or at least provide your feedback on their proposed plan. The plan needs to find the right balance of making the most of the time they have and being realistically achievable, so ensure they have added breaks to let them recharge.

Once the plan has been created, it’s important that they follow it as closely as possible, which is why being aware of the schedule is important for you. Things will likely happen that change their plans, so you’ll need to be somewhat flexible, but you should both go in with the mindset that they will be trying to follow it as it has been written. If things still don’t seem to be going well, be sure to look back and see if something could be changed in the plan.

Creating an Appropriate Environment

A good environment for your child to study in is one that has all the necessary resources they need to work without all of the distractions they usually have around them. Phones, television and video games are all very tempting, especially when your child is working through a difficult part of the application process, so removing these will be essential to getting the work done.

You shouldn’t treat them like a little kid by taking these things away yourself, but it’s important to encourage them to avoid these distractions in efficient ways, like leaving their phone in a different room during work sessions or unplugging any unnecessary devices. As well as this, try and find ways to adapt their space in helpful ways, such as displaying posters or flashcards that feature essential information for their admissions test or final exams.

Getting The Right Resources

If your child is just completing a standard university application, there isn’t much they will need in terms of resources other than a few Personal Statement guides and examples. However, if they have admissions tests or interviews to complete, there are lots of resources that will greatly benefit them during their preparation.

For admissions test preparation, practice questions and mock papers are practically essential, as practice is the most effective way to prepare for these tests. While these are sometimes available for free, they will typically be in a very limited quantity that won’t last for their entire preparation cycle. Instead, question banks, books and live courses are all available to not only provide them with the questions they need but also teach them actionable tips and expert techniques.

As for interviews, similar resources also exist to teach applicants how to interview effectively. These are particularly useful if they specifically target the interview your child will be attending (e.g. Oxford/Cambridge Interviews, MMIs).

However, the most beneficial support they can get for their interviews is to attend realistic mock interviews. You have the option to do this with them, but if possible, we would also recommend that they complete at least one mock interview with a professional who will be able to provide actionable feedback based on their experience.

Should you feel they need more help for the whole of their application or that you don’t have the time to provide all the support they need, there are support options available that guide applicants through the whole admissions process at the UK’s most competitive universities.

For example, UniAdmissions’ Full Blue Programme features unlimited one-to-one- live courses and a vast suite of resources covering every step of the admissions processes at Oxbridge, Imperial, UCL and more. This option gives applicants the highest chance of earning their offer at any of these prestigious universities.

That concludes our guide to your child’s preparation effectiveness. Each applicant is unique, so not everything we’ve discussed here will be relevant to you and your child. However, we hope these tips will help you to understand the issues your child may be facing and how to work with them to boost their motivation and improve the effectiveness of their work.

Remember to ensure that your child has everything they need to prepare for their application, especially if it involves admissions tests or interviews. The right support and preparation materials can make the difference between gaining an offer and being rejected, no matter how motivated your child is. UniAdmissions’ Full Blue Programme is the most comprehensive support package available for those applying to Oxbridge, Imperial, medical school and more, so discover how we can triple your child’s chances of success in their application today.

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