Admissions Decisions - 360 Degree Approach to Applications
At Brunel University, we know that when you graduate from us, employers are not just looking for a piece of paper with a qualification. They also require you to have transferable skills, such as interest in the position you are applying for, team working skills, ability to work on your own initiative and sustained commitment.
When you apply to university, we are looking for applicants who will be successful on our degree programmes. Although your school or college performance is important, we recognise that this may not be the only indicator of your likely success. We therefore treat your application with a 360 degree approach. This means that, when making decisions on your application, we will take a number of different factors into consideration.
Although we are looking for students with academic ability, we also consider as important the transferable skills you have that will help you to be successful at university. We recognise and value the different ways applicants can achieve and demonstrate these skills.
Applicants either receive unconditional offers when they apply, if their qualifications are already obtained, or they receive conditional offers for qualifications they will take in the future (becoming unconditional once they have achieved those results). Either at initial application stage or qualification results stage, depending on the applicants’ circumstances, we will always take a 360 degree approach before deciding to not make an offer to an applicant.
Some of our courses may consider A level grades within a certain range. Applicants at the lower end of this range can demonstrate within other parts of their application that they have the transferable skills to be successful on our degree programmes. We cannot consider applicants who are unlikely to fall within this range, as we feel they are not yet at the level to best benefit from the education we offer.
We are looking for applicants to demonstrate the skills to be successful on our degree programmes. Applicants can demonstrate this through achieving good grades in their qualifications (the Typical Offer level of each course as listed on the individual course webpage) or by achieving results within the range listed on the course pages and also demonstrating transferable skills in other areas relevant to the chosen programme of study. These transferable skills should be demonstrated in the UCAS application primarily within the Personal Statement and confirmed in the reference. For courses that interview we will also be looking at performance at interview.
For applicants with pending qualifications, we will make conditional offers based on our Typical Offers grades. If an applicant does not fulfil these conditions when they receive their exam results we will reconsider their application. There is no guarantee we will be able to accept an applicant who has not met the exact terms of their conditional offer. However, if qualifications are within our grade range but below the conditional offer, we will reassess the whole UCAS application and take into account any transferable skills. If vacancies remain on the course we will make offers to applicants we deem can demonstrate they are likely to be successful on our degree programme.
For applicants who have already taken their qualifications and not achieved our Typical Offer but whose grades fall within our specified range, we may consider making a unconditional offer if they can demonstrate other skills that would be an indicator of success on the course applied for. Each course has different success indicators, but broadly we are looking for a strong interest in the course applied for, team working, ability to work on your own initiative, sustained commitment, and if you have overcome adversity. More details of areas to include can be found below.
Brunel University is proud to support a diverse student population. We recognise that our students bring a variety of skills and experience to their course and their interactions with other students and this ensures a rich learning environment. We hope you want to become a part of our vibrant community.
Transferable Skills
When writing your Personal Statement you should think about how you can demonstrate some of the skills below from your past experiences and relate this to how your skill would benefit you on your chosen course. You should get involved in a wide range of activities and work experience while you are at school to develop these skills so you can promote yourself to universities.
In order to articulate your transferable skills effectively, you should outline when you have demonstrated the skills required (using specific examples) and the outcome of this. You can develop these skills during any work experience, your studies and your extracurricular activities. Please note we do not expect applicants to demonstrate every skill but some to think about including (but not limited to) are
- self-awareness: knowing your strengths and skills and having the confidence to articulate these in your Personal Statement.
- initiative: evidence of anticipating challenges and opportunities, setting and achieving goals and acting independently
- willingness to learn: being inquisitive, enthusiastic and open to new ideas.
- action planning: prioritising, making decisions, assessing progress and making changes if necessary.
- interpersonal skills: relating well to others and establishing good working relationships within groups similar and dissimilar to yourself.
- communication: listening to other people and clearly getting your point across orally, in writing and via electronic means, in a manner appropriate to the audience, including your ability to construct a structured essay.
- teamwork: being constructive, performing your role, listening to colleagues and encouraging them.
- leadership: motivating others and inspiring them to take your lead, ability to delegate responsibility and co-ordinate activities, ability to train and teach others
- problem solving: thinking things through in a logical way in order to determine key issues, often also including creative thinking and developing ideas
- flexibility: ability to handle change and adapt to new situations
- commitment/motivation: energy and enthusiasm to achieve goals
- time management, multi tasking and attention to detail: prioritise work load and being able to meet deadlines without making errors
