Careers and Universities

Universities update

It has been another excellent year for the Careers and Universities Department. Even with the changing landscape of the higher education market, our pupils have worked phenomenally hard and have been expertly guided by our advisers to achieve some outstanding results.

Our UK university offers have been impressive. Headlines include that 98% of UK university applicants hold at least one offer from a Russell Group university (including St Andrew’s) and an increase in Oxbridge offers to 42 places (22 Cambridge and 20 Oxford). Furthermore, 63 pupils received offers from Bristol, 63 from UCL, 53 from Durham, 49 from Imperial, 48 from Edinburgh and 24 from LSE. We have also celebrated the success of our artists who have gained places at Central Saint Martins, a world-renowned arts and design college, and the Architectural Association.

From our US section, the results have also been excellent. In an extremely competitive year, pupils gained places at some of the most prestigious universities and colleges such as Stanford, Brown, Yale, Duke, Brown and Chicago. Our Non-US International applicants have also had similar success with offers from institutions such as Bocconi University, McGill University, Queen’s University Ontario, University of Toronto and the University of Hong Kong.

Moving to the incoming cohort of university applicants, our Lower Eighths completed a course of five university lessons during the spring term. In the summer term, we hosted a series of university preparation events such as our medical conference and US bootcamp. Our annual SPS and Partnership University Day was another highlight and included talks from UCAS and Durham University, as well as subject specific sessions focused on personal statement writing and summer preparation for their applications. Finally, our Careers and Universities Fair returned for the first time since 2019. We welcomed 25 institutions – a combination of universities, employers and gap year providers – to take over the Sports Hall. Fifth Form, Sixth Form, Lower Eighth and partnership pupils were able to chat to the delegates, pose questions, and most importantly grab some excellent prospectuses, pens, and tote bags! We look forward to being able to expand this event in future years in collaboration with SPGS.

Our pupils are hugely well served by our wonderful team of university advisers and counsellors who once again have offered brilliant support, advice and guidance to all pupils. The team has been superbly aided by Mrs Jill Richards, our Careers and Universities Administrator, who joined us in September and has already improved the department greatly. We have also been extremely fortunate to have two outstanding Colet Fellows this year; Amy Henry and Nitin Rao. We thank them for their hard work and creativity they have brought to the whole team and wish them all the best for their future endeavours.

Careers update

This year was the year of Unifrog! After careful consideration, we were really excited to launch the award-winning careers and destinations platform, Unifrog, to all years groups.

Designed to allow pupils to explore possible career pathways, university courses and build their portfolios, the platform has been integrated into school life successfully. Fourth Form have been completing careers scavenger hunts aiming to familiarise themselves with the programme, whilst Eighth Form have been using it to conduct higher education research.

Our Sixth Formers completed their one-to-one careers interviews with our advisers, after a series of personality and interests profiling, allowing them to carefully select their A Level choices for the following year. A huge thank you must go to our team of careers advisers who have supported their advisees through this process. Of course we had our usual National Careers Week celebrations, this year in a hybrid format with talks both online and in-person. This meant we were able to invite our partner school pupils to attend from afar and increase the scope and variety of our speakers. From talks on ‘careers in F1’ and options trading to Marketing and Law – we had it all covered! The week coincided with International Women’s Day which presented a perfect opportunity for an ‘all-female’ speaker programme and a special Topical Tuesday with Natasha Pope, Goldman Sachs MD.

Our student-led careers society, ‘FutureSoc’, continued throughout the year. Sessions included ‘How to find work experience’, ‘Planning your gap year’, ‘Building your network’, and pupil-led talks on ‘Careers in Tech’ and ‘Careers using Psychology’.

The summer term was jam packed with university and careers events. We were delighted to invite Executive Director and leadership coach, Carrie Coombs, back to St Paul’s to deliver our annual CV workshop to Lower Eighths.

We were also able to award Myles Howorth with an AitkenRadermacher Bursary Gap Year Award. The award enables Paulines to undertake expeditions concerned with aspects of conservation or with scientific research projects related to the management and understanding of the environment and we look forward to hearing about Myles’ experiences on his return.

Looking ahead to next year, I am thrilled that Dr Dan Brigham will be taking over as Head of Careers who will bring fresh perspectives, ideas and new energy to the department. ❚

Glenn Manoff Chief Marketing Officer at Riverlan