Evidence bank

Start here. This is the pile almost everybody leaves empty, and it is the one that answers why you picked these subjects.

• Which topic did you keep thinking about after the test was over?
• What have you read, watched or listened to about this subject because you wanted to, not because it was set?
• Was there a lesson where something finally clicked? What was it, and what changed?
• Which topic did you find hardest, and what did you actually do about it?
• Have you ever disagreed with something a textbook, a teacher or a programme said? What, and why?
• What question in this subject have you not been able to drop?
• Did you ever look something up because a game, a song, a film or the news mentioned it?
• Have you explained this subject to somebody else? What did doing that teach you?
• What is the most surprising thing you learned in this subject this year?
• If you had a free week to study one thing in this subject, what would it be, and why that?

If the group above is empty, it is not because you are not interested. It is because nobody told you this counts. None of these needs money, a contact, or anybody giving you permission.

• Which free online course could you finish in a fortnight? FutureLearn, edX and Coursera all run university-written ones.
• Which subject podcast could you listen to on the way to school for a month?
• Which book or long article would your teacher recommend if you asked them tomorrow?
• Which documentary have you already watched that you could go and read up on properly?
• Is there something small you could build, grow, measure, code, draw or make?
• Is there an essay competition, an olympiad or a project you could enter this year?

A job is worth writing about. What makes it worth writing about is the sentence you attach to it.

• Do you have a job? What is the hardest twenty minutes of a shift?
• Have you had to handle a complaint, a mistake or a difficult customer?
• Do you look after money, stock, a rota or a till?
• Have you ever covered for somebody, or shown a new person how it works?
• What does the job stop you from doing, and how do you manage that?
• Have you been trusted with something you did not expect to be trusted with?

These get left out because they do not feel like achievements. They are evidence, and they are often the strongest thing on the page.

• Do you look after somebody at home? What does that actually involve on a bad week?
• Do you translate, interpret or explain things for somebody in your family?
• Do you cook, shop, budget or keep track of appointments for your household?
• What does your family rely on you for?
• Have you had to be organised because nobody else was going to be?
• What have you had to work around this year that other people did not?

You do not need a badge or a title. Organising something informally counts, and it is more interesting than a title.

• Do you organise anything, even informally? A team, a group chat, a rota, a lift share?
• Have you taught, coached or helped somebody younger?
• Have you had to get a group of people to agree on something?
• Are you the person people come to when something has gone wrong?
• Have you kept something going that was about to stop?
• What role do you end up in when you get put in a group?

The last group, and often the best. These are the ones people leave out because they do not look like school.

• What would you still do if nobody ever saw it?
• What have you got better at this year without anybody teaching you?
• What have you made, fixed, modified or customised?
• What do you know an unreasonable amount about?
• What is the longest you have stuck at something difficult?
• What have you failed at, and what did you do the day after?