Personal best

Two programmes, two very different worlds, and all in the space of a Sunday afternoon. Imogen Stubbs gave us a Radio 4 moment when she used the network to campaign against those personal statement forms which young students have to write as part of their applications to colleges and universities. The instruction booklet (or guidance for parents) obtainable from Ucas (the centralised organisation otherwise known as Universities and Colleges Admissions Service) suggests that this is an opportunity for the prospective candidate ‘to demonstrate their enthusiasm and commitment and, above all, ensure that they stand out from the crowd’. Orwell would have been horrified by the use of that meaningless cliché. How can they all ‘stand out’? And from ‘what crowd’?

Stubbs set out to undermine the process by asking a sixth-form head and a retired judge to write a statement for an imaginary candidate in law, which she would then submit to the scrutiny of an admissions tutor at Southampton School of Law.