The Common App essay is not a personal statement
British students applying to America often write the Common App essay the way they have been taught to write for UCAS. It is the most common mistake we see, and it is expensive, because the two systems are asking for opposite things.
What a curly arrow really claims
A-level Chemistry draws reaction mechanisms as though someone had watched them happen. Nobody has. A mechanism is an inference assembled from indirect evidence, and knowing how chemists build one separates doing the subject from memorising it.
Why historians disagree: reading history as an argument
A-level History teaches you to weigh a source. The discipline itself turns on a harder question: why do historians, working from the same evidence, reach opposite conclusions? Learning to read that disagreement is the real preparation for university.
The summer before you apply: a plan for October 2026 applicants
If you are applying to Oxford, Cambridge, medicine or another early-deadline course this October, this summer is when the work happens. Here is how to use it.