This is the last block of unstructured time before your application goes in. Spend it finishing one thing you can be questioned on and drafting the statement badly — both are worth more than starting something new. The three classic wastes are a programme booked to have booked something, reading with nothing written down, and leaving the statement until September.
Six weeks, and then your application goes in about eight weeks after you come back. That is the whole constraint, and it rules out most of what students are told to do with this summer.
The two things worth most
Everything else is optional.
1. Finish one thing
Not start — finish.
A project you completed gives you an artefact and a story: what you did, what you found, what went wrong, what you would do differently. That is twenty minutes of interview material and a paragraph of specific personal statement.
A project you started gives you a sentence you cannot develop under questioning.
If you already have something in progress — an EPQ, an Extended Essay, a dataset you opened in June — the summer's job is to land it. If you have nothing, pick something small enough to finish in six weeks: one public dataset, one question, four thousand words. Our list of free datasets covers twenty-two sources you can open today, and how to narrow a research question gets you to a workable one in an hour.
What does not work is beginning something that needs four months. Starting in July and abandoning in October is worse than not starting, because you spend the autumn feeling behind.
2. Write a bad personal statement
In August. Deliberately badly.
The draft you write this summer will not be the one you submit, and that is exactly why it is worth writing. Editing is a different and much easier task than generating, and students who arrive in September with eight hundred bad words finish comfortably. Students who arrive with a folder of notes are still rewriting in October, under A-level pressure, with a deadline approaching.
Write it once, close the file, and leave it for three weeks. You will see what is wrong with it immediately on reopening, which you cannot do while writing.
The thing to aim at: specificity about reasoning rather than achievement. "I read widely around economics" says nothing. "I could not reconcile two published accounts of the same policy's price effects, which sent me to the ONS figures" says a great deal, in fewer words. Our guide to getting value out of a project for applications goes into how that works.
The three ways this summer gets wasted
A programme booked to have booked something. The test is one question: what will I produce there that somebody marks? If the answer is a certificate of attendance, you have bought six weeks of being somewhere rather than six weeks of doing something. Our guide to European summer schools sets out the five questions to ask before paying, and the honest point that no commercial programme is affiliated with the universities it names — Oxford Scholastica states this more bluntly than any critic.
Reading with nothing written down. Students read five books over the summer and by October remember two titles. For every substantial thing you read, write three sentences: what the argument was, what you disagreed with, and what question it left you with. Ten minutes a book, and it is the difference between a reading list and something you can discuss.
Leaving the statement until September. Covered above, and it is the single commonest error.
If a free programme came through
Do it, and extract the artefact.
If you secured a Nuffield Research Placement, In2STEM, a Sutton Trust summer school or UNIQ, that is your summer and it is a good one. Nuffield in particular ends in a report and a poster, which is assessed output you can be questioned on.
The thing to add: keep a weekly log while you are there. Four lines a week — what you did, what surprised you, what you changed, why. Nine months later at interview you will remember the headline and none of the decisions, and the decisions are what the questions are about.
A realistic six weeks
Nobody works all summer, and a plan assuming otherwise is a plan that gets abandoned in week two.
| Weeks | What |
|---|---|
| 1 | Nothing. You have just finished Year 12. |
| 2–4 | The project: finish it, or do a small one end to end |
| 4 | One timed past paper if your course has an admissions test |
| 5 | Draft the personal statement, badly, in one sitting |
| 6 | Reread the draft. Note what is wrong. Close it again. |
That is roughly three weeks of actual work across six, which is achievable. The alternative plans — read twenty books, do an online course, build a portfolio, start a project — are the ones that produce nothing because they produce nothing finishable.
The admissions test question
If your course needs one, the summer's job is reconnaissance rather than grinding.
Find out the format. Do one past paper under timed conditions. Mark it honestly and note which question types cost you time.
That is it. Working through every available paper in August means arriving in September with no papers left and no idea what to focus on. Knowing the shape of the thing means your autumn practice is targeted.
What Year 12 students should take from this
If you are reading this a year early, the useful information is about the autumn, not the summer.
The free UK programmes close between December and March for the following summer. UNIQ opens 15 December and closes 13 January, and Oxford states it cannot accept late applications. Nuffield, In2STEM and Sutton Trust run on similar winter-to-spring cycles with overlapping eligibility.
So the summer before Year 13 is decided in the preceding winter. Our guide to what to do in Year 12 covers the sequence, and research programmes for sixth formers sets out every route in the order you should try them.
Where we fit
The Oxford Centre for Advanced Research runs 1:1 mentorships with PhD candidates and early-career researchers at Oxford, Cambridge, other leading UK universities and Ivy League institutions. The Oxford Scholar Programme is £2,000 — about $2,600 — for ten contact hours over ten to fourteen weeks.
Ten to fourteen weeks is longer than this summer. A student starting with us in July finishes in the autumn, which can work — but it means writing your personal statement while the project is unfinished, and that is harder than it sounds.
Honestly: if you are reading this in July before Year 13, the best version of this summer is finishing something you already have and drafting the statement, and neither of those needs us. If you are reading it in Year 12, the winter applications above are free and several are more selective than we are.
The one thing
Pick the thing you will finish, and write the date you will finish it on something you look at.
Six weeks is enough for exactly one finished thing. It is not enough for three started ones.
Frequently asked questions
What should I actually do in the summer before Year 13?
Finish something, and write a bad first draft of your personal statement. Those two have the highest return. A project you complete gives you twenty minutes of interview material; a bad draft written in August is infinitely easier to improve in September than a blank page is.
Is it too late to start a research project?
To finish one properly, usually yes — a project takes three to four months and your application goes in during the autumn. What you can do is complete something already begun, or start something small enough to finish in six weeks, like an analysis of one public dataset.
Should I book a summer programme?
Only if you can say what you will produce there that somebody marks. A programme ending in a certificate of attendance gives you nothing to be questioned on, and at several thousand pounds that is an expensive way to fill six weeks. The free UK schemes mostly closed in the spring.
How much should I read?
Less than you think, with more written down. Two books you can discuss in detail beat ten you half-remember. For every substantial thing you read, write three sentences: what the argument was, what you disagreed with, and what question it left you with.
When should I draft my personal statement?
August, badly. The draft you write in summer will not be the one you submit, and that is the point — editing beats generating. Students who arrive in September with a bad draft finish comfortably; students who arrive with notes are still rewriting in October.
What about admissions tests?
If your course needs one, the summer is when you find out the format and do a first past paper under timed conditions — not when you grind through every paper available. Knowing the shape of the thing in August means your autumn practice is targeted rather than exploratory.