The British Council welcomed students, parents, teachers and school counsellors from seven renowned A Level schools in Dhaka on 13 December 2016 at an award-giving ceremony at the Dhaka University campus office. MACES, a renowned education consultant and one of the trained agents of the British Council organised a 'Personal Statement Writing Competition' for students and the winners of the competition were awarded at the event. The students who want to study in the UK needs to apply through Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) and UCAS requires a personal statement to write to apply for the courses in undergraduate level. This was the first initiative by this local representative to support student's application to UK universities through UCAS successfully and to encourage them to apply to UK universities. The judging panel comprised of their university partners from some of the top class universities in the UK such as the University of Glasgow, University of York, Queen Mary University of London and Coventry University. They have received a total of 205 registrations from seven A level schools in Dhaka amongst them Scholastica, DPS STS School, Turkish Hope School are prominent. There were two runners-up and one winner of this competition. The winner received a MacBook and the two runners up received iPads from the organisation. The other 17 participants received a certificate of appreciation from Jim Scarth, Deputy Director, British Council, Bangladesh on the day of the event. Zafar Sobhan, editor of Dhaka Tribune was also present in the event as the formal speaker and he talked about the importance of writing.
This event generated a lot of interest amongst the students to study abroad and triggered out the interest again for the UK. The event was fruitful as right after the event a lot of the students who registered started applying to get admitted in the UK institutions through UCAS and MACES is helping them.
This has been a great initiative by this local representative to support student application to UK universities successfully and to guide them on the important part of the application process.