Liverpool: Question 3: Preparation outside education

Part of the 4,000-character total; minimum 350 characters

What else have you done to prepare outside of education, and why are these experiences useful?

What it’s really asking

Liverpool wants relevant experience from beyond the classroom (work, volunteering, reading, online courses, competitions) and, more importantly, why it matters for this subject. The why is doing all the work here.

Why they ask it

This question is where applicants are most tempted to dump unrelated activities. Tutors are not impressed by a busy life; they want to see judgement about what is relevant. One experience well-connected to the course beats five that simply prove you were occupied.

Three ways in

Pick the most relevant thing

Choose the one outside-school experience most relevant to your subject and explain what it taught you about the field or yourself.

Zoom into a moment

If you have work experience or volunteering, focus on a specific moment that revealed something about the discipline or the profession.

Show curiosity past the syllabus

Use wider reading or a self-taught skill to show curiosity that runs past the syllabus.

✕ Weak opening

“Outside of school I have a part-time job, play football for a local team, and enjoy reading in my spare time.”

✓ Strong opening

“Two weeks shadowing in a physiotherapy clinic taught me that the hardest part of the job is persuading a frightened patient to trust a painful movement.”

✦ Annotated example · Preparation beyond school. Written by EssayLens to teach, not a real applicant’s essay. Tap a highlighted line →

Outside the classroom, I spent eight months volunteering in a care home, and the experience taught me biochemistry's stakes more sharply than any lab could. ¹One resident's diabetes meant her carers tested her blood glucose before every meal, and watching those numbers swing made the glucose-insulin feedback loop I had only read about suddenly physical and urgent. ²It is useful preparation because it reminded me that the molecules I want to study end up inside people who are frightened, and that scientific rigour and human care are not separate skills. ³I also completed an online course in bioinformatics, where I struggled through writing a short Python script to find a repeated DNA motif in a genome file. ⁴Most of my time went on fixing errors rather than biology, but that frustration showed me how much modern biochemistry now depends on handling data well, a side of the field I had underestimated. ⁵Finally, I kept a notebook of questions I could not answer, like why some enzymes work in reverse, and chased a few of them through library journals I only half understood. ⁶None of this makes me an expert, but it has convinced me that I am preparing for the right course, and that the questions I cannot yet answer are the ones I most want to.⁷

1Answers the prompt directly and frames an activity by what it taught, not merely that it happened. Liverpool rewards reflection over activity lists.
2Specific, concrete detail connects a real experience back to the subject, evidence rather than a generic claim about 'compassion'.
3Explicitly explains why the experience is useful, exactly what the prompt asks, and shows mature reflection.
4Demonstrates self-directed learning and is honest about difficulty, which reads as credible rather than boastful.
5Reflection on a realistic struggle, revealing a genuine shift in how the applicant understands the discipline.
6Shows intrinsic curiosity and independent reading beyond the syllabus, the kind of self-motivation tutors look for.
7Closes with humility and a clear link back to the course, avoiding over-claiming while reaffirming fit.

Stuck? Start here

Of everything you do outside school, which one thing genuinely connects to this subject, and how?
What did a job, volunteering role, or experience teach you that a classroom could not?
What is one moment from outside school that changed how you see this field?

Before you submit

Does every experience here clearly connect to the course?
Have I explained why it is useful, not just what I did?
Did I cut activities that are impressive but irrelevant?

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