Queen Mary: How your studies prepared you

Part of the 4,000-character total; min 350 characters. Aim for roughly 1,400-1,600 characters here.

How have your qualifications and studies helped you to prepare for this course or subject?

What it’s really asking

UCAS wants you to map your current schoolwork, your AP, IB, A-level, or national curriculum subjects, onto the demands of the degree. The point is not to list grades but to show which skills and topics you are bringing and how they connect to the course.

Why they ask it

For international applicants this question quietly answers the tutor's worry: can this student handle our content with their background? Showing that your maths, writing, or lab work already touches the degree reassures them your qualifications translate.

Three ways in

Bridge one subject to the course

Pick one or two school subjects and explain a specific skill or topic from them that the degree will directly build on.

Show work beyond the syllabus

Describe a project, essay, or experiment where you went past what was required and say what it taught you about the field.

Name a gap honestly

Acknowledge something you are still building and how you are closing it, which reads as self-aware rather than as weakness.

✕ Weak opening

“I am currently taking AP Calculus, AP Statistics, and AP Economics, all of which are relevant.”

✓ Strong opening

“My AP Statistics project on local rent data taught me that the hard part of analysis is not the regression but deciding which variable is actually doing the work.”

✦ Annotated example · How A-levels built the toolkit for law. Written by EssayLens to teach, not a real applicant’s essay. Tap a highlighted line →

My A-levels in History, English Literature and Mathematics have given me three habits that I think a law degree will demand. ¹History trained me to build an argument from evidence and to anticipate the counterargument, and writing a coursework essay on the causes of the 1832 Reform Act taught me that a claim is only as strong as the source behind it. ²English Literature sharpened my reading of how language carries ambiguity, which I now see is the same close attention a contested clause in a contract or a statute requires. ³Mathematics taught me to move through a problem in logical steps and to distrust a conclusion I cannot justify, and I have found that the discipline of a proof is closer to legal reasoning than people assume. ⁴Beyond the syllabus, an Extended Project on whether assisted dying should be legalised forced me to weigh ethical, medical and statutory arguments at length, and to defend my reasoning under questioning. ⁵Together these studies have taught me to read carefully, argue precisely and accept that being challenged is how reasoning improves, which is the preparation I will rely on most in studying law.

1Opens by mapping qualifications directly onto the course, answering the prompt's 'how have your studies prepared you' head-on rather than just listing grades.
2Specific coursework example shows transferable skill (evidence-based argument) rather than asserting it abstractly.
3Connects a humanities skill (close reading) to a concrete legal task, demonstrating course fit and genuine understanding of what law study involves.
4Reframes a quantitative subject as relevant to legal logic, showing the applicant has thought about why each qualification matters.
5The EPQ is strong super-curricular evidence of independent research and sustained argument, both prized for law.

Stuck? Start here

Which topic in your current courses overlaps most directly with the first-year content of this degree?
When did a class push you to think like someone in this field, and what exactly changed in how you reasoned?
What skill does this course clearly need that your school has not taught you, and what are you doing about it?

Before you submit

Have I tied at least one named school subject to a specific demand of the degree?
Did I show a skill or insight rather than just listing the courses I take?
Is any honesty about a gap paired with a concrete step I am taking to close it?

Drafted it? Get an honest, admissions-style read, free.

Score my essay