University lecturers in the humanities don’t often find themselves awarding a mark of 85 out of 100 to the first essay a student produces at university – in fact, in those subjects, marks like that are pretty rare at any point. That early in their university career, most students are caught up in the enormous transition from one lifestyle – living with parents and going to school every day – to another – living in halls of residence, surrounded by new people, and often with much less structure to their daily routine. But, as I re-read this essay, marking it up with comments as I go, I can see that it’s out of the ordinary, really exceptionally good. When I finish, I fish out the form the student completed when she applied to the Foundation Year in Arts and Humanities at the University of Bristol. The front page, where we asked applicants to detail any prior qualifications, was pretty sparsely populated: no A-Levels; a brief roster of GCSEs. Further in, however, there was the personal statement, a heartfelt plea to be taken seriously as a candidate, and it rang with the same originality and insight as the essay I had just marked. The student had been gripped by the guiding question for our course, ‘What does it mean to be human?’ She had become vegan the previous year, she explained, and had been trying to puzzle out our place among non-human animals, and the respect we owe to them. She had convinced herself that, as a species, we are far too impressed by the differences between ourselves and other animals, and far too ignorant of what we share in common; and she wanted to know whether this was a Western trait only or whether other cultures share it.

What does this show? On its own, not very much. Yes, nearly all universities base their admissions criteria on the results of prior qualifications their applicants have obtained at school or college – most often A-Levels or the International Baccalaureate, but also GCSEs, BTECs, Access courses, Cambridge’s STEP exam, and so on. Clearly this student would most likely not have been offered a place at any university, and almost certainly would not have gained admission to Bristol, if it hadn’t been for this nontraditional way in.