Tips on completing your application

From the first research and development phase of Professional Formation, the following recommendations emerged:

With regard to personalised elements, it would be important to find an appropriate balance between narrative and supporting evidence. It would not be sufficient to provide only one aspect of this – both are required.
This raised questions of word length and it was agreed that this is something which individuals should use their own judgment in making decisions about, as it might be easy to meet word requirements but not say anything worthwhile in doing so.

Similarly, in some cases there might be a need for more narrative and less for supporting evidence, while in others this need might be reversed and so it was decided that word length on its own was not sufficient in securing successful outcomes; clear rationale and justification in making choices about word length would demonstrate a thoughtful approach underpinning a professional attitude. In each section, word lengths might vary from between 100 – 300 words, but this is not prescriptive; more important is an appropriate balance between narrative and supporting evidence.

Part of the process of managing word lengths and the volume of material scanned in, would be for applicants to be selective and to cross reference narrative to the same supporting evidence, reducing the necessity of submitting evidence that might not really be relevant to the application. In some case, ‘less is more’ might be a helpful approach.
There were some difficulties with reading scanned material, either because of the size of the print or the angle at which it was displayed, so that attention should be paid to file sizes and ensuring whatever had been scanned was actually legible.

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