Guidance for applicants

• When applications open for your cohort you can register for York Award and will be sent further instructions.
• This application form contains all the application questions, space for your responses together with instructions, tips and advice to support you in making a successful application. Your answers must be typed into the boxes of this document.
• Complete ALL questions and pay attention to the maximum word count for each section. It is anticipated that a good answer will use a significant proportion of the suggested words.
• You will be told the deadline for applications, and you can submit your application at any time up until the deadline following the instructions we will provide to you.
• You can see what is required to make an application on this web page. This information is for reference purposes only for the 2023/24 academic year, and is subject to change.

If you need the application in a different format for accessibility reasons, please email award@york.ac.uk.

To complete your York Award application you will need a copy of your current York Strengths Grid or to know which category (Realised Strength, Emerging Strength, Learned Behaviour, Weakness) each York Strength falls in for you.

You will also need to know this information to complete further sections of your York Award application.

• If you have already taken part in a York Strengths Development Session or York Strengths Online, we’d encourage you to revisit and update your strengths self assessment. 
• If you have not previously engaged with York Strengths, you can find out more and complete your York Strengths assessment using the tools in of York Strengths Online up to the 'Strengths Discovery' section. 
  You can see the definitions for each York Strength on the York Strengths web pages. 

We’d strongly encourage you to fully complete York Strengths Online as this will give you a completion certificate as well as valuable insight to inform your future plans.

To complete your York Award application, you will need a screenshot of your result from CareerSet to evidence you have used it, and your score. Please crop the image to ensure it does not reveal any personal information (eg your name).

A key checkpoint in ‘Your Career Journey’ is that you ‘have updated and tailored your CV using CareerSet’.

CareerSet will score your CV and give you tailored advice on how to make it better. You can use this advice to improve your CV - 75% is a really good score to aim for. You can reupload your CV as many times as you like to track improvements. CareerSet also lets you upload a job description and will tell you how well your CV is tailored for the job.

You can also get advice on creating your CV, and access personalised CV support through Careers and Placements if you need it.

Undergraduate applications only: to complete your York Award application, you will need your list of activities, with dates/duration for each (does not have to be exact).

The application will ask for a list of the key activities you have undertaken during your time at the University of York (or in the last three years if your programme of study is shorter) that you feel have contributed to your personal and professional development.

Make sure you include the activities you will be referring to in your later responses. You can include any activities you feel are relevant including work experience, activities as part of your course, related to college life, sports, societies, hobbies and interests, volunteering, additional training/courses/qualifications outside degree, or anything else.

Remember that your assessor may not be familiar with the activities you have taken part in. Do not assume any knowledge, avoid acronyms and explain clearly what each activity is and your role. 

Undergraduate applications only: to complete your York Award application, you will be asked to describe what work experience you have that supports your future career plans, and why by answering the following question: What work experience do you have and how is this relevant to your next steps? (maximum 200-250 words)

Work experience is key! Gaining a University degree is the first step to accessing a wide range of graduate careers BUT it's also important not to underestimate the value of work experience to really improve your employment opportunities. Work or related experience can be an excellent way to build your skills and experience for the future, whilst helping you to explore different career ideas.

Work experience can include a wide range of different activities:

• Work shadowing or work exposure activities
• Paid and unpaid work
• Full and part-time work
• Starting a business, self employment, enterprise activities
• Internships
• Work or study placements
• A year in industry
• Volunteering in the university community, UK or abroad
• Committee membership, organisational roles, representative roles
• Anything else an employer would reasonably view as work experience

‘Relevant work experience’ will look very different from individual to individual. It is up to you to evidence why YOUR experience is relevant for YOU and YOUR career ambitions. You may wish to consider the nature of the experience, the level of responsibility you held, the length/no of hours of the experience and what you gained or learned from the experience. 

Your assessor will be looking for evidence that you have completed work experience which will support you in your future career ambitions, and that you could refer to in a job application.

Postgraduate applications only: to complete your York Award application, you will be asked to tell us about the key activities you have undertaken during your time at the University of York (or in the last three years if your programme of study is shorter) that you feel have contributed to your personal and professional development. This will be done by  by answering the following question: What activities and work experience have you engaged in and how will this support you in your future career ambitions? (maximum 300 words) 

We would normally expect this section to include some form of work experience. 

It is up to you to evidence why YOUR activities and work experience is relevant for YOU and YOUR career ambitions. 

You may wish to consider the nature of the experience, the level of responsibility you held, the length/number of hours of the experience and what you gained or learned from the experience. Your assessor will be looking for evidence that you have completed activities and work experience which will support you in your future career ambitions, and that you could use in a job application.

Section three is designed to help you practice reflecting on your activity and evidencing your skills/strengths as you would in an application for a job or further study.

What you will do

This section of the application asks you to identify three of your top strengths, and give specific examples of when you have demonstrated them. Marks for this section will be awarded based on how well you evidence the chosen York Strengths. 

You must use a different York Strength for each example. The York Strengths you choose should ideally be selected from your Realised or Emerging Strengths (in Section 1). 

Preparing for this section

You can find tools and resources to support you with your preparations in the Reflective Practice: Employability Skills Guide. 

Please use the skills guide resources to give you the best chance of making a good application. Good responses will be based on good reflection, and use the context, action, result technique to structure the example.

• Reflect on suitable examples from the activities and experiences you shared with us in your activity list using Gibbs model of reflective learning. There is a tool to support this in the skills guide.
• Use this reflection to help you to tell a concise story that could be used in an application for a job or course using the CAR (Context, Action, Result) technique. CAR is a technique expected by many employers in application forms and interview answers. Explore use of the CAR technique and more ways of telling your story on the skills guide.

In this summary section, we would like you to reflect back on all the experiences which have helped you to better understand your strengths, your interests, your motivators and your values to answer the following three questions: 

• What have you learnt about yourself during your time with the University of York? (maximum 200 words)
• What do you feel has been your greatest achievement? What are you most proud of? Why? (maximum 200 words)
• How have you made an impact or contribution in the university or wider community during your time as a student? (maximum 200 words)
• How do you believe your experiences have influenced your career decisions? How do you think your experiences at York will have an impact on your future career? (maximum 200 words)

For this section, you should reflect on experiences solely based on your time as a student with the University of York, again using examples that you would choose to talk about in a job application/interview.

Your application and related data will be dealt with in line with the Careers and Placements normal service standards and the wider University privacy notices.  

Applications are marked and moderated anonymously. 

If you are successful in gaining York Award, your name may be included in the graduation brochure, university webpages or other locations. If you do not wish to be included, please email award@york.ac.uk.

Please note, if you include information in your application which raises concerns about your welfare, we may make a referral to Open Door to ensure you have access to the support you need.

The information you provide in your application may be coded and/or collated to produce aggregated reports which allow the University to better understand student needs, to create and tailor University employability enhancing provision and to support research into the effectiveness of programmes run by Careers and Placements, including York Award and York Strengths. Statistics resulting from this aggregation may also be used in marketing and promotion of such programmes. No individual will be identifiable from these aggregated reports. If you do not wish the content of your application to be used in this way, please email award@york.ac.uk.