Ask a parent what universities want and most will say grades. They are right, and no serious university says otherwise. But in the last two years the question of what a student has done beyond the classroom has moved from a nice-to-have to something applicants are asked about directly. This guide sets out what the universities themselves say, so you can judge whether a project is worth your child’s time, and what kind of project is.
From 2026 entry, the UCAS personal statement is no longer a single essay. It is three questions, with 4,000 characters in total and at least 350 for each answer. The first asks why the student wants to study the course. The second asks how their qualifications and studies have prepared them. The third is the one that matters here:
“What else have you done to prepare outside of education, and why are these experiences useful?”
Every student applying to a UK university answers it, for every course. UCAS’s own guidance lists the kinds of things it has in mind: work experience, employment or volunteering; personal life experiences or responsibilities; hobbies and extracurricular or outreach activities; achievements outside school or college. A project the student has made and tested sits squarely in that list, and it has one advantage over most of the others: it produces evidence. A student who ran a repair service for a term can say who used it, what went wrong and what they changed. That is an answer to “why are these experiences useful”, not just a list of things done.
Oxford is explicit: “We typically suggest that you focus around 80% of your personal statement on your academic interests, abilities and achievements”, and it adds that “extra-curricular activities are only helpful in so far as they demonstrate the selection criteria for your course”. Cambridge tells applicants to explore their subject beyond what they have learnt at school. LSE asks for most of the statement to show critical engagement with the subject and super-curricular activity.
The lesson for a project is simple. A project for its own sake is worth little on an application to these universities. A project that grows out of the subject the student wants to study is worth a great deal, because it is the clearest possible evidence of the thing they are all looking for: that the student has gone beyond the syllabus of their own accord.
No US university requires a project, and it is worth saying so plainly. What they do is invite one, repeatedly, in the questions they ask. Caltech’s application includes this prompt:
“Tell us about something you created, tested, repaired, modeled, coded, built, or redesigned. What problem were you trying to solve and what did the process reveal to you?”
MIT’s admissions office describes what it looks for under headings including initiative, risk-taking and hands-on creativity, and says: “You shouldn’t just enjoy thinking about problems, you should be excited about doing something to help solve them”. Stanford says that “an exceptional depth of experience in one or two activities may demonstrate your passion more than minimal participation in five or six clubs”. Yale puts it this way: “it is the qualitative elements of an application that make a prospective student stand out”.
Read those four statements together and a pattern appears. The US universities that receive the most applications are not asking for more activities. They are asking for depth, for making rather than joining, and for evidence that the student pursues something on their own initiative. A completed project is one of the few things a sixteen-year-old can do that shows all three at once.
Not every project helps. Admissions readers on both sides of the Atlantic have seen a great many “founded a charity” and “built an app” lines that dissolve under a single question. The projects that hold up share four features.
They are finished. A working thing, a completed campaign, a piece of research with findings. Not a plan.
They were tested with real people. Users, customers, an audience, participants. The student can say what those people did and said.
They changed because of what the student learned. The second version differs from the first, and the student can explain why.
They connect to what the student wants to study. A student aiming at engineering who built and tested a device; a student aiming at economics who ran a small venture and kept the numbers; a student aiming at psychology who designed and evaluated a peer-support resource.
A project with those four features answers the UCAS question directly, gives a US essay its material, and survives an interview.
A project does not replace grades. It does not make a weak academic record strong. It does not guarantee an offer from anyone, and any programme that suggests otherwise should be treated with caution. What it does is give the student something concrete and their own to write about, at the moment when every application form asks for exactly that.
A student applying for economics ran a plant stall over four markets, kept the accounts, dropped a price after the first market and sold out at the last two. Her UCAS third answer used the ledger; her interview used the pricing decision.
A student applying for computer science built a vocabulary revision tool with a no-code platform, had five classmates use it for three weeks, and removed a feature nobody touched. His Common App activity line carried the numbers; his Caltech-style “making” essay carried the removed feature and why.
A student applying for psychology designed a peer-support leaflet for younger students with a teacher’s oversight, trialled it with one year group and gathered feedback. Her statement’s third answer explained what the feedback changed; her reflection tied it to the research methods she wanted to study.
None of the three projects was large. Each was finished, tested, changed and connected to the course.
Sometimes. The question is whether the student can show the four features above. Coursework the whole class did, marked by a teacher, rarely shows initiative. A project the student chose, ran and tested does.
No. A project that failed and was understood is often stronger material than one that quietly worked. What matters is the evidence and the student’s account of what they learned.
Long enough to build something, test it and improve it. In our experience that is about twelve weeks at four hours a week. Shorter, and there is no time to test; much longer, and it competes with school.
No university requires one. The reason to do one is that every application now asks what the student has done beyond the classroom, and a finished project is the clearest answer. If your child already has something they have made, tested and can explain, they have it.
A first version can. Testing it with real people and improving it usually needs a term, because the people you need are at school. Twelve weeks at about four hours a week is the shape that fits around study.
Not sure what to build? The CURIOO Project Finder asks a student ten questions and suggests three projects sized for twelve weeks: one practical, one ambitious, one for a cause they care about.
Parents: the Signature Project guide is a five-page PDF you can forward, at curioo.com/signature.
Sources. Quoted from UCAS and each university’s current admissions pages. CURIOO is not affiliated with or endorsed by any university named. Requirements change each year; check the university’s own pages before applying.
