My Gap Year

If you're thinking about a gap year, this series is my own story — start to finish — so you can decide how similar your situation is to mine. I'm posting it in parts so each video can stand on its own.

If you're considering a gap year, follow along; if you're already on one, let me know if any of this matches your experience.

I had an offer from Imperial for Aeronautical Engineering: 3 A*s and an A. On results day I got 3 A*s... and a B in Economics, missing the offer by one grade. My insurance, Bristol, confirmed my place. Bristol is genuinely great for aero — strong industry links, a top-four course, and my sister was already there.

But I had to ask myself some honest questions: would I actually be happy there, even with those grades? Did the course/city fit me? And — the big one — what would I do with a year out? I'd just started Praneel Physics that summer, I had a paid TikTok UGC deal lined up, and Imperial told me they'd consider a fresh application with 3 A*s achieved. Bristol isn't hard to get back into, so it became a low-risk safety net while I bet on myself for a year.

This time I applied to Imperial, Bristol, Bath, Southampton and Cambridge (Trinity College) — all for Aeronautical/General Engineering. I picked Cambridge over Oxford because Cambridge and Imperial both use the ESAT, so I only had to prep for one admissions test.

UCAS still makes you list every A-level you sat, so I had to declare the B in Economics — but I'd already cleared it with Imperial's admissions team that they'd only weigh my three A*s. With grades achieved, offers came back fast: Bristol and Southampton within days, Bath much quicker than the year before. Imperial and Cambridge, as always, took the longest.

The new UCAS personal statement format (three separate questions) launched after I'd already written mine the first time round — and since I wasn't in school, I had no workshops or guidance on the change. I read UCAS's own guidance on what each question was looking for, then restructured my existing statement to fit.

• Why this course? — your motivation and specific interest within the subject.
• How have your studies prepared you? — A-level subjects plus extra-curricular academic stuff (olympiads, Isaac Physics, competitions).
• What else have you done, and why is it useful? — work experience, projects, societies, leadership: your supercurriculars.

That restructured statement got me 8 offers from my top 4 universities. The full text (with my own annotations on what each line is doing) is in the Premium PDF below — but I genuinely cannot stress this enough: do not copy any line of it. UCAS's similarity checker will flag it, and "it's just a Praneel Physics video" will not save you.

I didn't know I was taking a gap year until September, so — both times — I had only about a month or two to prep for the ESAT. Comparing the two attempts, prep time was the single biggest factor, not raw ability.

My score was a 5.2 average both years. That was enough for an Imperial interview and offer, and a Cambridge interview (though not an offer in the end). If you're wondering what score you need: anything above ~4.5 should be enough to get your foot in the door — after that it's about your interview. My honest advice is simply to start earlier and do more practice papers. TMUA Paper 1 is a solid proxy for ESAT difficulty if you run out of ESAT-specific material — and I've got shortcut videos for pretty much every ESAT topic on Praneel Physics.

Here's the actual timeline of my offers — useful as a benchmark even if you're not taking a gap year:

• Bristol offer — 2 October
• Southampton offer — 8 October
• Cambridge (Trinity) interview invite — 18 November
• Bath offer — 1 December (Bath is usually slower — this was unusually early)
• Cambridge decision day — 28 January (rejected — all colleges decide the same day)
• Imperial interview invite — 13 February (interview slot 24-27 February)
• Imperial offer — 19 March

Almost 5 months between my first offer and my last. If admissions teams haven't replied by the typical interview window, they often won't formally reject you either — so don't wait around forever.