AS the nights draw in and the first leaves start to fall from the trees, it’s that time of year again as the university application deadline looms. Son number four has been trawling websites, attending open days, toiling over his UCAS university application form and agonising over his personal statement.

“Oh, how I remember the days,” I tell Roscoe. But, really, there’s barely any comparison. Back in the Dark Ages, we didn’t have any online information, so relied on the few prospectuses that happened to be lying around in the school library. I don’t remember it being discussed much at school. Parents, as was the norm, didn’t get involved, they left it up to us to make the decisions.

Expectations are different now. The pressure is greater. We have attended parents’ evenings explaining the whole process and school has organised visits to universities in the region, where students have had talks and lectures related to the subjects they want to study. Roscoe even went on a residential trip, where he stayed in university halls for two nights to get a taste of student life.

School offers practice interviews and lots of advice on that crucial personal statement, which must be 4,000 characters long and reveal a knowledge and passion for their subject, as well as evidence of a rounded personality, with lots of extra-curricular activities and achievements to show for it.

Our generation didn’t have AS-level exams, which many schools, including Roscoe’s, still choose to sit in lower sixth form. So we spent that year lazing about and day dreaming, with lots of time to read and think about things that weren’t on exam syllabuses.

I vaguely remember filling in my UCCA university application form, by hand in Biro, and handing it to the school secretary to get a reference from the headteacher before sending it off. My parents never saw it and teachers didn’t examine what I’d written, I certainly didn’t hone it to perfection.

I can’t remember what reason I put for wanting to study English literature or attend a particular university. I liked reading and writing, I may even have mentioned that I wrote a bit of (bad) poetry. But that wouldn’t be enough to impress an admissions department today. We didn’t have to produce a formidable-sounding “personal statement”. Back then, there was a hobbies and interests section on the form.

I didn’t have a glittering list of extra-curricular achievements or relevant work experience to recount. My only job was as a Saturday girl in a photographer’s shop. I didn’t play music or sport, I wasn’t a Duke of Edinburgh Award winner and I had never been on a World Challenge expedition, trekking through jungles and helping out at orphanages in Bolivia.

The reality was that I spent a lot of time with my friends in our dead end town, which had been torn apart by the Troubles, hanging around street corners and bus stops, complaining that there was nowhere to go and nothing to do.

Our A-levels were a means of escape, a passport out of there. I don’t remember having any clear goals or coherent ambitions. I didn’t even visit any of the places I was applying to. I probably wrote that I chose the particular university I went for in the end because I liked the course, which was true. But, much more importantly, being across the water and more than 500 miles away, Norwich was as far away as possible from home.

And when I met one of my older sister’s friends, who had just graduated from there and told me about the amazing social life and opportunities she’d had to experience so many different things, that clinched it. Because having a great social life was every bit as important to me as studying English. The truth was, I didn’t really know who I was or what I wanted from life. But that wouldn’t have worked particularly well on a university application form even then.

Roscoe and his friends are expected to be so much more clued up as they make decisions influencing how the rest of their life unfolds. They have to demonstrate clear goals and coherent ambitions and give the impression that they know who they are and where they are heading. And yet, while the process may have changed, 17-year-olds today aren’t much different to 17-year-olds more than 30 years ago. They are full of the same self-doubts and insecurities.

Taking this next, important step, is as terrifying as it is exciting. Just like us, they are taking a chance. And, oh, how I envy them…