FAQ
The questions worth answering honestly.
1
“Will it write my child’s personal statement?”
No. UCAS runs similarity checks and scrutinises AI use, so a generated statement is a risk to your child’s application, not a shortcut. Sidelore produces the raw material — dated notes in their own words — and helps them structure it. They write it.
2
“What if my child just ignores it?”
Some will. You’ll know within the first month, because the weekly email will tell you honestly rather than dressing up an empty week. If it isn’t being used, cancel — there’s no annual lock-in and we’d rather you didn’t pay for something nobody opens.
3
“Why can’t I see everything my child writes?”
You can, if they choose to share it. We don’t default to it because a product that reports on a seventeen-year-old is a product they stop opening, and then it’s worth nothing to either of you. It’s also their data in law from sixteen, so it isn’t really ours to hand over.
4
“Does this guarantee an offer?”
No, and be careful of anyone who implies otherwise. Grades and admissions tests do most of the work. This is for the part of the application that most students leave until it’s too late to fix.
5
“How is this different from a list of MOOCs?”
A list is the easy part — you can find one free in ten minutes. Two things are hard, in this order.
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1
Knowing what’s worth pointing at. Most of the value, and most of the work. The essay prizes, the free placement schemes, the things that aren’t courses at all — and then choosing the one that suits a particular student and making the case in a sentence they’ll read.
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2
Then knowing what to do with it. Where it’s something to watch, the suggestion is rarely “watch this” — it’s “watch this, then find the paper behind it and decide whether you believe it.” That’s the difference between consuming something and engaging with it.
Neither is a content problem, which is why a catalogue can’t solve it.
6 · asked on the schools page
“Isn’t this just Unifrog?”
Unifrog is the record. Sidelore is the reason there’s anything in it.
A blank form doesn’t help a student who doesn’t know what to look for — and nor does a searchable catalogue of four thousand courses, which just hands the problem back to them.
We don’t tell students what to do. We put one genuinely interesting thing in front of them and let them decide, which is the only version that works on a seventeen-year-old and the only one that produces something worth writing about afterwards.
Sidelore arrives every week with one specific thing: a course, an essay prize almost nobody enters, a free summer programme that doesn’t need family contacts, a society they could start on a Tuesday. Chosen for what that student is actually interested in, with an argument for why it’s worth their week.
It then captures what they made of it while they still remember. That part does overlap with Unifrog — it just happens eighteen months earlier.
They work well together and we’d never ask you to drop it. If Sidelore works, your students turn up to Unifrog with something to put in it.