Year 12 - 2024/25 - Support, Discussion and Looking After Each Other

That sounds very positive @bluefineliner hopefully your daughter will gain an awful lot from her teacher's support and mentorship. Sweeping generalisation but I do tend to find it is young women who doubt their abilities more than young men. That's not to say young men don't, of course, it just seems to present differently.

It is certainly about organisation and prioritising which open days to attend. We have lots of clashes through June so decisions will need to be made. DS has lots on his list because he is uncertain, so hopefully attending a few will give him, and all of our children, some clarity. It's wonderful if the young person knows exactly what they want to do, and where they want to do it, but I'm sure there are more who are not certain and need the help that the open days will give. Many seem to offer virtual open days and subject taster lessons too. So different, and much better, than in my day!

Thank you dd has a 16-17 card which is 50pc so that helps!

@Countrylife2002 I feel as you do about organising trips to open days, I just need to know when and where so I can sort them around my work commitments. I also think DD will make better decisions after physically having seen the unis.

It does take some thinking about for us because most of the unis she wants to visit have their open days either on the same day or within one or two weeks of each other which means June weekends will be busy.

I had a very interesting phone call with DDs teacher after expressing my concern about her own self belief in her abilities (despite her being extremely able). What a wonderful caring teacher, she was really tuned in to DD and the issues she and other girls may have around being high achievers and the pressures and doubts that many of them have. I am so pleased I have spoken to her as I feel she will be a huge support and mentor to DD going forward. DD will listen to her advice over mine too 😂.

@Countrylife2002 Have you got a railcard (Two Together perhaps?) to bring down train fares?

I’ve decided to view the open days like house buying prep and just do the research properly so will go along with dd and make weekends of it. DD is very happy.

DD has moved around a lot with my divorce and other things so I think the location really matters to her. It needs to feel like she could settle. When I went I did visit some but really didn’t care the way she does. Just unfortunate all the ones which have the courses she likes are quite so far…!

We’re only organised as I need to budget to afford the trips!

I’m impressed at how organised people are dd not really done much research into university. Her grades have dropped a little and she was never going to be applying for top tier universities. I don’t know, I’d like her to have some ideas, but I don’t want to put too much pressure on her. She doesn’t want to be too close or too far away. Beyond that who knows. She’s thinking economics or finance or combination of those. Not really something I know anything about!

DD2 doesn't know what she wants to study but thinks that she'd prefer a campus university rather than a city one. DD1 is at a big city university so I partly wonder if she is reacting to that. Though I do think that a campus would suit her. We're going to look at Bath in June and will stay overnight with her godmother who lives in the city. So I'm looking forward to that too 😀DD is going to take a year out so pressure off a bit this year. School won't be happy as they prefer them to defer but DD wants to apply with known grades.

Yeah it is that. We are v close. I think she needs to see it really.
i shall mull it over !

I don’t think any decision you make on this is weird, but perhaps she is really saying she’d far prefer to have your company - which I can understand.

Does she actually need to visit this uni in person, or could she perhaps access a virtual open day? Then think about an in-person offer holder day later on?

DD is adamant it’s weird to go to a uni open day 5 hours away on a day trip alone.
Is it?

That's us too!

Work experience was useful (if a bit boring) as at least now he has some idea of office work.
Neither DH nor I do that kind of job, so he has never had much to do with it.

Mostly sat and watched, but they did let him do some recruitment and contract work, which he said was quite interesting.

@SunblockSue is your DC open to thinking about post-18 routes? One thing you might think about is booking onto an early open day at a university relatively close to home (and therefore not costly to travel to), just to get some ideas rolling. The main open day “seasons” are in June and Sept/Oct, and it is worth thinking about the June ones as by the autumn the pressure is building towards final decisions - if they want to apply in Y13. The equal-consideration deadline in the coming round will be 14 Jan 2026, so a couple of weeks earlier than it has been in recent cycles.

Goodness how organised your kids are. Mine has no idea of subject let alone which city! There doesn't seem to be any mention of uni from the school until much later in the year!

Good news on the work experience @Waspie.

We've booked Glasgow and Sheffield so far. Glasgow will involve an overnight stay. DS school have said they can have 3 days 'off' for open days. He went to see the Chemistry dept at Warwick with his A Level class just before half term and was impressed but thinks it's too close to home!

@Waspie yes i's only 40ish mins from here to Oxford, we went by train from our local station so super easy to do. If your DCs have the opportunity it's worth going, I encouraged DS really as a motivating thing, even if he doesn't get anywhere there hopefully he'll have done enough through motivation to get somewhere else on his list. That said, his top list also includes Imperial...😂

How lovely to see all these ambitions start to unfold! DD won’t be going for Oxbridge, but her school are very organised and ensure that all applications go off early so that they can then concentrate on their studies. So her school deadline to get her UCAS form finally submitted to school is 16 October, right after the Oxbridge, medics etc are in.

She loves the idea of Edinburgh, but given the severity of cuts they are contemplating I am not at all sure that her niche course will survive there. All courses available for 2026 entry should be shown on UCAS by 29 April, so we shall see.

@Waspie how I wish DD could take your DS's pragmatic view on applying 😂.

I have been spurred on to contact her biology teacher to see her view of DD now too, so she will advise her from a different perspective, which will be great as DD holds her in very high regard and will listen to her over me any day!

DD’s top 3 are all ridiculously competitive and she could well get none of them. No 4 she should get and no 5 is insurance . So I’ve made it clear she really must be completely happy with no 4. Unfortunately as no 4 is in Scotland we’re going a self guided tour of it instead of the open day to save costs so that we can combine 2 Scottish uni visits on one trip.

DS ruled out Oxbridge, but LSE is still in play. He is surprisingly mature and worries about costs (mostly his food 🤣). He will look at the actual courses he is interested in and student evaluations.
Warwick would be DH's suggestion.
I support Durham or Edinburgh.
No trips booked yet, because DH doesn't want LSE to be our first open day. 🤦‍♀️
Train ticket prices are extortionate, but I am looking forward to it. I didn't do anything like that as a student, as I just went to my home country's LSE - which I visited many times before.
DS also doesn't want to miss any schooldays before mocks. He missed enough for sports already.

DS is going to apply to Oxford. He knows that, as @JustHereWithMyPopcorn says, he doesn't have a snowballs chance really, but has the attitude that he has nothing to lose from the experience.

His careers teacher said that students need to decide if they want to go to Oxbridge, or if they want to study the subject they want to study. If it's Oxbridge for Oxbridge's sake they should tactically apply for the course with the highest acceptance rates (Classics with MFL was cited as an example).

We are lucky that it is quite local to us so there is no big expense involved in going to the open day in July. DS has ruled out Scottish and northern English unis so, with the exception of Exeter, open days will be days trips.

He has booked an open day at Birmingham. It's further away than he wanted but it's DH's old uni and he desperately wants to take DS to see it!

He has managed to get work experience though -Yay!

Interesting you are both mentioning Oxford as DD was considering it until this weekend when she had a crisis of confidence and decided against it. Yesterday she was told she could have a place on schools trip to Oxford at the end of this month as someone had dropped out, so now she is going, but seems to be losing any confidence she had from the fear of failing to get in (which she knows is the most likely outcome).

It is hard to advise because she is capable of getting grades but as @Countrylife2002 says, the application process will be awful. We will have to see what she thinks when she has visited I think.

@Countrylife2002 DS has also done a taster day at Oxford and really enjoyed it. He wants to apply but realistically hasn't a snowballs chance, I shall remain supportive though.

DD is doing a couple of taster days at Oxford (already done one and loved it), and will go to the open day. I am not looking forward to the application process for this.

Luckily that is one she can get to alone with no worries! Except the one she’s done so far ended up with cancelled trains, so I had to drive to get her , and ended up getting a bus lane fine 🤦‍♀️

We’re visiting 2 unis in Scotland over 2 nights (1 open day, 1 self guided tour), and it’s costing £900, of which half is a dog sitter as the usual person isn’t available.

DD has reluctantly accepted she will have to visit the English unis alone, as day trips. The furthest one would have cost nearly £200 for my train fare. And we couldn’t have managed it in a day trip as the trains here don’t start early enough. If she goes alone it costs £60 on the train and I can drive her into London to get the first train (and no dog care required). DD is grumpy about going alone but I’ve pointed out she’s thinking about living there so she should be able to manage a day trip!

If you have a bursary from college then check there is funds available. On the uni pages there is a section whereby you can claim travel expenses if you meet the criteria. Hope that helps