Would you encourage your DC to accept university offer?

[hawleybits]

We're not sure. DS has two good offers but given the unfortunate circumstances isn't sure whether to accept this year. His course will involve many practical units and I cannot imagine how the course would work if teaching online is still going on. DD is in her second year and is doing little or nothing.

Universities are putting the pressure on but DS is concerned that if he accepts he might not be allowed to defer. DS has already had a gap year, albeit cut short because of COVID.

I really feel for universities but what would you suggest?

I’d not be encouraging mine at the present time. It’s an awful lot of debt for most and I would only want them to do if they could do the full course and it was needed for their chosen career.

Far to many go because it’s the expected thing and end up not paying back their debt or using the education.

But there is no guarantee he can defer and competition next year may be more. How sought after is the course? If practical units are mandatory they will restructure the course to do more theory first.

Yes. It s a chance to get ahead even if a lot is online.
There will be smaller classes and more tutor time potentially even if online
The sciences medicine etc will go back first

I think unis will be wanting to discourage deferrals as much as possible. I know mine is! This may mean that your son is made to apply next year with the added competition that will bring.

Also what will your son do in the meantime? Jobs are going to be hard to come by. Will he go and do an apprenticeship and forget uni altogether? If he needs a degree for what he wants to do I would go this year.

I would advise another year out. The unis are struggling to cobble together programs at the moment which arent going to be optimal.
I work in a uni ( research rather then education side) and I see what pressure the lecturers are being put under. Even though they are doing there best to provide optimal educational resources it will not be on par with what these courses would offer under normal circumstances.
Plus I think a bit more maturity does students well. On a side note I certainly fucked about in my fresher year and could hav done with a bit more life experience.
Can he get some type of work experience in something related to his field for a year?

One of mine has deferred until next year, partly because of an Spld, partly because of discomfort with all the unknown variables.

What does he want to do and is university essential for that...

Given there is a heavy practical element is it STEM in which case probably yes, if not then what will Uni do in terms of career prospects?

Time to take stock and consider really...

I have DS who is 3 years in to a 4 year engineering course - next year should be a lot of land and project work

and DD who is just at the end of her 1st year (law)... it's not great for her really as the support and in line teaching were very slow to get started and the Uni staff have struggled a bit with tech, and if she was in your position I might have suggested a year out...

No way would I defer! Unis are cash strapped and it will be be so hard to get a place next year.

Universities are putting the pressure on but DS is concerned that if he accepts he might not be allowed to defer. DS has already had a gap year, albeit cut short because of COVID.

I really feel for universities but what would you suggest?

I would suggest he rings admissions for an exploratory conversation about his options, specifically establishing their attitudes to deferrals.

Tell him to mention any personal issues, learning issues, specific disruption caused by COVID (more than the lockdown we have all experienced) or similar.

If he is more comfortable doing it by email than phone, that’s probably a good idea.

Admissions departments are usually really helpful.

Thank you for your rapid input; I know many of you are involved with university life.

My suggestion to DS is to get in touch with his course contact, who to this point has been really accommodating, in the hope of getting some unbiased feedback.

It isn't STEM, it's Music which will involve rehearsals and performances as a large part of the course.

My feeling is to hold off for a year. He has a job currently, so isn't just sitting around waiting. He would hopefully be fine next year as his grades were very good.

Music he can do a lot of work on his own rehearsing and zoom classes. And using tech to create pieces from recordings. And continue theory. But up to him really if he has something else to do.

My daughter did a music degree and actually very little of the course was practical. The content of each course will be different though and it should be easy enough to check with the institutions concerned.

For my daughter there wouldn't have been a problem with the course but her extra-curricular music, and her social life more generally, would have been very seriously affected.

Personally I'd be tempted to defer for the year.

I'm currently studying for a master's in a practical subject and although it's been great having the coursework to do while on lockdown, I am going to suffer in terms of gaining practical experience and doing fieldwork because it has all been cancelled, as have all the external courses I had booked on. I'm sure employers will be understanding for this year's graduates but if I were thinking of starting this September I would be seriously considering whether it would be worth it if the uni wasn't able to offer the practical element, which for me is at least 50% why I'm doing the course.

However I'm doing mine as a career change and it's only a one-year course so circumstances are a bit different.

He may not be able to defer if too many want to, but be told to reapply next year, competing with the following year”s cohort.

I'd say it depends how competitive it was to get on this particular course. Is it a prestigious college? Did he have to perform in auditions?

If he could likely get an equivalent offer again next year I would defer if possible. If it's a once in a lifetime chance I'd grab it with both hands. Can he use Unistats or similar to work out where he might stand?

What would he do instead? Not many jobs will be available for unskilled teens.

I don't really have to encourage my DS as he is still very keen to go to uni in the autumn even if he has to do the work online for a while, but he hopes that won't be for too long. This is a low population year and he has benefitted from that in his applications. May be a whole different ballgame next year, what if some unis go under due to the situation? Possibly more students and less places, so he definitely wants to go, he is totally fed up with a life on hold as it is.

DS has emailed his course contact with some questions and will hopefully hear back from him fairly quickly. It's Newcastle uni and the entry requirements were quite high. His offer was unconditional (before lockdown) as he already had his grades. He's since received another unconditional offer from Southampton who I imagine are also fighting to put bums on seats.

DS knows that next year might be a different story. I'm just a bit sad for him when I see DD who is currently in her second year having barely any contact time, her work placement cancelled and just generally feeling like she is on hold.

I am with my 18yo. But it’s a university that is in no danger of going under. Also it is a humanities degree and can be done easily by distance learning if need be. I’m actually ok with there being less social distractions for first year.

We were discussing this today with DC, both of whom have accepted offers to start in October. They're upset that the courses might begin online (DS1's course should be lab-based; DS2's is a Humanities subject) but they both said: if I defer, what can I do? There's no travel, no jobs, a deep recession. They'll already have spent half a year reading books and going for walks because there's little else on offer. If they defer, it'll be another year of milling around. And deferral puts pressure on the year below them, who will be competing for far fewer places if this year's intake all hold out until '21.

For music, I'd seriously consider deferring. You can't replicate physically being in a room with someone when you play music, you just can't. And that applies to instrumental lessons, ensemble work, collaborative composition work just on the formal learning side without even getting into the many many informal opportunities for creating and making music that you come across by being in the same place as other people doing the same thing which is the stuff that careers beyond university are often formed by.

By all means chat with admissions but in all honesty you do have to be physically present to make and learn music, really.

DD has accepted an offer from her first choice uni for the fall. They made it pretty clear in a Zoom call for perspective parents that they could only grant a very limited number of deferrals. She was a recruited athlete (she rows crew) and they gave her a really excellent financial aid grant. We're in the US, so uni is insanely expensive here.

She decided that she wants to start in the fall, no matter how it's done, and we support her. This uni has a very low student to faculty ratio (13 to 1) so they should be able to handle distance learning with a lot of individual attention. She might not get as good an offer the second time around if she has to reapply.

I think she made the right choice, but everyone's situation is different.

@Drink Veneer - but would it not work if they reorganised the course, so that all the music theory and composition went on in the first term and performance and technical skills became the focus, post lockdown?

@ellanwood possibly, but music performance is a combination of craft and skills - it's an ongoing thing. The one to one instrumental lessons run throughout the entirety of the course and are augmented by personal practice that entire time. So even if, say, a student was to get nine months' worth of tuition crammed into three or even six, if it doesn't happen in the nine month timeframe that allows for nine months of personal practice, it won't have the same utility.

Even if he defers he’s going to need to keep on with lessons to keep his skills up.