Thread 29 - Covid Cohort - Whirlwinds and Waiting

[OrangeCinnamonCroissant]

This is a thread for supporting all young people post GCSEs 2020, regardless of their educational setting. It is respectfully requested that all are supportive and helpful to each other. If you want to start a debate, e.g state vs private, please don't within this thread. Please also be sensitive when responding to threads about grades.

Some of us have been here since first thread back in yr10, some will be new. Everyone has been friendly and helpful in the past. Everyone is welcome. It is hoped this will continue.

Our DS/DD may go down various paths (such as employment, apprenticeships, higher ed) We have decided for anyone interested they will most likely find us within the Further Ed board.

previous thread 28

Yes, Birmingham students are very middle class too. I did say to dd that that’s probably true of most of the Russell Group unis unfortunately..,

Dh was very taken with Leicester when we visited but dd didn’t apply as she didn’t think it was good enough. He seems to take every opportunity to tell dd she made a mistake - today it was ‘if you wanted diverse, you should have applied to Leicester’

DHs do have this tendency...

he did it when she decided to move for sixth form too. ‘Are you sure you’ve made the right decision, won’t you miss your friends?’ after we’d already handed in our notice and forfeited her bursary! Why sow seeds of doubt when the decision’s made?!

We were supposed to go to Birmingham today but she didn’t want to, it’s currently 4th and she was worried it would move up and cause more of a dilemma, also she’d been invited out…

I can understand the dilemma @Zebracat! It’s hard enough choosing between three! Dd has reflected and decided to rule York out now. She thinks she wants a decent sized city.

@crazycrofter

I can understand the dilemma *@Zebracat*! It’s hard enough choosing between three! Dd has reflected and decided to rule York out now. She thinks she wants a decent sized city.

Would a self guided tour (on a nice day) to some of the others help make a decision. Of accessible of course!

• if accessible

Dd has an offer holder day at Nottingham a week on Wednesday so that will help. Then she’s debating whether to visit Manchester. Southampton is still in the running, despite the cold wet offer day!

Bath haven’t offered yet, but I’m wondering if it will have a similar vibe to York? Can anyone who’s been to both confirm that?

Cardiff was lovely and sunny.
Very informative day but as the journalism building is nowhere near the rest of the uni or the accommodation we didn’t get to see anything else but that’s ok.
Journalism building is lovely and new and next door to BBC Wales, who they have connections with, which DS was impressed about.
No freebies except a can of water on arrival

We missed the freebie breakfast roll at York @Fiddlersgreen! We were also unimpressed by the range/quality of eating options. The first two student guides we asked said the only option was Costa and the queues were huge. Another student guide directed us to the Vanbrugh College dining room. The only food options were some sandwiches and some slightly dry looking jacket potatoes so we had a piece of cake and went for a late lunch at Maccies in town. Southampton’s delicious free lunch was much more impressive!

@crazycrofter I think Bath and York will feel very similar because it's is such an expensive place as well as super selective. Certainly as a city Bath is MUCH whiter and more middle class than Bristol.

@Piggywaspushed Sorry Brum didnt go the way he expected, DD felt like that after Liverpool but speaking to one of the students gave a different spin on the course. It is very hard to get a truly accurate picture of what it will really be like living and learning there in just a couple of hours and from listening to one lecture. Hope he is feeling more positive today.

@crazycrofter Never been to York but did go to Bath in September last year for a campus tour just so happened to be a day freshers were arriving. It definitely didnt come across as a white middle class bubble. Plenty of non white students. We were talking to a bunch of students (who were out welcoming freshers) who had moved from overseas to do their and had been stuck there due to Covid - students from Poland, India, China. All came across very friendly. We are there in April for offer holders day so will see.

Went to Nottingham a few weeks back and lovely campus much bigger than Bath, very green and spread out would love to see it in summer. Lecture was top notch from a young post grad and couldnt fault the teaching staff or students who spoke, laid on a lovely lunch for us, they did their marketing very well and we were very impressed by what we saw.

The food and drink was a bit crap at Birmingham tbh too. We all had to queue at Starbucks for a drink. Nothing was provided at all. Then at lunch it was a stampeded for the free sandwich and crisps.

Bath has quite a large number of international students. I am sure someone on the Oxbridge thread looked it up. So, in that sense , it's diverse. Plus the courses it offers tend towards the male and not always necessarily white demographic. Years ago, Loughborough and Bath used to have a very skewed male/female ratio but I think that is less the case now.

Glad Cardiff was a success Fiddler.

We seem to have completely missed out on free lunches and freebies. DD and DH missed the one at Southampton, and Portsmouth was crap that way. We ended up grabbing a vegan sausage roll from Gregg's.

I have high hopes of Swansea!

@22Newnames Congratulations on the offer!

It's fascinating to hear feedback from all the open days. Funny how the little things can swing a perception.

@crazycrofter We visited York in half-term and it did at first look all white middle class but we did hear a lot of European languages amongst applicants (could still be middle class!). When we spied on the MSc students in the laboratory there appeared to be more diversity. However Ds didn't like it for other reasons.

We've done Bath and York, although Bath was without students around: in terms of the look of the place, we preferred York at a look level, but very similar vibe - mostly slightly 70s/80s blocks (York has more modern new campus), lake and ducks, and some greenery. York felt greener. I was slightly bemused by the lack of eating options at York.... Bath felt slightly more student-y to me - posters/politics and identity type stuff around, if you know what I mean! For ds's course there was a decent sense of diversity within the applicants and the students they had there to showcase.

(Oh, and we got a decent buffet lunch at York, to add to the complete randomness that everyone seems to be experiencing!)

It’s obviously very course dependant. There must have been around 50 Psychology applicants there yesterday, maybe more, I’m not good at estimating. But we watched them file into the lecture theatre and there were just two boys! And all of them were white. Of course lots of them probably won’t end up at York!

The other thing that DS did yesterday was blurt out that he wished he had applied for history...

@Piggywaspushed - what was your reaction to that? We had similar recently in that DD said she wished she had applied to Manchester and also there is a really good course that sounds interesting, look.....

I just sort of ignored him! His only logic seemed to be that it would have been easier to choose.

I did tell him moths ago that I thought he would like a history degree.

It's all just wobbles...hopefully.

Oh no @Piggywaspushed! Ds did similar with psychology at parents Eve (his teacher was very kind and flattering and he suddenly had a wobble that he DID love psychology…!!)

Yikes @crazycrofter - i assume the sex bias is fairly typical of psychology but that does sound extreme! Ds is comp sci so it’s the opposite: getting a good few girls in the mix was a joy at York!!

I think what he is doing is more employable. He wouldn't like some of the bits of history. If anywhere did degrees in just social history (other than Glasgow which does) he would have 100% have gone for it. There's always postgrad!