How to choose course, university etc?

[3boys1cat]

DS1 is in Year 12, and I am beginning to realise that I don't have a clue where to start.
He will probably want to study Maths (or something involving Maths) but I don't know how to narrow things down. Am also a bit vague about timings (e.g. when to go to Open Days). Has anyone who's been through it got any advice?

The UCAS website is a good place to start www.ucas.com/students/coursesearch/
so your DS could search for maths courses and see what the requirements are and then look at the individual university websites for more details about the courses. When your DS has an idea what sort of grades he is aiming for (from school reports/module results) he can target his choices better.

Open days are usually in the summer after AS level exams and again in september the details are usually on the individual university websites.

DD2 is in her first year of university studying maths and we looked at a few league tables as well to get an idea of how the universities were ranked as well. We only used it as a very rough guide as some of the criteria aren't always relevant but it gave a feel of where was a good place to study.

Your DS's school should explain the process over the next few months but no harm in looking at stuff now.

ds applied for maths in this round of applications. He only did one proper open day, but we visited several campuses and did a quick self-guided tour just to decide if he liked the feel of the place and fancied living there for 3 or 4 years. We tried as far as possible to fit visits in when we were passing closeish en-route to somewhere else. By the time he applied early on in year 13 he'd narrowed it down to 4 (one of which he applied to blind, but has visited since on a post offer visit day). So it's not essential to visit beforehand, but it's a bit of a risk that you might waste a choice if you get there and hate it. We also found this article by Bill Lionheart of Manchester university gave some interesting ideas that we wouldn't have considered.

For your ds, he will need to decide on what he wants to apply for, so visiting department open days in any related subjects might help clarify his thoughts. Many places let you switch between quite closely related subjects (eg maths to maths with stats or actuarial science), but if he's considering things like engineering or economics he'll need to be sure what he wants before he applies (or he could apply to different things at different places to keep his options open but that makes writing a personal statement trickier).

It's definitely not too soon to start thinking about this - application time will come around all too soon.

Ummmmmm..........I'm struck by your choice of words there, 3boys - 'I am beginning to realise that I don't have a clue where to start..... I don't know how to narrow things down.'

One of the tricky things about this stage is coming to terms with the fact that it's your son who needs to narrow things down. He's the one who'll be applying and he's the one who will be doing the course, incurring the debt etc. There is certainly a role for parents to support their near-adult children with the information-gathering and decision-making but in the end he needs to take a lead on this.

It took my son a long time to make his mind up what course he wanted to do (I think till Easter of year 12) and even longer to decide where to apply (final decision on top choice was taken in the middle of September, two other choices followed soon after, the final two were made by mid-October). Fortunately, it's all worked out OK, but to us it felt like he needed a bit of a push to get started. If he hadn't responded to that we would have been questioning if he should really apply at all. It's a lot of money to spend for something you don't really enjoy/engage with.

Most schools I know of seem to kick-start the UCAS process after AS levels. However, by that time it can be too late to get onto some open days. My son left it too late to apply to visit UCL, for example. For the ones where you have to book, that can often be done over the Easter holidays. I did notice this year that many universities were having some open days at the end of the summer term but were also having some in the early part of the autumn term, including some on Saturdays. That helps.

Good luck!

We went through this process with DS1 last year and are now starting again with DS2 who is also in Y12.
I think each school/student/parent probably approaches it slightly differently, but here's what we did.
First I bought the Times Good University Guide - as well as a list of the top unis for each subject (in their view), it also has a section guiding you through the UCAS process and a page giving facts and figures for each uni. I think it's a really useful starting place.
Next from that DS began to identify courses that interested him - for him that was Maths.
So he looked at some Unis that offered good maths courses based on his predicted grades and that he liked the sound of. Then he began researching what courses they offered and booked himself onto some open days -TIP when booking open days also book a place on some of the subject lectures they offer. DS went to a local open day and listened to a maths lecturer and an engineering maths lecturer both talk about their subject. He came home fired up with engineering, maths was discarded!
Once we had started, DS took ownership of the process, but he did need our input - otherwise known as me spending hours on the internet trawling through the courses that different unis offered and what they were looking for in applicants.
The task was made a little easier by DS assertion that he wanted to stay south of the M4 corridor so the number of Unis we were looking at was manageable. Having chosen engineering, DS then read around the subject and focussed on the type of engineering he was interested in. Luckily, it all worked out and he started in October at his first choice Uni.
Oh, and do not underestimate the power, knowledge, support and general hand-holding that Mumsnet provides - one very kind MNetter even arranged a work placement for my son at the company her husband works for after I came on bemoaning how hard we were finding it to get relevant work experience.