university open days (am I supposed to go?)

[AtYourCervix]

DD is off to Cardiff on wednesday.
She's being all independent and insisting I'm not supposed to go.

(apart from just working out the train will be £30 and getting stroppy about timings - all of which could have been bypassed if I was driving)

Anyway. Am I supposed to be going? Can I trust her to find out important stuff like money and halls and stuff)

I'm clueless. Help.

DS1's college is running quite a few trips. The cost by coach is only £10 so he is going on trips to Cambridge, Warwick, Durham and Leeds.
Other than that he will have to go by car or rail. Some places are so far I reckon an overnight stay might be necessary. (Actually I was rather hoping for a weekend in Durham).
I was thinking that when he has , hopefully, got offers, that I would go with him on the post application open days on the grounds that his choices have been narrowed down by then.

My oldest friends daughter is doing geography at sussex. In yr 2 and loving it Is in LA atm on a 'field trip'!

DD went on her own, booked all the travel herself and an overnight stay in a Travellodge for one of the visits.

I think it is good experience, although I appreciate there are some who find it more difficult to cope than others.

She is 18 next month and has just booked her first holiday abroad with a friend. In other words, it gets worse!! (And she is still my baby too).

Southampton is good as well as the others mentioned, and Edinburgh is top-class (that's where I went) but if she's not going to get points for Bristol then it's unlikely she'd get in there.

Tell her to get used to people asking "so are you going to be a teacher, then?" For the next 4 years at least!

She will be fine on her own but open days have changed massively in the last 10 years and it is now the general thing that parents go too. So much so that they send you a hot drink voucher and have special talks for parents and sometimes even a separate tour.

Thsnks all. Much appreciated.

Are we talking pre- or post-application open days here? There is a difference - the first is to encourage students to apply and the second is to interview them (if that is part of the decision making process - might be quite rare these days) and/or encourage students to accept their offers. Many more parents (and brothers and sisters for that matter) attend the former than the latter. Various reasons - tend to be more "drop-in" rather than planned events with a timetable; the visitors are a bit younger; it's more like casing the joint so two or three heads are better than one; if they are held at the weekend it makes for a nice family trip to a city.

At pre-application open days I'd say that 80% - maybe even more - of the visitors come with at least one other family member. At post-application maybe around 50% and usually only one parent.

Pre. She's going with 3 friends. So i'm not the only lzx parent.

Just in case you're worrying, there seemed to be more groups of teenagers wandering around the university this morning than teen+parent and there are hoards of people in university colours giving directions. They all looked happy too as they got in my way

Thanks mrsH

Parents are more likely to go these day because, unlike the old days, they will be making a significant financial investment (and I mean ££££) and so want to see where their money is going.

She's back. Jumping up and down excited.

I'll be needing to remortgage the house then.....