Has DD scuppered her chances of getting a offer at this uni??

[Curlysuzzie]

Ok where do I start, DD was suppose to go to open day visit at a Russell group uni about 2 weeks ago she booked it and everything, however we went on a last minute holiday, DD was given the choice to either stay and go to the open day and email the uni to say she can't go, DD forgot to email the uni to say she couldn't attend. We got back today, DD got a stern email asking why she did not turn up. I was a bit shocked but I can understand why they would be peeved off having a no show who couldn't at least email them to cancel. The problem is DD is wanting to apply to them, will she be black marked because of this? DD has emailed them back to say she is sorry and that she went on holiday at short notice.

....and if the whole application process was changed so that students only applied to universities after they had received their results all the money, time, effort and STRESS spent in hosting and attending open days could be reduced drastically.

DDs BF couldn't afford to go to open days as he had to save to go to Uni (and give his mum rent) There are lots of DC in his position.

That's a good post Ricardian. That's my experience of being a Mum and part time Uni application helper to my 4 DC - The universities application procedures have to be clear, fair and transparent and our experience of it is that it is, most of the time.

PeasePuddingCold said: Just a general observation: I've seen demand for all bells and whistles Open Days grow over the last two decades - driven by a significant minority of parents who demand something "for their money" (a rather unhelpful view of education as a consumer commodity, which it is not). We divert precious resources of time & money to make Open Days memorable and give likely applicants a sense of the best of what they'll experience in their 3 or 4 years with us.

It is interesting to read about Open Days from the provider's point of view, so thank you for that.
However, as much as you may wish to believe that education is not a "consumer commodity", the financial impact on families as things currently stand means that it is most definitely that, when all is said and done. I agree that education should not be a consumer commodity, but when students are graduating with levels of debt, the like of which previous generations could not begin to imagine, you have got to start seeing it from the perspective of prospective undergraduates and their parents, the latter of whom will be financing much of the cost in many cases.

Whereas back in the day students would take what they were given by the university dept in question and be grateful for it as it was free, it is understandable that today's students should want to feel that they are going to get "value for money" to make the debt they are going to incur as worthwhile as possible.

I assume they feel it is a way of testing how keen an applicant is.

Or they feel it's a way of getting students on campus so they can pitch to them.

DDs BF couldn't afford to go to open days as he had to save to go to Uni (and give his mum rent)

Bloody right. I thought about blogging my children's admission process, under a title like "Middle Class Privilege", totting up the money we spent and the occasions when we deployed middle-class connections and knowledge to leverage things.

Ricardian, my advice was about post offer AVDs. At my place (and in my discipline) these can be quite important. We interview before making an offer, but I know other departments in my field that make an offer during AVDs I think.

This is an important point, I guess: applicants need to look at each university & check the practice.

Doesn't change the point in response to the OP's question: it is polite and useful to the university to let them know if you've booked to attend a day, and then can't make it.

The people who lose out may well be other applicants. And there are some real consequences: at one place I worked, we bussed people between our 2 locations. We had to pay for the buses on the basis of bookings which were made. And we had to insist that applicants went first, and families of up to another 4 or 5 people (oh yes, the day out families) would have to wait. I had to go toe to toe with a very rude woman who insisted that she travelled with her daughter. I said that her DD would be completely safe, and that if she insisted, there was another applicant who would have to wait 3 hours for the next lot of buses. She said she didn't care.

I did wonder about the suitability for university in a largeish town for a 17 year old apparently unable to travel 20 minutes from one clearly designated place to another without her mother.

I did wonder about the suitability for university in a largeish town for a 17 year old apparently unable to travel 20 minutes from one clearly designated place to another without her mother.

It's interesting that Unic (Uniq? whatever, the Oxford access scheme) makes a big deal about you travelling to the session on your own. I think they're assuming that people who can't travel won't be able to cope.

Ricardian - that's ridiculous. There are many reasons why it may not be a good idea for a young person to travel on their own to eg a university open day, or interview. Or a Uniq day. The paucity of reliable public transport links in some parts of the country is just one of them.

In my example I can think of very few reasons why a 17 year old intending to enter university within the next 18 months could not have boarded a designated coach, going to only one designated place, to enter a clearly designated building to attend a clearly designated lecture & Q&A, in company with 40 other people also doing the exact same thing ...

Maybe that young person actually had one of the few reasons you can think of pease...

And of course, UhtredRagnorsson, there is provision for those.

But the vast, vast majority can travel unaccompanied, and if you live somewhere with poor transport links that's an argument for parents to give a lift to the first station they pass on the way to Oxford, not the whole way. I was treated to a wide range of shocked responses when I said my children were going unaccompanied to open days, including overnights, and none of those reasons were anything more than "how will they cope, it's so risky, my daughter wouldn't know how".

If you're seventeen and can't travel long distances by train on your own then, absent SEN or other clear disability, you should learn.

Pease I don't dispute that. But that's a different thing then Ricardian was saying.

My DD was invited to an interview and audition at York, on Thursday. I'm in Nairobi for work, and my DH was supposed to be on jury service (in fact he was released last week but we didn't know that at the time). To get from where we live to York would involve a flight with a notoriously flaky airline who have a bad record of canceling flights and then leaving customers to their own devices, and then a decent length train journey. The train would be fine. The flight - I just wasn't prepared to run the risk of her being confronted with a canceled flight and being stranded in a city hundreds of miles from where we live. So she rearranged the interview to a later date - when I will accompany her on the flight segment and then let her get the train on her own (I'm not wild about paying two train fares). I don't think this makes her unsuitable for a degree course. As it happens she has AS which makes things more difficult but even if she was NT I wouldn't run the risk of leaving her to cope with the airline in question on her own. If she gets an offer from there and ends up going there we will obviously drive her there and back at the beginning and end of term. Or, she can plan to come home on the early morning or mid afternoon flight - neither of which would be options for the interview day which finishes too late for anything but the last flight. In context - like I said, I'm in Nairobi. I got here on my own and will journey home on my own. I'm not wild about it but there you go. I would never rely on the last flight back home in the uk from the airline my DD will have to use to get to York, having been stranded by them myself in the past and experienced first hand what that's like. I had a company credit card, and colleagues in the place I was stranded. dd1 would have neither if she got stranded. No way will she be doing that trip on her own. She will be traveling to some of her other auditions on her own, and all of them are several hours train journey away - but my first hand experience of the train company when disaster strikes are considerably better than my experiences with the airline.

Where I've worked, if there are applicants overseas, we'll accept a video or do a telephone interview. You can ask about alternate arrangements.

Haven't got a clue what you mean about my DCs' results Bipp. Either about their all being exceptional (they weren't) or the more general point that the level of results determines the need or otherwise of attending open days .

Strathclyde had an applicants open day and they made it clear in the email that you were much more likely to get an offer from them if you went to it. You could contact them with excuses but I think they saw it as "if you really want to come here for 5 years then you should take 1 day out to come and discuss the course, see if you like it and show us you're bothered".
My son went to his open days alone or with friends. They were all in Scotland though. He just googled how to get there on time with public transport.
I think bookings for open days don't work as so many are booked up early by organised parents/ teenagers who then change their mind and don't go. They'd be better just having an open day and doing tours/ talks at intervals to whoever is there first come first served.

Pease Pudding. I think it is more than education being an expensive purchase. DD's course will be five or six years. I think most of us would want to look round before committing to living somewhere for so long. Her discovery, from her first open day, is that she is someone who needs a good level of life balance. A very academic environment narrowly focussed on the subject, with few social or other opportunites to mix with non medics woud not suit. A pity as academically she would have been in a relatively strong position. So the open day was really worthwhile, and a pity the others were full before she got a chance to register. Similarly DS says that some of his fellow students are genuinely unhappy in Central London, and would have far preferred a campus envirnment.

The being able to travel on your own is an interesting one. Some kids lead quite sheltered lives and it is not unknown for 15/16 year olds to be driven to school and not allowed to use public transport. It even used to be a bit of an issue at work when you would find someone in their mid 20s, but who had always lived at home, balking at the idea of attending a training course in, say, Birmingham. And our neighbour's son, who was at Oxford, discovered some of his peers seemed not to have used public transport on their own before arriving at University. Different times. It's quite possible that the mother was equally shocked that a University would assume a 17 should travel on her own.

It even used to be a bit of an issue at work when you would find someone in their mid 20s, but who had always lived at home, balking at the idea of attending a training course in, say, Birmingham

I had someone like that working for me when I was in industry. I made it a formal disciplinary (final written warning for unauthorised absence) after his mother phoned up to tell me that it was unreasonable to expect him to go to London because "the underground isn't safe" and she had forbidden him to go. I had a customer dangling until I managed to get there three hours later.

2Rebecca I think a great many people couldn't risk travel expenses on the off chance that there might be space available.

Needmoresleep the whole thing about kids using public transport seems to be a generational thing. When I was a teen we used to hop on and off buses and trains and scoot 40 miles down to the coast with no method of communication whatsoever, unless we chose to go to a public phone and ring home, which I don't recall ever doing. But of course once we were old enough for mopeds, buses and trains were history. We're rural, and my DC use buses to the nearest town and then the onward transport; they've all done that from around the age of twelve or thirteen. But many, many parents insist on lifts everywhere, as though public transport is a new and dangerous thing. It's curious. Part of the bigger very coddling picture though I think. That said, I get Uhtred's point completely, about particularly unreliable companies, and kids stranded several hundred miles from home.

I wonder what the relative cost of travel is now compared to the days of our youth. I don't remember having to book trains or the cost being an issue. If something goes wrong you could just get a later train.

DD2 had a disaster when the ticket barrier ate her ticket and it couldn't be retrieved. The ticket inspector tried to make her pay the on the day single for the journey which was £89 and she promptly burst into tears (and managed to get it sorted out). I got a sobbing phone call even though she's a seasoned traveller.

I'm already twitching that DS hasn't booked his train home from Durham for Christmas yet and the price is steadily rising. Sometimes it's easier to just do the driving.

Yes, the difference between the bargain fares and the on the day fares is mad. In fact the raw price of on the day fares is mad. Trains seem especially mad but perhaps that's just from our neck of the woods.

I've found its nearly always cheaper to drive the DC to open days. I'd prefer it if they could go by train but sometimes it isn't practical especially if talks or visit days are sceduled for mornings.
I haven't ever gone into any of the talks with my DC but they liked me going. Let's face it, it was a lot quicker and easier for them if I took them. It was also a good chance for them to chit chat about things. It was good bonding time and a bit of a break to studying
I've just counted and I've been to 16 open days/applicant days/interviews over the last few years
DC 1 did his open days with a pal but I accompanied him to 3 interviews.
DC 2 did 5 open days, and 3 applicant/interview days
DC3 did 3open days and 2 applicant days

4 of those required overnight stays due to early starts (interviews mostly)

It's a lot when you add it up. I don't think it's necessary to visit lots of places but targeted visits help the DC work out exactly what they want from a Uni and helps them feel positive and excited about it.

Middle class advantage indeed.

I wonder what the relative cost of travel is now compared to the days of our youth. I don't remember having to book trains or the cost being an issue.

In broad terms, peak tickets have substantially risen in price, seasons are about the same, off-peak and advance fares have considerably fallen in price. There were much more complex off-peak rules under BR ("Blue days" and "White days") and there was advance booking (APEX and Super-APEX). 16-25 railcards are more generous (I am constantly amazed at people going to open days without having either a 16-25 or a Two Together).

That reflects pretty standard yield management. The same's true of plane fares; a fully flexible plane ticket is more expensive than a generation ago, but cheap tickets are a fraction of the price.

The main change from a generation ago is that two car families are much more common.

We used to live overseas and DC1 was 17 before he used UK public transport. He had flown half way around the world on his own including transits in third world countries but was all when faced with a UK bus timetable.

I find this interesting reading, my two had never travelled on their own until they went to university, purely because we farmed in a very rural area, with no neighbours and no public transport- it was 8 miles to the nearest bus stop which had one bus a day, and 24 miles from the nearest station. We just got used to ferrying them around.

Both of them managed getting home from uni by buses and trains to our nearest station perfectly well, I never gave a thought that it would be otherwise.

It will have no bearing on her application whatsoever.

I'm still wondering why it's a good idea for people to go to offer holder days. Dd1 went to 3 - she had already been to their open days - and got very little extra information (if any). I think two put on talks on "why should you do this subject" (same as at the open day), which was a bit odd considering the audience already had offers to do that subject!

Not at all sure whether to encourage dd2 to go to any - assuming she gets some offers ;-)