Open days - are they full of ghastly pushy parents?

[RhodaBull]

The Open Day notifications are coming through, and after reading various threads on MN and newspaper articles, I am concerned that going to them will be a stressful rather than an illuminating experience.

Ds is quite an anxious individual, and gets cast down and loses confidence in the face of braggy elbowy people. He says The Student Room makes him feel sick, so if you add in their parents too, I'm worried that going to an Open Day will be an all-round dreadful day out and only serve to depress the both of us.

Opinions?

Dd and I went to several of her open days- we treated them as a day out, frankly. She talked to the people from the Departments she was interested in, and asked about a couple of extra curricular things which are very, very important to her. And we had a look at the accommodation. She had generally had enough by about half way through the day (she's not good at crowds) so we had a look round the surrounding area, to "place" it reality, IYSWIM. I chatted to some parents over coffee in some places, but only because I chat to people wherever I am.

No sign of pushy parents and practically all of the kids looked largely petrified. The % of floppy haired boys in rugby shirts and girls in Uggs was higher in some places than others though. Looking at you, Exeter......

Bertrand - we also treated the days as a day out.
I found them quite enjoyable but often tiring. We did Birmingham on a Friday and Nottingham on a Saturday the year before last, staying at relatives on the Friday - my feet were killing me after 2 days! With the costs involved etc., my DDs wanted our views as well. We didn't meet many pushy parents at all. I did find that our views were slightly swayed by the weather on different days - campus unis always look better in the sunshine! DD2 is currently unsure which to uni to firm and being able to discuss the various universities does help (as well as looking at the course structures online).

I went to several open days with DD1 last year. By and large they were all quite enjoyable but we much preferred the ones where the departments had stands in a large hall and you could go and talk to the lecturers and sometimes current students. My tip would be to go early as they can get very busy later on - we queued for a long time to look at accommodation at Warwick, for example.

The worst place we went last year was Durham (sad for me because I went there and wanted DD to love it too). There were no stands so we went to two subject talks. There were some rather strange and detailed questions about particular aspects of the course but the stand out pushy parent moment was while we were having lunch and there was a parent actually coaching 2 boys with index cards showing their questions for the next session. It was horrendous!

Interestingly, the only thing that dd really decided based on the open days was that she definitely didn't want a campus university when that's what she thought she wanted before.

Atia I made the mistake of assuming that DS2 would work out that the jumbo sized Persil liquid that I left on his desk when I dropped him off for freshers' week had a practical rather than purely decorative purpose. I had to put him right about four weeks into term when he phoned to ask why his clothes weren't getting clean in the washing machine....

I loved the open days with DS. The ones we went to had more parents than potential students! All the dc had at least one but mainly two parents with them. The lectures we went to specific for DSes subject all had rows of chairs taken up by mum child dad, mum child dad, mum child dad ......, with the dc always in the middle! Fascinating.

Looking forward to doing it all again with ds3

We went to the ones our kids wanted us to go to: DD1 is more independent than DS1.

Some of it was quite interesting: scientist DH says he is quite gutted not to be doing Art at Loughborough (though strangely DD1 didn't like it).

Actual weekend visits to older student siblings and friends give the best social flavour though, certainly enough to to determine if you prefer city or campus in the middle of nowhere.

When I was going at 18 I went with my mates.
I actually didn't make it first time round and am at uni now as a mature student. I went to one open day where a parent spent the whole course lecture asking questions and comparing to another uni ' at X they do Y, do you?' Type questions and 'my dd already has done Z so is there a more advanced level' , reasonable questions if it wasn't for the fact she fired them off one after the other and no one else could ask anything. Her dd didn't end up in my year ( only 25 students) so I guess she's at Y.

Ds used to do a lot of chess tournaments, and I fear that the parents at those may be turning up at open days now. I can only say that the chess parents were horrendous , not above sneering at or trying to psych out their dc's opponent - no matter if they were ten years old. And of course much braying and bringing along of large groups of floppy-haired siblings.

Actually another hangout of the pushy parent is music exams. I once encountered a very nasty woman who was listening through the wall as previous candidates did their exams and tut-tutting gleefully when they made a mistake, seemingly to bolster up her snotty-nosed dd.

Are Open Days awfully crowded? Are any of them (ahem, we're talking perhaps top five here, sorry if this is taken as some sort of boast) worse than the others?

The couple of open days I went to was very crowded and rather chaotic. I've not had a positive experience from them mainly because they were poorly organised, running over schedule having a knock on effect on subsequent talks throughout the day so they ended up rushed. Then when it came to Q&A this was put into a informal setting a large classroom. Whereby the few professor's/ lecturers would be scattered throught the room and there wouldn't be a queue to ask questions but rather have to do alot of budging and shoving and try and get eye contact in order to ask anything. Some of the parents can talk for England with the professor's so end up waiting, drinking coffee, collect leaflets to read etc.. However offer open day is worth the visit. Less people and better organised. Q&A alot better run better .
But generally the higher the institute expect some parents to be wanting to monopolise the Q&A parts. I don't think it's all because they are. being braggy or show off their dc etc.. But more because if they don't ask now they might not be another opportunity to do so. Go to a few by all means then as you get familiar with how it goes can self select which ones you want to attend and leave DS to it.

Thank you, that's helpful. I can imagine what they're like. Even at ds's sixth form college evening for parents there were those that seemed to think the college would only be catering to one pupil - their dc. There was one woman who actually asked if her dd would be comfortable because she would be coming from an independent school. (Actually I think she posted on MN as well - saying her dd liked black-tie dinner parties and didn't take drugs...)

Ds would really be looking for info on the course - do the Open Days focus on specific subjects or are they more of a going along in a crocodile to view accommodation type of affair?

Are Open Days awfully crowded? Are any of them (ahem, we're talking perhaps top five here, sorry if this is taken as some sort of boast) worse than the others?
Yes they are. Parking a nightmare - park and ride at Warwick and York.
Durham was the worst. If you don't know it, it's very hilly and spread out. Lots of loud braying types and the subject talks seemed very dictatorial and unwelcoming (compared with other unis who seemed keen to stress how flexible courses were with a wide choice of modules). Both DC loathed it.

I'd have completely the opposite view about Durham. Very well organised, although definitely use the southern park & ride if needing to park. I don't think it was at any more than ten minute walk at most between the main library area and the bailey colleges. Ds1 very taken by it perhaps his floppy hair explains it, although it did not end up as his first choice. An awful lot of things did seem to need to have advance booking, which maybe helped once actually there. The weather was spectacularly good which perhaps helps, although really should not be the deciding factor :)

"Durham was the worst... Lots of loud braying types."

That was my experience as a post grad student there too.

Dd2 was underwhelmed by Durham too, just a bit "resting on laurels" she thought. And we didn't like the way that once you'd booked, you couldn't just add something else on - very ott booking process. I don't know what the parents were like though, dh was with her (not at all pushy).

I thought the Open Day experiences that I shared with my DD last year were brilliant. There was no easy way for her to get to most of them so I was definitely the taxi but some of the places I had not visited before and was keen to explore the different towns. I guess my DD sort of went with the view that the course that she is doing is broadly similar across all universities and therefore the actually setting of the university was important. She discovered quickly that she didn't want a campus one, liked the city ones but that London as a undergraduate was not for her! I appreciate that for some course the departments facilities are very important and need to be visited unlike hers which are all lecture based. We found the students who showed us around extremely friendly and passionate about their university, we both marvelled at the sports/arts/student union/food & drink facilities on offer and didn't bother with any accommodation viewings, figuring that it was not a major factor and one to perhaps explore at an offer day later. I will echo an earlier comment, that a sunny day made a huge difference!

I attended many lectures with her - some went over my head, some were fascinating but without fail the lecturers were all good at stopping parents in their tracks from asking stealth boasting questions - so not much evidence of 'pushy parent' at least not shared with us all!

Our favourite thing to do was to spot the parent and child look-a-likes, genetics can really be strong - as were their often shared fashion style!

I definitely felt you could do as little or as much as you wanted and get plenty out of it with no pressure to be or do anything...enjoy!

this thread has made me feel better, I dropped ds off and was aghast at the amount of young people going in with mum, dad, granny etc....ds wanted to go himself and I didnt think anything of it.

he had already made up his mind before he went anyway and I know he knows what he wants better than I know for him

If a DC likes a course and a town it would be wrong to dismiss a university because of pushy parents or floppy haired rahs. It is true that the rahs cluster for comfort at Durham, Exeter, Leeds, Nottingham and Newcastle and the party crowd will be attracted to the cities but at all these universities there will be often considerably more than a thousand students in each year. The down to earth students and geeks are not hiding in a bunker at Exeter wishing they had gone to Warwick or York or Southampton .... They will find other students with like values, interests , etc however over represented other sub cultures might be, and possibly at no other time in their life will they have so many opportunities to find them .

Lots of loud braying types and the subject talks seemed very dictatorial and unwelcoming (compared with other unis who seemed keen to stress how flexible courses were with a wide choice of modules).

But in science subjects it is often important to have a number of compulsory modules in the first two years, to lay solid foundations. The "top" courses in the UK allow less choice in modules for this reason. The "weaker" courses allow students to choose from a wide range of modules but this is primarily a marketing tool. Choosing from lots of modules (and hence skipping material that should be compulsory or making incoherent choices) doesn't affect students who don't want to carry on with science, but often negatively affects those who do want to work in science, as they don't have solid enough foundations.

It's all so confusing! Perhaps it's best to avoid an open day and go and spy on the students "at leisure" in order to ascertain if Durham and Exeter are really full of rugger buggers and sailing wannabees. Actually ds thinks an entirely reasonable way to pick a university is whether there is a Forbidden Planet in the town. I suppose it's as good a way as any of gauging the geek population of somewhere.

Just read the other thread about Durham halls costs. Scratch Durham, then! £7500?!!!!

Dd chose based on the proximity of Urban Outfitters.........

That's what my son liked about Glasgow, a bigger Forbidden Planet than Edinburgh! He joined the role playing society and anime clubs (as well as kayaking so he does get some exercise and fresh air!) He visited New York last year and his posts were full of how many comic book stores he and his mates had found.
! drove him back from some open days but he was adamant he didn't want his dad or I traipsing round with him and wanted to "get the atmosphere". he went to a couple with friends or the school others he went alone.

We went to all the Open Days with DCs 1, 2 and 3. All three of them were taking courses that are only offered at half a dozen Universities, so involved much travelling and overnight stays.

Most of them offered separate discussions for the parents, mainly on finance and/or pastoral issues.

All 3 of them made their own decisions about where to apply to and what they wanted to do, but they are so caught up in the excitement of it all that it doesn't occur to them that, for example, the accomodation is so far away from the lecture hall that you are going to have to get up early for the bus, or that there is no chance of any term time work in this place.

There were a few snotty people, but not that many. Most of the parents trotted along behind and just made small talk about where they'd travelled from. One or two tried to make it all about them, but you get that in all walks of life. By the last of our visits we had a pushchair to contend with and it was an eyeopener that the mother-and-daughter combos were barging past and tutting, while the father-and-son combos were opening doors for us and talking to the baby.

We have more been to post-offer days rather than open days.The other parents usually keen to make conversation and down to earth.