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?

RG universities, a fair number of parents loudly extolling the virtues of their exceedingly embarrassed looking DCs

Top 10 university, a few the same, but mostly just parents being enthusiastic and friendly.

A.N. Other university, lots of parents who looked slightly overwhelmed, and in a couple of cases deeply proud of their DC for even being there.

(The experiences of the last couple of years of uni searching)

This year I have been to a number of open days with my DS and a couple of post offer days. We've really enjoyed our tour of the UK, most were done in a day but some involved overnight stays.
All the Universities had parent sessions, some had joint student and parent sessions apart from Cambridge, it had a large sign up saying 'parents leave your children here'!
We didn't see/hear too many pushy parents, although at Oxford the email said parents couldn't go in the lecture with their children and some parents did! We didn't get a good feel for Durham either, which was surprising because we'd heard so many good things about it.

I overheard a mum asking her husband if she should mention the fact they had a yacht when speaking to someone from a law dept (RG university).

Went to a few with my dds - a good excuse for a night away in a hotel - but not the places they both eventually chose. Depends very much on your dc. Mine are pretty independent.

I was surprised parents even go- was unheard of back in my day. A professor friend said that a few years ago they realised so many parents turned up that they decided to embrace it. Dd1 went off to her first open day with a friend - was stunned to hear on her return that everyone else had parents there so I decided to go along to the next couple.

We didn't get a good feel for Durham

Funny isn't it, how different people get different vibes for places. My friend went to look at Durham and just fell in love with it.

Hasten to add that I wasn't a parent tagging along with child, but a somewhat ancient person hoping to go back and have another bite of the cherry.