Open days - what attracts you? What puts you off?

[shovetheholly]

I'm interested in hearing about your experiences of open days!

What attracts you and your DS/DD to a course or a place? What puts you off? What kind of information is it good to receive about the course? How much does the city/town of the university matter? How significant are job prospects later on to your decision? Do open days always confirm what you already think, or has one changed your mind (either positively or negatively)?

Am asking because we rarely get honest feedback from parents on the day (for obvious reasons), and I'd love to hear what you REALLY think... and get a sense of what we can do better.

Maybe it depends on the subjects. Tutorials/problem classes can be quite important in STEM. (But as far as I could gather, all the places DD looked at seemed fine, plus 'open door' policy at most)

virgil they do ask about contact hours at Oxford!

I point out that my students are expected to read a huge number of texts so when would they actually do that if there were more contact hours.

GetaHaircut It's daft, isn't it?

I point out that my students are expected to read a huge number of texts so when would they actually do that if there were more contact hours

Yes, I sometimes say - well, ok, we'll all sit in a seminar room for 8 hours while you read Middlemarch and I re-read it for the nth time. Come to think of it, that might be a way of getting them to read it ...

Surely asking about contact hours isn't necessarily a negative thing. It helps students build up a picture of what day to day life is going to be like once they are at Uni. Maybe some prospective student or their parents ask as they assume low contact hours equals low value for money but I bet that's not the reason most ask. It does differ from Uni to Uni and some students could legitimately prefer more lectures.

I think it would be useful to provide examples of typical weeks showing things like lectures, lab hours, tutorials or whatever.

Contact hours varies hugely between degrees though. Vocational degrees like medicine, vet, engineering have loads of contact hours. More arty degrees or English or conservatoires have fewer but you're expected to do much more reading/ drawing/ practising your scales.
My son in his Erasmus year is currently complaining about too many contact hours and no time to socialise much or try and learn the language or read around the subject as he's in lectures or doing course work.
I suppose if I was paying £9000 a year for 3 hours lectures a week for history of art or something I'd wonder if it was maybe a waste of money but I'm biased against media studies/ history of art type degrees anyway. They seem a bit self indulgent. Fine if you've money and time to burn.

I think it would be useful to provide examples of typical weeks showing things like lectures, lab hours, tutorials or whatever.

I think most if not everywhere DD's been interested in they have provided this. Engineering, so of course theres a pretty full schedule of lectures, labs & tutorials.

I suppose if I was paying £9000 a year for 3 hours lectures a week for history of art or something I'd wonder if it was maybe a waste of money

Maybe they're unwittingly subsidising the necessarily more expensive courses such as science, eng and medicine?

Do parents really go to Uni open days? Surely at that age and stage, dc are able to make their own choices?

Do parents really go to Uni open days? Er, yes. Don't recall seeing any young person who was without a parent at any of the 10 open days we attended.

My 17 year old didn't feel ready to travel all over the country on his own to attempt to make a massive decision about which he knew virtually nothing. We were more than happy to support him

I went to Exeter. Thought my ds would love it - he didn't.

Personally, I've not been to any, as I'm not the one going. At the time, I didn't realise so many parents went.

DS has been on his own. In fact, he only went to two pre-application, as he felt he could choose five from the internet descriptions. He's planning on visiting the other three now he has the offers, to select his two favourites.

Reading this thread, I feel we perhaps haven't taken it seriously enough!

really Arrittey? I'm absolutely sure my dd isn't unique in wanting to attend her open days alone. Much as I did.

Errol you are right that our College subsidies STEM subjects, the true cost of medicine would be extremely expensive, so the costs are pooled (in a very simplistic sense).

We do provide a typical week in terms of activities and contact hours.

The point is that as parents ask about contact hours, and students then tell us in the student committees they all want contact hours, the university have believed them and upped the contact hours, so we teach two hour lectures instead of one, increase seminars to 90 minutes, have more skills/employability careers/support courses, more office hours, meet the lecturer and so forth. The problem is that many students actually on the course then don't attend a lot of these events, even regular lectures! Attendance is very poor I have been finding this past year or two, although there's always a core of keen students that keep me from losing my morale entirely. It seems the more we offer, the less they attend. So, we have created something really quite unnecessary to meet this perceived need, when a lot of students would be better off with more focused quality interaction, freeing them up to work in paid jobs and do more reading/studying by themselves.

It varies. A lot of it is pure logistics, but some of them value a parent's take on a place, extra eyes and ears (not to mention memory, who said what where). Of course its their choice and parents shouldn't helicopter (though some do).

DH took DD to an interview today - proceedings kicked off at 9:30, she couldn't have got there by train in time. Thats only been possible for one of her interviews.

Xpost - kitten - theres a mix - sometimes there's a group of friends, some alone (more often boys, it appeared) but I think most had a parent or two, sometimes a sib as well. It isn't one size fits all.

DS is doing history. His contact hours are few. However , over Christmas he showed me the (short) feedback he had from his tutors. It was very impressive. Short , but they had understood him and given really quite pointed and apposite advice.

I'm a humanities graduate , so probably not so bothered as others , but I do think think that with appropriate teaching etc the university loans are not inappropriate just because you don't get a huge amount of contact time - e.g. lots of lectures etc. I think that the shorter but more focussed time DS gets is worth hours of sitting in a lecture hall. Just my opinion. (And he is humanities - it would not work for all subjects - I know that) .

an humanities graduate - sorry late and quick typing.

Always worth pointing to a few stats when people start to deride certain kinds of arts based/creative degrees: www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/01/creative-industries-key-to-uk-economy
www.gov.uk/government/news/creative-industries-worth-almost-10-million-an-hour-to-economy

An interesting thread and really useful to hear so many different views.

On the point about students with SEN I think it is always a good idea to contact the University direct. I think you can tell a lot by that initial communication. You can always ask if they can arrange a more individual visit to the university and department if the crowds and bustle are an issue--I've met with a few prospective students and their parents in this way. More universities will offer a more inlusive approach to freshers and induction week too so that is something to look out for and a sign that an institution is thinking about students with disabilities and additional needs.
I've also done the same with o/s students who haven't been in the country on specific open days--never been an issue to set aside some time to meet with them.

(I've never known a professional in industry being paid for weekend work, btw. And they're not all on huge salaries compared to uni senior staff.)

But not all university staff are senior staff. Can you name me another field that would pay somebody 28k for a fixed term, non-renewable 6 month or 1 year contract, work them at 60+ hours per week and also expect them to show up for 12 weekend days per year for no extra money at all?

And, like everyone in the public sector, university academics have seen a huge increase in workload (particularly administration and teaching) since 2010 or so, with real term decreases in pay. For many, being asked to do a lot of weekend open days on top of all this is the straw that breaks the camel's back.

To some extent it probably is true that poor open days correlate with undergraduate experiences. On the other hand I am always relieved that my own department gets away with rather basic open days (very over-subscribed, top of league table) because preparing for open days does take time away from actually teaching the students we have. (I don't think our open days are bad but we definitely don't put on the jazzy shows that lower tariff departments do.)

BTW I think that a lot of the contact hour questions are driven by coverage in the media. They don't tend to come from parents who themselves studied at university and who understand how degrees work.

If "basic" open days address the essentials, I think that they are more than fine. As a parent, I do not want the Abercrombie experience described up thread. Please, universities, stay away from marketing gimmicks and fun. I am there to assess whether our family's £70,000 or so will be well spent on your DC's education and the only people who can convince me of that are academics. I don't need an estate agent tour of accommodation - I can work out the suitability of what is on offer for myself.

our DC's education

User - I said 'senior staff' as I think it was the presence or otherwise of these which was the issue, not the ranks of untenured staff.

Always worth pointing to a few stats when people start to deride certain kinds of arts based/creative degrees

Indeed, Lionheart - our Careers people say good English/Drama/History/Art grads are very employable.

Yep, some degrees are more portable than others.

BasiliskStare - I agree that the sort of feedback one gets from academics is highly focused and incredibly useful. Both my DSSs remark on just how much they enjoy interactions with their tutors.

I have recently employed a PhD student, who teaches literature to third year UG and first year PG students at a highly rated university in Paris, to give my DD (12) extra French lessons. The experience so far is astonishing - DD loves it. There's an incalculable difference between a secondary school teacher delivering a curriculum to a class (even in the French system, where teachers have a great deal more intellectual freedom than in England) and a one-on-one conversation with someone who is deeply immersed in their subject and delighted to share it.

If your uni claims to offer a degree which is actually delivered at a "partner college" rather than the uni site itself, make sure that the partner college is represented on the uni open day. My DD has been caught out twice by this (possibly due to our lack of knowledge, but she is the first to go to uni in our family, so we don't know our way around the system yet). It has resulted in expensive train journeys, over night stays in hotels, and has been a complete waste of time and money, especially the first one where no one we spoke to was able or willing to give us any help other than to tell us you need to attend the college open day.... Well it didn't say so on the open day web site, and it's your uni' s name on the final degree! We have learnt our lesson.

good English/Drama/History/Art grads are very employable.

I'm sure thats true - a question is perhaps, how much of that is due to the characteristics they brought with them and how much is 'added value' as the result of their 3 or 4 years at a particular university?