Tips for exploring a town/city on open days

[beigepattern]

DD and I went to one open day last year but doing lots this year - I think around 7 or 8. THe one we went to last year (Liverpool) was useful but I don't think we spend enough time exploring the city as well as the uni.

I want dd to get an idea of whether she'd like to spend 3 years somewhere, and obviously the town/city is an important part of that, but other than staying for a couple of days, which isn't really an option, how on earth can you get a feel for a place in 2 or 3 hours either side of the open days?

I am wondering about doing self-guided walking tours? I think some unis do city tours as part of the open day too. Has anyone done this? Or do you have any other tips for ways to get a feel for a city in a short time?

Hop on hop off city bus tours.

how on earth can you get a feel for a place in 2 or 3 hours either side of the open days?

If the town- or city-centre isn't within walking distance then that may give you pause for thought. Students need things to be within walking or cycling distance.

First of all, personally I think 7 or 8 is too many. How will she get time off for all of these unless they are Saturdays?

Also, try and narrow it down to big cities or smaller cities and campus vs city. There will be a big difference between Liverpool and Exeter but less difference between Liverpool, Manchester or Birmingham in terms of the city experience. Obviously local facilities and population are different but whether it’s worth several hours to look around is a moot point. Better to look at accommodation in my view.

The other big consideration is whether the university is on a campus, eg Warwick. You then only have the campus to walk around. I would try and narrow her options down a bit to say 5 because you could be very busy.

Students don’t spend a huge amount of time in any city centre they choose, unless they are very into nightlife and shopping. They spend more time in their university area so a quick look around accommodation and where it is might be worth it as well as the location of the faculty.

If your Dd is very much looking forward to nightlife then I am sure you know where to look and that will dictate university anyway. There are not that many students who are seeking out a Michelin starred restaurant and all the grade 1 listed buildings in a city and most students won’t worry about the city centre of Birmingham vs Liverpool. Students get to know where cafes are and the supermarkets. They are also in every city.

We never fitted in walking around at all. We had far too much to do at the university. Well DD did - I went to have a look round if I could but if you are captive on a campus you really do not get much further afield.

Travelling to the university and Parking if needed takes a lot of time out of the day. If the city had been a deciding factor, we would have gone back for a day/weekend. It’s very expensive and time consuming though.

Students don’t spend a huge amount of time in any city centre they choose, unless they are very into nightlife and shopping ... or doing paid work.

They won't be doing the tourist things remember... tbh am not sure a city tour is going to be helpful. They'll be visiting the student haunts wherever they are, and you'll never find those out until you're actually a student.

Whether a small town or large city is preferred is a valid decision, but one you should be able to make without a weekend stay! (Hint - Liverpool is the latter!)

If paid work is necessary, then a larger city is vital over campus miles away from anywhere. However if 8/9 open day visits are planned, the op must be quite well off!

If possible, I would try to visit the ‘student’ area where they tend to live in 2nd/3rd year (if living on campus isn’t common for all three years), then make the journey from there into the city centre, to get a feel for the likely journey to campus and into town in later years.

I think the big decision is city uni v campus uni and then, more importantly the course.
Mine didn't tour any of the cities except where the uni was spread out in a city centre. Both hated those and chose campus unis.

Mine were the opposite. Campus was too much like school. They liked the idea of spreading their wings a bit. Depends on the city though and what experience you want. I think a small university city such as St Andrews is very different to Manchester so size of city is a factor.

There's nothing wrong with investigating what's local, where they can get to, but hopefully it's the whole package. DD has found the perfect course with perfect facilities for her personally, it's in a location that very easy to get back home and apparently the uni is one of the nicest, but the city isn't great. My DD is conscious of this, but I know for her it's friends she needs to get her through 3/4 years, not location.

Thanks for the replies.

Oh Bubbles, I choked on my tea when I read your replies. If you could see my very ordinary home, job and lifestyle you would see why the idea of me as a wealthy mum swanning round endless expensive open days asking to see the Michelin star restaurants made me laugh! (And yes they are mostly weekend open days, so no problems about days off).

A bit more info: I don't want to say which course DD is applying for as it's quite unusual and she doesn't want people to know her mum is posting on here, but most of the unis that teach it are city centre ones. DD's gut feeling was that she'd prefer to be on a big campus like Warwick or Sussex, but most of those don't do her subject so realistically her top 3 or 4 choices will have to be city centres. The reason we are going to so many is because I think she needs to persuade herself that she would be happy living in a city when she'd prefer a campus.

Her plan is to visit the 4 that have the courses she likes best in June/July, then the others are in the autumn if she is still undecided. Maybe the unis themselves will be enough to help her choose, but that wasn't our experience with Liverpool where she liked the uni & residences, but didn't come away feeling enthusiastic about spending 3 years there. Because of this I thought it was a mistake not to explore the city a bit - even if it's just a walk around the city centre to get a feel for the atmosphere, etc.

Thanks eduCated for the suggesting we visit the areas where 2nd and 3rd years live - will definitely look into doing this & getting an idea of the travel into uni from there.

Ifonly4 that's interesting - I did wonder if Liverpool had ticked lots of other boxes then perhaps not seeing the city wouldn't have mattered.

I did the open days on my own, and as actually based my decisions on how helpful people were.

In one city I arrived at the train station, asked for directions to campus, turned out the people I'd asked were students heading to campus anyway - they helped me catch the bus, chatted to me all the way there and then they walked me to the correct building for my interview - That experience made me put down the uni as my first choice.

I am glad you laughed OP! It can get a bit serious on here at times!

My DD1 was at a city university and the other was in London. So big city! There is a difference between London and nearly everywhere else.

I think, from what I have seen, many city universities are in decent areas. Bristol university (one I know well) is in a fairly upmarket area. The halls of residence are very leafy if you choose the Stoke Bishop ones. Most city universities have their own “student” areas of the city and are generally very pleasant. You just live around other people and have to walk down street to get to lectures!

Try and look at the positives. Lots of students enjoy them. You still have halls of residence and you make friends. The halls can be in mixed residential areas so you don’t have to be in the middle of club land! The cities frequently have parks, shops, cafes, cinema, theatre, music venues, art galleries and lots of different places to go. Life doesn’t have to revolve around the union and the campus. It’s a bigger world and can be exciting and fulfilling.

I hope you have fun looking.

Thanks bubbles, and interesting about Bristol as that's another dd wants to look at and is somewhere we've never been before. We actually live in London so it's not that she's worried about city life - I think maybe she was hoping for something completely different and that's why she was attracted to campus universities.

What I'm thinking now is that we definitely need to look at the studenty areas - where the halls are or where students tend to live and (as eduCated suggested) check out the transport to and from those areas. I think that would give dd a good idea of what life would be like in those cities for a student. HOpefully if we do that with her top 3 or 4 first, we might not need to visit them all.

Thanks Lyrical too - I don't think that's a bad way to choose (as long as you like the course too). Some of my best memories of uni are of the nice people who helped me with various things or were just friendly.

This has been very helpful so thanks for all the replies - they were not really what I expected (was thinking of tips for taking walking tours or similar), but actually it's been more useful than that in making us think through the reasons for dd preferring campuses and what kind of things would make her feel more comfortable with a city uni - so big thanks to you all!

If can be quite difficult to visit the halls at Bristol halls at Stoke Bishop when doing the open day at the university. They are about 1 mile plus from the university down the Whiteladies Road to The Downs. However my DD rather liked the idea of going “home” in Y1 and the most popular halls are in that location rather than in the city. There is a mix of catered and self catered. There are plentiful buses but late at night they must share a taxi with friends. Safety first!

The student areas are Clifton and Cotham in particular. DD for both year 2 and 4 (abroad y3) was about 10/12 minutes walk from her faculty. You can therefore easily take a quick walk around Clifton, Clifton Village (the Archway deli for lunch or a coffee) and the Whiteladies Road/Tyndalls Park Road when you visit. Just get a map. DD lived in Eaton Crescent and then just off Landsdown Road. Anywhere around the Channings Hotel is full of student flats and houses. The fact you could live close to the university was a big plus and saves bus fares and timetables.

We didn’t know Bristol. I could now very happily live there! A few of DDs friends still do. All the others are now in London, as is Dd.

Hope you enjoy your planned visits.

That's really helpful - thank you Bubbles. I have pasted that into an email to dd. She is quite good at planning the open days in detail and making lists of things she wants to find out, so she will love having this info to add to her list for Bristol!

I'm starting this again with DD2. With DD1, now in her 1st year at uni, she knew she was interested in Cambridge quite early so we booked a Premier Inn over the summer holiday before Y12 and spent a couple of days looking at the various colleges and getting a feel for the place. She was then able to discount some colleges because she decided she wanted to be fairly centrally located.

After that, she had a long list of 21 courses in around 10 places. I drove up from the SW of England to Newcastle and we did a whistle-stop tour of Newcastle, Durham, York, Leeds, Sheffield, Nottingham and Warwick in May of Y12, then another of Southampton, Bath, Cardiff and Bristol in the summer holiday between Y12 & Y13. By then, she knew she did not want a large city and was able to narrow things down to her 5 eventual UCAS choices.

DD2 has a good idea of what she wants to study. We were visiting my father in NW England at half term so decided to come "the long way" home and visit Leeds, Sheffield and Leicester. Like her sister, she was not a fan of the settings of Leeds and Sheffield but really liked the feel of Leicester.

With both girls, we haven't really explored the places; I studied in Leeds so know it well and tried to encourage them but they were both adamant that the big city was not for them. However, on the open days, they already have an idea about the city from a brief visit and can find out a lot more. It was a lot of driving but has worked well (so far) for us.

Wow, that's a lot of driving Malbecfan, but I can see how it would be good to check out the cities/towns before the open days. DD likes to be really organised and I think it can be easy to get stressed by thinking there is so much to find out about on an open day, so maybe we'll try and visit a couple of cities over Easter.

This can be quite difficult as cities that appear quite unappealing when you visit can have a very lively student scene. I used to work in Southampton (worked at the university), which isn't a very attractive or interesting city, having been heavily bombed in WW2 and rebuilt quite carelessly. But it does have a fantastic common on the edge of the city centre. And some great live music venues. And some slightly bohemian areas away from the centre with interesting shops/cafés. And a couple of areas (e.g. Portswood) where the majority of the population are students and there is a buzz and good atmosphere despite the buildings' being a bit run-down. The challenge is getting away from the identikit city centres and finding the areas where students will be spending their time. You really need current students to tell you where these are.

Another issue is working out how many students at a particular university live at home. I had this a bit when I was an undergraduate (more than 30 years ago). I was at a smallish college of the University of London and the place was deserted at weekends because so many students were from the home counties and went home every Friday evening.