Uni knowledge

[tendril]

Desperate looking for any advice about uni applications/choices/open days. To support my dd. What do we need to know and ask? I'm really concerned about the money side, how much will she realistically need if tuition fees are paid by student loan? I don't know where to start, grateful for any advice if you have been through this.

The UCAS website is quite a good place to start to give you some info on different courses, entry requirements, application timescale, finance, etc. I'd also suggest contacting your dd's school as I think most schools have info evenings for parents, and spend a lot of time supporting students through the UCAS process.

Choices & open days:
She should start thinking about this in Y12 as the open days are usually in June, July, September & October.
For the course she wants to do, make a list of the universities that offer it and for each one, find out the typical grade offer.
By the end of Y12 she should have some idea of what grades she is aiming for - look at universities at this level, just above and just below (for insurance).
If the list is too long, she can reduce it using other criteria. Does she want to be in a big city? An easy train journey from home? If it's a course that varies a lot between universities, she should look at the course structure (on the university website).
Once she has a shortlist, she can start planning & booking open days.

Applications: this is done in the autumn/winter of Y13. She needs to draft and write a personal statement about why she wants to study that particular course (see UCAS website for guidance on how to do this). There's a big online form. She fills in her personal info, her GCSE grades, a list of five universities/courses she wants to apply to and her personal statement, then her school/college adds predicted grades and references.

Offers
She should start receiving offers in the spring of Y13. Each offer will be conditional (certain grades needed) or unconditional. She needs to accept an offer (and can also accept an insurance or back-up offer) by the first week in May.

Finance
Once she has accepted her offer(s) she can apply for student finance.
The student loan comes in two parts. One part pays for the tuition fees. The other part is a maintenance loan, for accommodation and living expenses.
The amount of maintenance loan she's eligible for will depend on several things, including whether she'll be living at home, whether she'll be studying in London, and the income of her parents. The basic maintenance loan is £4000ish a year for students whose parents earn over £60K, and more for those whose parents earn less than that.
Student Finance has an online tool where you can put in information and it will estimate how much she'll receive.

Basics:

Open days summer term year 12
Applications submitted to UCAS autumn term year 13 (some courses/unis early in the term) - cost £30 ish.
Wait for offers!
Accept two - preferred and a back up.
Apply for student finance - google this.
Fees paid by loan. Maintenance also loan, £8500 full amount of household income under £25k a year, sliding scale to £45k household income. Above that minimum maintenance loan of £4000. Parents expected to top this up.
As a nudge, the full loan amount SHOULD be enough for accommodation and living expenses.
Work hard to get results!

Here's the student finance calculator for England:

www.gov.uk/student-finance-calculator

Which will give you an estimate of how much maintenance loan she'll get

I'm a lecturer. Top tip for open days... Please let your Dd ask questions! sorry but often the applicant's don't get a word in amongst all the parents.

But there will be student services to give advice on finance and housing. Just get a feel for the place and talk to students there if you can.

Many of the Open Days have sessions for parents whilst the potential students do something else. These give general information and student finance info too. You may or may not need to book yourself into one.

I think she should ask the school about which universities to start looking at and obviously decide on a subject, or two. There is a wealth of information about how to choose a university based on where it is in league tables, (overall and for her subject) where it is geographically, in a city or fairly remote, and how much accommodation costs. Student satisfaction is another element that potential students look at as well as job prospects.

It’s a lot to take in but the web is a wonderful encyclopaedia of all you need to know. Let your DD guide you regarding research and try and do it together.

My top tip would be to visit a very local university open day very early on if you have any nearby so you have something to compare with the ones your DD is actually interested in without having to travel a long way. You may also find out lots about the standard bits of fees etc and general things at an early stage by doing this. A lot of open days for sept 2019 start will start in June 2018 so you can get out there early

There is an excellent FB page called 'wiwikau(what i wish i knew about university). It is mainly parents rather than students, but it is really helpful and everyone is very friendly.

Thankyou so much for replies, really useful advice. Not much help from college so far I will chase it up. She's in year 12.

Think also about type of course. Does she want one with a placement? Does she want one which leads to accreditation with a professional body?

Been round this block a couple of times with DDs heading into sciences so our top hit list for open days were

• course talk
• library
• labs
• accommodation

Second time around with DD2 I didn't go into the course talk (wouldn't have understood a single syllable). DD2 needed no prompting to ask questions on her own account!

She really needs to get going on this then. Many open days start next month but there are ones in the Autumn Term. Has the college not suggested visiting open days? This seems rather too laid back. Can you not speak to the someone who advises on university applications at the college (titles vary) and see what info they give to students. Most give out a handbook and/or have the info on their web site. Have you looked?

I, personally, would be wary of visiting a local university unless it’s top class for the subject. My local one was never going to be on the radar for my DDs so what would be the point of visiting? They didn’t even do the courses. Some students wouldn’t find it useful to visit places like Cambridge or Durham if they are likely to be better suited to an ex poly or Art School.

Therefore, start with which course. What subject(s)? Where’s the best place to study and where will be she realistically get into? Check out the A level grades and subjects required. Draw up a shortlist and if one is handy, that’s good. If it’s 150 miles away, so be it.

I think one of the most important issues is the location. I found we ended up with loads far away and only two within 2 hour journey door to door. I hadn't considered how ds might feel about this, and he hadn't either, until we started going on all those train trips. So possibly worth trying the journey before you do UCAS application rather than wait till after the offers come in!!! Lovely as some unis were, he ended up going for one nearby. So worth investigating courses nearer before you go to trouble of investigating loads further away, there are good unis all over the UK.

Also take the Unistats with a pinch of salt. And, The grades are often higher too in the published criteria than they will expect if you are are a good candidate, so don't limit your choices on the basis that the grades are too aspirational.

Compare courses, student satisfaction, grades needed etc here.

unistats.ac.uk

And here university.which.co.uk

Definitely second the idea of deciding how far your DD wants to be away from home before you start doing long journeys to open days. If she wants to be able to come home for the occasional weekend in term time, then the radius of potential unis is much smaller. Also, the open days are massively busy, with thousands of people and it can be a bit overwhelming. It’s worth having a look at the talk times etc (they send you the times and all the details once you’ve registered for the open day) and planning a route or strategy before the actual day. Sometimes they have to print off and take with them their barcode to be scanned, so a bit of prep is really useful.

I, personally, would be wary of visiting a local university unless it’s top class for the subject
That may be appropriate for some, however many schools and colleges, particularly those that are aiming to encourage wider participation in HE arrange day trips to a local university for their year 12s and even year 10s and 11s because it’s a good starting point for someone who has never visited a university before and has no family background of university, without investing lots of time and money in visiting. You can gain a bit of confidence that way for when you visit places you are really interested in.

Slightlyperturbedowlagain I agree. Having that first open day a 'neutral' one gives the potential student a chance to absorb a bit of the student atmosphere without worrying about whether the course is right.

DD2's first open day was at DD1's uni. They didnt offer the course DD2 was interested in but having an 'expert witness' for assertions being made by the uni did give DD2 an interpreter.

I still wouldn’t recommend my local university! It’s nothing like many other universities. It’s near the bottom of most league tables and it certainly isn’t aspirational.

If you know (hope) your child is likely to get good A level grades, why not start with likely universities that might not be that far away? It’s a huge mistake to fall in love with the cosy local offering without stretching to somewhere better. No-one should be encouraged to dumb down. Definitely not first time in the family students. It’s rather patronising to suggest this. They are as good as anyone else, many of whom would never do this. Try for the best. It’s only one choice on the form.

I dont think anyone is suggesting 'dumbing down' just getting the first open day under her belt without there being a lot of pressure on having to rule that institution in or out. A kind of practice run.

Choosing the next step is all about finding the 'best fit' in terms of course, location, environment, achievability. Sage advice from DD1 to DD2 was that if she put the effort in to choosing then wherever she went she would end up loving it.

Encourage your DD to read the details about courses she thinks might interest her. Dont just go on course name, two courses can have the same name but be quite different in content or approach. Also encourage her to keep an open mind. Both my DDs' thoughts about which courses to aim at evolved through experiencing the open days.

It is well documented that many bright children from “first one to university” homes go local and do not look further afield. It’s not a good overall strategy for social mobility.

Open days are not frightening or difficult. The ops DD is already near the end of Y12. Going local may well waste valuable time if it’s not appropriate. You would never say this to a child who should be applying to Oxbridge! Why would they/should they look at the university of blog?

I dont know where the OP lives so the local university could be Durham, Bristol wherever. I would recommend a student aiming at Oxford/Cambridge to look elsewhere as well. Just because a course has a high tarrif doesnt mean it is necessarily the 'right' course.

We all make suggestions based on our own experiences. DD2 found having a dry run at an open day with her big sister worked for her.

Getting to see the different places possible is useful. What can look perfect on paper/the screen can then not work in reality. DD2 thought she would love one place but when she got there loathed the place!

For the potential universities DD2 and I went along together for the open days. For the offer holder days DD2 went on her own. This also helped on the final decision making as it meant DD2 could get a feel for each place on her own without her fat old mum huffing and puffing behind her.

I think you have slightly missed my point Gnome. If you find yourself starting to look at universities at this late stage, at the end of y12, with no research done at all, then wasting a day off school to go somewhere way below your capabilities is not a good strategy. If you were looking in y11, then fair enough to look at the local one, irrespective of likely attainment. Durham wouldn’t be much good for a CCC student or one wanting an Art School, as I said before. If time is short, tailoring the visits is best.

I have no doubt Oxbridge types should look elsewhere but they are not well advised to look at somewhere near the bottom of the league tables just because it’s local. Surely the best advice is to know roughly where your possible results might take you and find the right course and university based on this. Many people are time poor, have weekend jobs and need a shortlist.

but they are not well advised to look at somewhere near the bottom of the league tables
By definition a ‘local university’ frequently won’t be one at the bottom of the league tables, it really depends where you live....and be wary of the whole ‘bottom of the league tables’ thing anyway, it’s important to find somewhere that performs well for what you want to study, they don’t necessarily match the ‘overall’ table for every subject.

I think we will all just have to disagree over this topic which comes up very often. I would take the top 5 or 10 univerisites in the country for the kind of careeres and earnings levels you are after and use that as a list. How close you are to your mummy or whether it is the best at basket weaving on the planet or gets the most into Macdonalds jobs on graduation is neither here nor there. Aim high. You don't even need to visit them if you don't want to bother in advance.

I agree Xenia. Aim high. Don’t waste time and effort and do some research. Takes a bit of time but it pays off.