University tour: Virtual vs Actual visit. what to see?

[whatinname]

Hello, this is completely a new journey for me as my DS will be the 2022 batch. Now Unis registering interest for virtual tours. Would virtual tour be as good as actual tour? Would virtual be not biased view? Exactly how the Uni would want us to view it? Also what info (apart from subject specific, accommodation) should we need to gather? Parents who has done virtual vs real, what difference they felt? If virtual is good enough why ever we bothered about the actual visit? Sorry lot of thoughts and questions.

We've done both!

Real is better however virtual is also worth doing imho.

My daughter did a virtual one the other week and it was a great experience- there was a team specific talk on Teams you could ask questions on and the ability to go to dedicated chats for accommodation and admissions. She was confident to do this where she might not have been in real life.

Positives were that there was no waiting to try and talk to someone in a queue, it was a case of typing in your question and getting an answer. The video as provided were helpful.

Negatives were that nothing beats actually standing there at the actual university.

I think it is still possible to get a vibe about a place online - some places I went to with my son definitely had a 'you'll be lucky to come here' vibe whereas others were more 'we'd love to have you'.

In terms of what you see you only see the bits they want you to see when you actually go there 😉

I usually don't go on these threads as loads of posters jump on saying how awful it is to take your kids to open days, they must go alone. We've done it differently- visited the cities together but then split up for bits of time once on campus.

Hope this helps a bit 😊

I cannot comment on virtual vs actual visit but don’t forget that, before too long, you should be able to visit the cities and have a wander around. Look at some halls of residence from the outside and get a feel of what is there. Could DS imagine living there? Does he prefer campus or city? Or town? Or London?

To be fair, most university open days are there to sell the university. Some need the students to ensure financial stability! Others will give you straight into without gloss.

If you can get to a real open day, I think one parent going is fine. However not to prospective student talks, lectures or taking up spaces reserved for students. Being a taxi and a sounding board is perfectly ok.

"Real" open days and tours can be biased too! They often only have selected accommodation blocks open for viewing and many of the lectures/presentations are in the more attractive/newer blocks, given by the more "personable" staff. We went to several open days, but still had to do lots of online research etc to see what we really wanted to see (such as virtual tours of the accommodation blocks that were closed), and also to get a better idea of the local area/town centre, etc.

We enjoyed the "real" open days, but there was a lot of wasted time (queueing, duplication of info in lectures/sessions) and some of the tours were quite long and tedious, sometimes with very little "real" information. A special mention has to be made of a Physics professor in Leeds who "ran" a tour where he basically hadn't the foggiest, he took us up and down corridors only to find locked rooms - after half an hour, we'd not actually seen anything except corridors, then he took us back to the meeting point to ask someone else where he should go, and then we trailed around the corridors again to finally find a lab with some students doing experiment presentations, but by the time we got there, the next group had already arrived and there wasn't enough room for us all, so we just gave up and drifted off!

But yes, you do get a "feel" for the place, probably moreso from the students (student ambassadors they're usually called), who can tell you the "reality" of life on campus. In some, especially Newcastle, they were remarkably friendly and honest, others, maybe not so much.

We also went to a few "offer holder open days" which we found a lot more useful as they're usually held on "normal" working days, with real staff and students milling around doing their "normal" daily activities, so you can see how busy it is (or not) when it's not as full as the special weekend open days.

I'd say doing both real and the online ones is best if you can, but if real open days aren't possible, either due to covid, or distance, the online ones are a pretty good alternative, but just try to get to offer holder open days if you've not been to the full open days.

We've sadly only done virtual. I think real would be better in terms of really getting a sense of what the place is like - but virtual was better than nothing. Over the course of the first few months of the lockdown we saw the virtual open days significantly improve too. Dd's first one (which at the time was her second choice on paper) was really poor and it tumbled down her ranks - but when she repeated it shortly before putting in her UCAS application, the open day had massively improved and it is now her insurance. I suspect the virtual open days are useful for giving a sense of the universities themselves but less so for the cities and the geography.

In terms of tours, campus, city, accommodation, YouTube is your (and your DS's) friend. There are loads of videos up there- some of the most useful can be ones made by international students for prospective fellow international applicants, who naturally are much less likely than a home applicant to have been able to have a look round in person.

I think actual open days can put on snazzy lectures that definitely are not reality!

The queuing can be very tedious. There’s often not much to be gained that you couldn’t find out elsewhere. I actually think whether you want city or campus and cost of living are pretty important. Is DC wanting pubs and clubs or a quiet night in playing scrabble. There are universities where the night life is brighter than elsewhere.

All the accommodation is on line. Have a good look at all that’s available. Then compare prices.

For some subjects, contact time might only be 8 hours. So library and self study facilities will be important.

Having done both (ahead of the game for the first time!) actual open days are much better than virtual ones as you get a real feel for the place - the 'vibe' as DD put it.

Virtual is better than nothing but I'd follow up with a drive around the area when it's permitted.

If actual open days happen in September it's worth going to the shortlist.

The obvious bonus of virtual ones is you don't have travel costs (and potentially staying overnight costs).
The downside is you don't get the 'vibe' and you don't get to talk to students who are actually there.

It is a bit like the difference between browsing for a new house on line and actually visiting the house.

But your student can have a longer list of 'possibles' and do all the virtual tours now, and then hope you can visit in person later in the year, once they have narrowed it down to a shorter list.

Thank you very much for all your advises. Really helpful. DS started registering for the virtual days. This will help us to narrow down the list definitely.