Unofficial Uni tours

[Darbs76]

Hi

Is anyone else planning on taking their DC to visit the cities the Universities are based in that they plan to list, unofficially? Obviously we still don’t know if any official open days will take place but it doesn’t look likely. Really upsetting as I’ve been looking forward to taking my DS to the open days for years now. But I still think it’s important for him to see the city and we might be able to see some of the Uni’s, at least from outside. We are going to see Oxford & Cambridge initially as he will need to make a decision between them earlier and then Warwick, Imperial (that’s commutable to us). He also is thinking of St Andrews but that’s an 8.5hr drive without even factoring in millions of toilet breaks etc. We might have to just research that one. Might suit him as he’s not really interested in the night life as he doesn’t drink, but that could change. He’s still the baby of the year so not even 17 until the weekend.

Any tips, eg any parts of any of those Universities the public can just access? I guess seeing any halls etc will be out of the question but I suppose we could have a look how far away they are etc.

[MarchingFrogs]

Birmingham, Leeds and UEA, for example, have publicly-accessible museums / galleries on campus. The Modern Life Cafe at the Sainsbury Centre on the UEA campus is well worth a visit, too (DS2 will be starting there next month and is thinking of saving up for the odd meal there, after I treated him to lunch there when we went to an exhibition a couple of month ago).

[ClaraThree]

@Dilbertian

Dd finished Y13 this year. The only open days were virtual.

She used the following criteria to select her uni choices:

1) Course content.
2) Distance from home (not too far, but also not too close!)
3) A uni that was well-located within the city, not at a distance from it, nor widely sprawled within it, and with good access to all amenities.

Only after she had narrowed down by these priorities, did she look at accommodation and societies etc.

My Dd did exactly this.

[HasaDigaEebowai]

Birmingham has just had a number of open days with appointments with course tutors, campus tour, accommodation tour etc. We’ve also done tours at Loughborough, Lancaster and we are doing Exeter next week. We did york on our own by just wandering around.

It makes a big difference IMO. Ds really liked Loughborough (although was slightly put off by the vice chancellor saying that if kids like playing Xbox then they should not apply because the university doesn’t want them ) but wasn’t at all keen on Birmingham. No real reason other than the vibe he got. So its really important to visit if you can.

[sammyjoanne]

Lancaster has an open day on the 28th sept and also one in october. Chester has it in person, so has Reading.

[0DimSumMum0]

I'm so worried about this as I know how important physically visiting the unis is but we just cannot get! We are not in the uk and travel and quarantine just makes it impossible for us. My son is doing a lot of the virtual open days but it's not the same. Wondering if he should take a year out so that he can properly look next year.

[beenrumbled]

DD has booked on 2 in person open days after having an unofficial look round with us - Lancaster and Sheffield. She wanted to have a proper tour of York but currently its virtual only which she feels is pointlesss.