University Open Days - what to look out for/find out?

[redskyatnight]

As per title - we are going to a university open day next week.

DD is only just about to start Year 12, so we have time ... but we wanted her to at least see what a university was like to give her an idea about future options.
I suspect we will just go with the flow and join in with the general tours/talks, but is there anything anyone would suggest is worth finding out/asking about?

Is there enough acom for students? Where is it/cost etc

visit the actual dept and ask about if they are doing face to face or online lectures, tutorials etc - some still aren’t.

ask students rather than uni staff your questions to get a clear picture of first year experiences

Can we ask the subject and the uni open day?

Facilities for the subject/subjects. Social space - is there a student guild? Sports facilities if she’s into it. But at Y11 I’d suggest just talking advantage of the big talks and tours more than anything else - maybe not student finance at this point because it’s liable to change

Might also want to look at careers and study abroad to give her a sense of the wider uni

It's Northampton (chosen because it is easy to get to and we were free on the Open Day, rather than being an active choice or focus on the individual university). When I was DD's age I lived in Manchester and basically the university was all around me and I frequently mixed with uni students. We don't live in a university town, so DD has no concept of what one is - other than thinking it's an advanced version of school. Hence I want her to find out a bit more at an early stage.
She's interested in English.

Its not a bad idea, both of mine visited an Open Day at local Universities just to see what to expect. Also as far as I can see the student finance talks are similar everywhere and you might as well hear it once and not have to bother again until you get to offer days.
Everyone focuses on the gleaming halls which are the accomodation for the first year usually- although some Universities (eg Essex) seem to have lots of accomodation for other years as well. It is good to find out what the accomodation is like for subsequent years - some towns have lots of really grotty houses rented out to students.Its worth talking to students on campus about their experiences. Its also an idea to find out what the part time job situation is like as well.
With English , she might want to think about Creative Writing, linguistics, language and/ or literature and other options as well.

@redskyatnight we did similar and used Leicester as our first with 2 kids of the 3 kids. didn’t live close but uni was doing open day and thought we needed to start some time.

I would recommend starting now for uni open days as you want most done by end of September on start of year 13

We toured 3 universities in 2 days with DS in the summer of year 12. Just so he could get a feel for a campus university, a city one and smaller one. We couldn't go into buildings (holiday/covid restrictions) but it was quite helpful.

For DS when he did open day tours it was very much about the feel he got from the academic staff. Course content was very similar for years 1 & 2 for his subject.

Go to financial talk once

go on campus tour once - then self guide - you’ll get a better feel for uni

Accommodation go and see plus check out location on campus

Go to a couple of different subject talks to get a feel for course they would like

course talk tips

who is doing the talk?
which other staff are there on a Saturday?
how happy are they?
should be all of the department for undergraduate lecturers
All f2f teaching back on? Including lectures
all field trips back on (if course has them)
ask students what’s the best and worst things about the course
flexibility of modules

uni visit bingo - all unis will say these phrases during the day ……

research based learning
guaranteed accommodation for first years in halls if you firm us
over 200/300 clubs and societies
top 5/10/20 uni for …..student satisfaction/accommodation/research on …..guardian/times annual survey
year aboard available

Agree with @EwwSprouts your DC will tell you if it’s got the right ‘vibe’?!

listen to your child your favourite one may not be theirs

DS2 was prised out of his bedroom for three 'tag-along' university visits with DD (nearest in age, DS1 6 academic years older than him)

• campus tour at KCL, autumn half term of year 10 (tour guide was a super-enthusiastic 3rd year from the Seychelles and we all fell in love with her, even if neither DC actually decided to apply to King's)
• open day at Exeter Streatham campus, May half term of year 10 (he hated all of it, apart from the place we stayed at, the cinema museum and the lunch from a van doing various chicken curries- albeit not so various by the time we got to it)
• offer holder day at UEA, which he and I mainly escaped from to walk round the Broad and meet up with a friend of mine for coffee and a look round at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Art . Fell in love with all things UEA - particularly the sheer concrete-ness of it all, and the iconic Ziggurats accommodation blocks😮 - and Norwich and has just completed his first year there, studying History of Art. And n.b. yes, having fallen in love with every other aspect, he did actually check out the actual course that he was interested in, althouvgh initially he had been intending to study Architecture, which woukd have meant applying to Norwich University of the Arts, as it isn't offered at UEA.

So you never know exactly what will - or won't, for that matter - take their fancy about a university

.

My daughter starts y13 September and we've only been to three. She's doing an art foundation so we were looking at that, but the universities do degree programs snd though she'd like to go further afield we went to the those talks too.
The 'vibe' is important, and talking to actual students on the course you are interested in is great if possible. The people who conduct the 'sales pitch' so to speak are pretty good at it (though one should be replaced asap he was dreadful) and are too general to get much out of.
The best was when we got to talk to the head of the degree course at one uni. He may have been a bit loose lipped but he was extremely informative. If you can get a one on one chat that's ideal.
We saw the foundation and degree shows which told us a lot - as does going online if the teachers have instagram accounts. Shows what their style is. Obviously art in our case but look up any teachers that run the courses and find out their background and publications and experience.
the practical stuff: accommodation etc might be worth a tour. Certainly the facilities - so impressive at one uni and almost non existent at another. I know one girl who pretty much discounted a uni as their library was drab and subterranean- another she visited was modern and exciting.

@redskyatnight great your starting at year 12 :) I did with my two. Ive got one in 3rd yr uni and DD2 has just finished year 12 and has one more to visit.

Accommodation - just see a couple to get a fair idea.
Campus tour, great one to do
Talks like personal statement/student finance/ uni welcome talk - very good to do the once, but when you done one uni, you get the gist.
Subject Talk - every uni visit. Its vital to get a fair idea of the course
City visit - only do that at the end when you have a couple of hours free.
Study abroad - only do those if DC is interested. If theres a stand where you can ask questions, rather than a 'talk' even better.

Other things you can do is Library, but once we saw like 2 libraries, we didnt bother with the rest as they are very similar.
Eateries, worth going to one for lunch, and also checking them out on line.
And ask about internship oppotunities too as they are very important.

Out of both DC we have done:
DD1 - Lancaster, York, Leicester,Leeds, Oxford
DD2 - Reading, Chester, Lancaster, Lincoln (to visit Bangor)

DD2 - Reading, Chester, Lancaster, Lincoln (to visit Bangor)

Forgive me, @sammyjoanne - but I misread that as you saying that you had gone to Lincoln in order to visit Bangor😮

Although to be honest, I wouldn't put it past DS2 actually to do something like that, as despite my best efforts, his knowledge of domestic geography is truly to be despaired over...

My opinion on this is that there’s no point asking any questions as you won’t get an honest answer, plus don’t believe anything they say at the talks: the whole thing is a PR exercise.

The point of the open days is to allow the potential student to get a feel for the place and whether it feels like somewhere they would be happy.

It’s good to be able to look at the accommodation, though the potential student should bear in mind that the best accommodation will be in high demand, so they might not get in.

If they have specific questions about the course, they will probably get a more thorough and accurate answer by email than if they throw it at some random member of staff on the day, though they may get lucky and get to speak to someone genuinely in the know who is prepared to be honest rather than being positive but vague, as required by their senior management.

Oh goodness, my DD is going into Year 12 - is this done thing I need to start planning for now

@redskyatnight
I am not sure it’s worth seeing a university she may not go to to read English just for a day out. Although I know they offer it. We sorted out likely universities fairly early. When DDs visited universities we drilled down into what each course offered, facilities, and she did subject talks. This won’t be the same in, for example, York and Northampton. English is one of those subjects where course content varies a lot. You can go to parents talks.

Also Northampton is a fairly boring town! I know it well and went to school not that far away! Even M&S has pulled out! We were rural too! In those days it wasn’t a university at all. Therefore you can look at accommodation and the faculty, but I’m not sure what this will tell you about universities in general and most accommodation will be newish as it’s a new university.

By all means go, but I would look far more closely as what her grades are possibly going to be and look at universities that might match her ambitions. It does depend on where you live, but you can easily visit city universities (short break?) and have a walk round, eg Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol etc. Campus universities can be more difficult but not impossible. It’s also very valuable to look around the city/town where a university is located. Would she want to live there for years 2 and 3?

Therefore, depending on her possible grades, I’m not sure how helpful this will be as Northampton is more like an extension of school as it was a college of HE and attracts many local students. Yes, it offers degrees but you really need to look at universities with a long track record of teaching English to compare and contrast.

@CornishGem1975
No. Lots find out about university on line and then visit a few cities in y12. It’s often been said on MN to have a look at a local one but if DC is never going to go there I don’t see the point. Why not visit when and where it means something? Keeps costs down.

If you mean attending open days - yes, it is. Of course there are those who can't attend many, or possibly any, open days for various reasons, but yes, it is definitely a thing to visit places where they are considering studying and living for three or more years.

Starting on the autumn of year 12, not necessarily, but planning to start now does spread the load and lessens the potential panic if the first couple fail to live up to the expectations of a paper exercise. LSE was a case in point for DD- I think she wanted to love it, because I was there in thev1980s, but frankly, having gone back for the open day with her (and having hung out on a few LSE theeads on TSR), I wasn't at all upset when she decided that it wasn't for her.

Your DD does need to have some idea of what she wants to do, though, and if it's a bit 'niche', where it is actually offered. (Actually, it doesn't even have to be very 'niche' for it not to be offered at Oxford or Cambridge, for example).

Thanks @MarchingFrogs DD is probably heading down the biosciences route so we'll do some research on that. She has an idea of places she might like to go and some aren't close so I guess we need to factor in this because our weekends are rarely free! Do they do open days several times a year?

Ask about the timetable, some subjects have less contact time because you are expected to be working on your own.

What options are there within the course? Some allow lots of options, some are narrower.

Have a look at any societies / sports clubs she might be interested in.

Campus v non campus? City or rural?

Most universities have an 'autumn series' and a 'summer series' of open days, some on a weekday as well as weekends. But there are only so many weeks on the year, so there may be double bookings. If you are lucky, you may find e.g. Birmingham and Warwick on the same two days, as DD did, so we stayed over in Coventry for a couple of nights to do both(all of ours, though accompanied, did most visits by train), although the next year, it was Birmingham and Nottingham on the same weekend, less helpful but not un-doable.

There's a regular poster here whose DD has just graduated from Newcastle in biomedical science, I think they would highly recommend Newcastle. DD2 did biomedical science at Nottingham Trent, then 'upgraded' to LSHTM for her Masters.

Re. English I remember DH saying that he avoided some of the older universities – Bristol was one – because they had an emphasis on compulsory old english literature and poetry such as Spencer, Chaucer, Beowulf etc. His real interest was 19th century novels – Austen, Hardy, Eliot, James – and European playwrights – Stoppard, Brecht, Chekhov, Ibsen. Of course that was a long time ago! But the point is, English os son wide-ranging it pays to look closely at available modules.

'is so' wide-ranging!

One reason we want to go to a local, possibly won't make it to the UCAS form university is simply that DD doesn't have a clue what she wants, so presenting a possible option to her will hopefully let her focus in on what she liked and what she didn't like and enable her to home in on what she does want when she is choosing in earnest later.