Uni Open days

[cittigirl]

Please settle this argument.

Dd in year 12. Hoping to go to uni Sept 2024. She says she needs to go to uni open days this November and December.

I say next autumn for Jan 24 application.

Who is right?

She doesn’t need to go this year, but she can.

She is.

Sorry posted to soon.

Jan 24 is the deadline but many schools want to have applications in by mid November.

There will be open days in the Spring, which is a nice time to visit, and just before the UCAS process starts in earnest.

Your dc's school may want her ucas application completed in Oct 23. Many uni's hold their open days on the same date, for example this year 10th sept 2022 was Bristol, bath + many more so yes good idea to start soon. Plus it's expensive so spread the cost.

Do as many as you can this year to spread the cost because train fares and possibly hotel bills are very expensive. Also it will mean you aren’t trooping off every weekend. Many of them are really close together or on the same day. It’s very time consuming.

She is, sort of.

Applications will start as soon as she gets back from summer next year. Hardly anyone (no one in my 3 x DC friends groups) left their application till the deadline. The latest I heard of was December and he was an outlier. You don't need to try to look at all of them this year, but getting a couple under her belt will let her think about priorities and what's actually important and of course some people don't go to any open days. You need a happy medium.

Everywhere will have previous on line open days on you tube, or the uni website eg. Which can get her started. Maybe direct her there for now.

However if she wants a feel of places there's no harm in starting to look. Especially if she's anxious or unsure about what she's looking for.

You can start to look a year early, some do.
We didn't.
Clearly she has lots of time, it's down to personal choice, have school been telling her to start looking?? Some schools encourage looking early so you've got more time to think. It can be full on doing uni open days but she will want to look again next year at the ones she's shortlisted.

Thank you all very much. Dd will be very pleased 🤣. As you can probably tell, I didn't go to uni.

I would start with a nearby city one and a nearby campus this autumn, use that to narrow down the sort of uni experience she is wanting then narrow down unis based on that over the winter and plan to visit them over the summer/ autumn. As pp said they are often on the same days so you can't just plan to go in Sept 2023.

It depends on her really. I had assumed we would wait til year 13 but DS is beginning to think about it already so we will probably do a couple now just to help inform his thinking.

You are right. You can go a year early but I would encourage you to look out for the open days in summer term. We do one in June which usually has y12 students thinking ahead. I'd say it's fine to go now but things can also change one year to the next. Modules can be changed or joint Hons combinations (although it irritates me a bit personally when I've been putting a load of effort in for someone who I find out might not arrive for two years if at all 😆)

Have you seen this thread, @cittigirl ?
www.mumsnet.com/talk/further_education/4624910-post-gcses-2022-year-12-202223-general-support-thread?page=13

Sorry should have said I'm course leader at a uni

Ds had to have his rough personal statement in before the end of year 12, early entry deadline is 15th October for medicine, dentistry, veterinarian courses and Oxbridge. I think going in year 12 is a good to have a long time to think over what you liked/didn't like about the universities you have visited and look into accommodation and the costs etc and post on here asking about personal experience of X university. There are older threads on lots of them.

There is no right or wrong on this one. Open Days can involve time and expense. However, visits in Y12 allow DC to start forming views about courses and types of unis and be motivated to apply themselves to their A-level studies.

Early visits can also help avoid the problem of date clashes (unis often aim for the same narrow selection of Saturdays). I have a DC in the same cohort as yours. They have/will do a couple this autumn and some more in the summer to spread it all out a bit.

If your DC wants to attend some Open Days sooner rather than later, it does show they are keen and you might as well go with the flow. Having attended a couple of Open Days now, my DC is sufficiently confident to attend Open Days later in Y12/Y13 on their own, which is an added bonus.

Having said all the above, I also have DC who were unable to attend classic Open Days because of the pandemic. They were still able to make informed decisions despite that using online events and informal visits at other times once travel restrictions were relaxed.

Hope all the above helps.

Are there many open days in nov/Dec? When dd was at this stage they were June/July and sept/Oct. By Nov/Dec early applications (and many that don't need to be early) are in and courses which interview are doing those.

As PP have said, spread them out. Also, if the student has has applied without visiting before, or wants a second look before the final decision on firm and insurance, then some courses offer 'applicant days' and /or 'offer holder days'

www.whatuni.com/open-days/search/?date=122022,112022&level=m

Actually quite a few coming up in November and December.

Quite a few unis seem hold two Open Day dates in the autumn @ErrolTheDragon, so there are some in Nov, for example, and then two in the summer. This feature has helped my DC sidestep some potential clashes.

It does mean more weekend attendance for staff but we are grateful they do so because the real value for DC has been in the informal chats with lecturers and course students rather than the set piece presentations.

I leave my Y12 DC to do all the running with such conversations and deliberately step away and browse a noticeboard somewhere (or even depart the building if they feel confident). I have trained them to declare they are Y12 early on in any conversation so that aspect is clear up front.

I agree that the offer holder days, typically in Spring of Y13, are another opportunity. However the Y12 visits are useful for DC who might not yet have settled on one subject area and early visits help with this rather fundamental decision.

I'd definitely start going now, though next spring/summer would be more normal. Waiting til Autumn of y13 and it's really too late, though I know some wait until they have offers BEFORE they go to open days!
And if the unis are spread across the country you'll need to space them out.
We started looking at sixth forms in Y10 and thank goodness we did as due to lockdowns if we'd waited then we wouldn't have seen any in person.
We are doing open days for 2024 entry (my dd is doing an art foundation next year), though the bulk with be done next Summer after A levels.

I really appreciate everyone's thoughts on this and advice given. She's booked to see a local one and we're going to one about 100 miles away as well in a couple of weeks.