DD is quite keen on one university in a small city she has visited and loved. Its decent (if not exceptional) for her course and convenient but not too close travel from home (both driving and train). In many ways it works very very well from my perspective. It's a totally sensible, safe-ish academically choice.
She's agreed to visit a couple of others but a little under sufferance. Everything is compared to her preferred choice and her A level campus (which again was a slightly quirky unexpected choice necessitated by circumstances but that is working very well for DD). A lot are dismissed by DD at the online investigation stage.
But I am worried about how much I should be allowing her to self restrict, or for that matter restricting her myself.
The family situation mentioned below means I have carer responsibilities that severly limit my ability to travel, money is limited and i have injuries all of which make travelling to university open days challenging, especially if you can't get there and back easily in a day. I don't really have the emotional, physical or mental reserves to go charging across the country looking at all the unis for her course. The situation will most likely complicate her travelling to and from whatever uni she goes to amd how much i can help.
Compounding the decision is that we really have no idea what her grades might look like.
We as a family had the time from hell through her GCSEs, most people were incredulous DD was still sitting them at all. She had very little actual study in the 3 months prior to the exam but she wanted to stay in correct year with her peers. The fact that she took them was a miracle, the fact she passed any deeply admirable
(The family situation is ongoing and may unexpectedly hit crisis at pretty much any point but hopefully the impact on DD education wise is somewhat mitigated now. But it's still very stressful )
DD underachieved on one important subject she is hoping to rectify this year and averagely on everything else. Would lead to the expectation of CCC. However Initial A level assessments peg her as having the capacity to hit at least 2 B and at least one of those potentially an A (on a good day if nothing else goes wrong between now and then). Not that that surprises me hugely, she's bright. But that makes a reasonable estimate of her grade anything between a CCC and an ABB. She hasn't lot the same level of hobbies enhancements as many with that grade due to covid, the family situation and her own physical challenges
I don’t know whether to encourage her to look at a more challenging uni (which are all bar one much further away for her course) or whether that is just entirely unrealistic and will just hit her confidence if she is turned down or misses the grades. I'd hate to feel I limited DD's opportunities (any more than they alreafy are) before she'd already begun.
But I do know that given DD a stubborn whotsit🫣😁, there's a definite value to letting her go her own way about things. Especially when her way definitely has its own merits.
So how many visits did you do with your DC? Any words of advice?