How many university open day visits did you do with your DC?

[Icedlatteplease]

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?

Most cities have university accommodation that students can afford. Brighton has 2 universities. They don’t rank highly on the private school student league tables. Vast numbers of ordinary students go there. People just find a reason to discount somewhere.

@RampantIvy
What disappointed me at the only subject talk I went to was the parents asking the questions! Hugely over invested people and yes, they need their own session if they are that desperate and their Dc should be having their own session. Students don’t always need to ask questions either. Often lots if aspects are covered to their satisfaction so quieter ones can sit back!

True. Travel to and from London is often very different to journeys between other parts of the country. North/South travel is generally better than East/West in my experience and travelling diagonally across the country tends to be yet more difficult, even by road, and train or coach journeys usually include multiple changes.
Even other major cities are not as well connected to each other as they are to London, though they have good links compared to smaller towns and rural areas of course. If you don't live somewhere close to a mainline station, airport or motorway, geography is likely to be a much bigger factor in University choice than it is for those who live in big cities, especially London. London- Glasgow or vice versa is indeed a long way but it's easy (my DH used to do it as a day trip for work on a frequent basis) Trips like Oban to Leicester, or Barrow in Furness to Norwich however, would probably quite reasonably put plenty of students/parents off particular courses.

believe me, he looked into everything in detail. But for this particular persons circumstances which I’m not going to go into because I’m identifiable on here it was a no go. You have to take into account accommodation in years 2 & 3 as well. The cheapest was £100 more than in Sheffield where he will be going.

and private school league tables, don’t make me laugh. (Some people choose degree courses based on industry contacts etc anyway)

It is not just about league tables and prestige of university's that always comes into the decision of using the best university. My son had an offer from Warwick to study maths but he declined it and is at Birmingham because that was the best fit for his personal circumstances. I agree with @Comefromaway it is personal choice. Would a 2-1 at a so called prestige university be better than a first from a RG university which wasn't so well thought of?

What even are private school league tables?

DH and I went to none at all.

Our DC's went by themselves to make their own assessments of each university they were interested in (based on prospectuses, course descriptions etc).

Distance from home, and us, was not one of the issues they (or we) considered. They 'd been thoroughly prepared to fly the nest and were ready .

Well, yes. However, you can still 'fly the nest' if you are at a university an hour away from home.

None with dc1 as it was during covid and we just couldn't. Their choices were entirely made online.
2 with dc2 plus we visited 4 other universities when we happened to be passing for other reasons (and by visited, I mean we drove onto the campus, parked and wandered around for a few minutes at most). The open days confirmed previous opinions rather then creating new ones.

I think that pp may have been referring to the percentage of home students from private schools at each uni which features, for info not ultimate ranking purposes, within the Sunday Times tables. So 38.4% at Durham (highest of any uni), 29.8% at Oxford Brookes (Oxford itself only slightly higher and likely to be "overtaken" by OB within the next couple of cycles in all likelihood); down to 0.6% at Bolton.

Bolton has a university?

But to answer the OPs question

DS3 none due to Covid, although did some online ones; although he had visited both this elder siblings at their Unis. Both ruled out.

DS2 perhaps 3 or 4. He took a gap year so these were quite spread out timewise. Ironically he ended up going to one where he only went to the applicant day, which really sold it for him, whereas the applicant day for his previous "that's 100% the one" after the open day served to confirm actually it was 100% not the one for him.

DS1 four, one with school. Although York one was of his five choices the open day was ruled out as "I;ve been to York for school trips". None of these (perhaps 3 at most) involved York uni!. We all as a family went up to Durham as DH could drop me and DS at the uni then headed off to Beamish for the day with the younger two.

Living in a rural area public transport is virtually not existant. How I yearn for it to at least reach the "poor" status where @RampantIvy is. 😁

It’s the old Institute of Higher Education

It also has a well regarded private school.

Living in a rural area public transport is virtually not existant. How I yearn for it to at least reach the "poor" status where @RampantIvy is

It was non existent during the autumn of 2018 when Northern Rail went on strike every Saturday between August bank holiday and Christmas.

Thanks @boys3

@TizerorFizz I don’t understand the relevance of % of private school students at Brighton in the context of this?

@Withholdingvitalinfo I was trying to illustrate that if young people come from better off backgrounds, they are less likely to be put off by slightly higher hall fees. So places like Bristol, St Andrews and Exeter have quite high housing costs. Yes, there are lists with the universities with more privately educated Dc and those with less.

I’m not sure what “£100 more expensive” at Brighton really means. Per week? Per month? I would not say it’s miles more money than Sheffield but it depends how hard you really look or whether you just confirm your own favourite by citing costs elsewhere. However Sheffield is great.

@handholdin
As for a 2:1 from an elite university or a first from RG elsewhere: employers usually want a 2:1 or a first. That’s to get over the starting line. After that your first won’t be worth more than a 2:1 in maths from Warwick or Cambridge. It will depend on selection tests and interviews. Few employers think a first means everything. Grads have to offer more and a 2:1 is perfectly acceptable to nearly all employers. Unless anyone knows of ones who take only firsts

2022 prices for Brighton - cheapest £3440
Sussex: £4600. Neither extortionate. Expect £140 P/w upwards for subsequent years. Not the cheapest but not ridiculous either. I do think looking at costs matters but also being accurate matters too.

I read an article recently about students being priced out of university towns. Brighton was mentioned.

www.theguardian.com/education/2022/dec/26/it-was-chaos-students-on-being-priced-out-of-the-rental-market

The cheapest available accommodation was £100 per week more expensive in Brighton than Sheffield or Leeds. It’s London prices without the London weighting.

The young person absolutely loved the course and institution so it wasn’t a case of confirming a favourite.

It’s not just about yearly price though. Dd came across quite a few accommodations that were the same yearly as the one she chose.

However, the one she chose doesn’t make her move out over the Christmas and Easter break. Quite a few do.

Dds accommodation was around £3k. Many of the others that were 3k made you move your stuff out for 4 weeks at Christmas then Easter. So 8 weeks less accommodation. It would have been a huge pain in the arse to do this and restricted when she could go back.

and while you may think an extra £400 per year isn’t much. It absolutely is for the people who can’t afford it. Dd didn’t get much loan because of my wage. Except I am also a single parent and have another disabled child. I do give her money every month and She does work part time but her course and the extras curricular are heavy going. She can’t do a 40 work week and study. And extra £400 plus the cost and time to travel, would have been too much for her. So the price of accommodation, cost and time of travelling back were a consideration for her.

That’s the adult thing to do. Look at all aspects then work out which is the best, overall, option.

@Comefromaway is that first year hall costs, or subsequent year private rental?

Brighton certainly has first year accom cheaper than Leeds (university of Leeds that is), although the proportion this represents at Brighton is another matter entirely.

A lot of unis are pretty poor when it comes to accommodation cost transparency. Its all well and good saying 1st year halls range between say £3,000 and £9,000, but if the distribution is heavily skewed towards the upper end, lets say the median is at over £7,000, it does not mean a great deal.

I'd disgree with @TizerorFizz on Exeter - for 1st year halls at least. Its certainly not the cheapest! however for 22/23 c95% of self-catered hall rooms at Exeter were not more than £7,100, so it is equally far from being the most expensive.

I'd even go as far to say that Exeter has one of the more transparent approaches both in terms of rooms at various prices and the demand on each - hence fairly limited demand at Exeter for the cheapest rooms (c1:1 ratio). The demand profile at Brighton could be very different - eg demand for less expensive rooms well over actual capacity.

Back to Exeter - take somewhere like Lincoln Uni. Certainly has an ever improving reputation, firmly in the upper half of league table - usual caveats of course. All self-catered accommodation, with what from a quick glance through most starting at £7,200 for the year.

It was private rental.

The train journey was apalling/expensive too.

I was comparing costs with Leeds Conservatoire costs as that is where my Ds is.

My own dd was in London for postgrad and there is a big discrepancy between what is advertised and what is actually available.