How many Open Days?

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DD has a longish shortlist of potential universities. I've told her we can't visit all of them. But wondered how many university open days people are intending to/have been on? How essential is it to visit somewhere before putting it on your UCAS form?

My daughter is doing an Art Foundation so though we went to a few open days for that and a couple also had degree courses, we are just starting now with proper degree open days. I said upthread we will go to the five she's thinking about, but several had their open days during her A levels (now done). So first open day next week, the closest. Then we have booked a campus tour in July at Falmouth, an eight hour trip as I'm the only driver and will stop halfway. We are staying two nights there. Then we have another in July - 2 1/2 hours away. The last couple we will do in the autumn.
Our experience with FAD open days is to try and talk to a student and faculty. The students can give the inside scoop, and faculty can be very informative, away from the PR spiel.
I remember in my time my mother loving the very green and leafy campus of my first university. It certainly looked as pretty as a post card. But it was totally wrong for me and I left after a year, to completely change direction. I ended up at a place in a major city that I picked for it's reputation and only visited for my interview.

If your DC plays school sport, it's well worth doing as many open days in this term as you need to.

The ones in the Autumn term are generally on Saturdays, which doesn't fit well if DC plays for the school Firsts - especially given it'll be their final season

1. Two were with school, one I tagged along with my friend's family, and the other two I went with my mum.

Sorry, posted too soon 🤣

I think it's good visit quite a few cities etc - you don't necessarily have to go to the open day if it clashes or whatever. I got more from just being in the city and getting a feel for it than the actual open day.

Also I just remembered I visited another one with a friend's family, so 6!

DS went to 3. Said he didn’t want Scotland, Wales, London, Exeter or Durham.

Visited 3 (one with us ) . It helped rule one out and he firmed the one he visited with us. Insurance he’d never visited. He didn’t get the grades on the day and got into Strathclyde in Glasgow through clearing - never been to the country before, let alone the uni.

DS much more of a risk taker than DD though. She’s had the benefit of visiting some with him - and her standout favourite so far is Strathclyde but that’s because we visited him on a working day and the SU and library are full and it’s buzzy. You just don’t see this on open days sadly. And DD is all about the vibe. We went to Royal Holloway for a visit with her and she really hated it, mainly because of its location but also because the SU was locked doors and you couldn’t even look round on the Open Day , plus campus deserted so felt like all had gone home for the weekend which was super unappealing to her.

We have booked in 5 more but I’m hoping with each one she will narrow down her preferences so we can reduce it.

It’s fun but hugely time consuming, expensive and exhausting!

Dc3 is applying to Exeter, Bath, Swansea and Birmingham - all universities that their siblings have been to/are at so they've seen everything first hand! We'll probably go and see Loughborough and that will be it.

Did about 5 each with DD1 and then a few years later with DD2.

We got quite organised so as not to spend too much time doing things just because they were part of the official tour.

Our hit list:

• Course talk
• Accommodation in the relevant price range
• Labs (both DDs scientists)
• Library
• Hot chocolate

We really enjoyed it. We chatted about what we had seen. My job was to be a sounding board so that DDs could really think about what they wanted.

With DS we attended two open days and also looked round two uni cities and the outsides of uni’s on our own and then we attended three applicant visit days.

With DD she attended 3 open days and 3 applicant visit days.

We’ve done 4 already and have another 4 planned. It doesn’t help that DS hasn’t narrowed down course so are looking at 2 potential options (and both courses aren’t always available at the same uni).

You will receive various responses from people who have visited 10 Uni’s and others who have visited one or haven’t visited any. I suppose it really depends where you live (we don’t have many Universities within easy day trip access), your budget (it can be very expensive with travel especially if you have bring along other family members and also pay for a hotel room or rooms), whether you or your DC has a job on a Saturday (when most Open days occur so this reduces opportunities and some Universities have Open days on the same day so you can’t be at two places at once), time and how quickly or slowly your DC decide they are are ready and willing to think about it, make decisions about it and want to visit etc.

We did open days at 5 , her three top choices , and two local possible back ups from memory. Well worth doing the open days , one she managed to discount as the talks gave more detail than the prospectus which meant she discounted it , also very disorganised which didn’t bode well . The local ones were 45 minutes away or less and just went because they were close to see what they had on offer in case she ended up in clearing really .

That left her with two really strong choices that she felt happy with .

We visited quite a few, I can't remember how many exactly, but around 12, spread out over the course of 2 years. We really enjoyed making a weekend away of it and exploring the local area as well as the uni. We visited many places new to us from Exeter in the South all the way up to St Andrews in the North.

DD also attended summer schools at a few of the unis she was particularly interested in.

It was well worth visiting the unis as some that sounded amazing on paper turned out to be disappointing when we visited.

We have many happy memories of those 2 years and the weekends away visiting new places.

We did 4, and she applied to all of those. We didn’t managed to make it to her 5th choice but went to an offer holders day instead. She also went alone to an offer holders day for what she thought would be her top choice just to reconfirm as by then it had been almost a year since visiting. We went the night before in most cases to explore the city and the next day concentrated on the uni itself. We both really enjoyed our little jaunts across the country. I got a Two Together railcard as it was always her and me who went and this cut the cost of trains a bit.

We’ve done 4 already and DD doing 1 on her own. One was a local one just to have a look around. We’ll do more in September once we have better idea of the grades she might get.

She was very undecided what sort of Uni she wanted so it’s really helped with her decision (a busy city rather than campus).

We are lucky that we can do them all as day trips on the train, and we’ve enjoyed making a day of it - subject visit / talk, chat to students, wander round the site, look at accommodation, have a nice lunch, wander round the city, get an ice cream and see a few sights.

We don’t bother with a lot of the talks they put on, as a lot of information is available online. Main thing is the course info, chatting to students, getting a feel for the Uni and the town.

We plan to visit 5 altogether, 2 now, 2 in September and one ds has a placement at over the summer. We've visited the 2 with the lowest grade offers so far so I'm interested to see how the others compare.

We’ve done 2. Dc2 hated one place which I thought he’d like. Manchester yesterday waste of time in all honesty although the subject talk was good. We’ve also done a non open day look at the city. I think we’ll just leave things now until offer holders days. They’re time consuming and not often worth it.

DD did 4 now and will do others in the autumn. We’ll also visit others at weekends so she gets a feel for the place. DS only went to 2.

@user50316 that’s a good list of criteria to help narrow the choices.

Remember they don’t have to do all their applications at once. Even if you’re doing an early one to oxbridge in October you can add the other choices later. It helps if you’re struggling to get round to visiting.

@LaDeeDa123 we had Manchester on our list...what were the issues?

When I was in sixth form I went to 2 open days. There was no suggestion or expectation that my parents would come - in fact I didn't want them to (we were and remain very close though). Now I have 2 kids at uni and it seemed very much the expectation that open days were a family event. DC2 wanted to visit quite a lot of far-afield ones. I pointed out that the cost of the train and the hotel was in the £££ each time and she managed to narrow it down to a serious shortlist. The one she went to in the end was not one she had visited.

If you can afford it, lovely. If you can't, I really don't think it's necessary.

Mainly the accommodation talk not being very informative, especially given the problems over the past few years @Livinghappy

Similar here - DS1 visited 8 (Oxford with school, then the others split between DH and myself accompanying, since one of us stayed at home with DD and DS2, who were too young to be left at the time). We swapped for offer holder days, so could each add our twoha'penceworth re all 5 that DS1 applied to.

DD did loads - a mixture of taster days, campus tours and proper open days - and all with yours truly, as I was more flexible re time than DH. It was fun, if tiring. And yes, quite expensive, with some overnight stays, but we worked it out. In the end, she chose the same university as DS1 (Birmingham); it did feel a bit like the story I remember from my early childhood, of the little old lady who decided she wanted to move house, so had an estate agent tour her round several houses and eventually found 'the one' - her own. But hey ho.

Poor DS2 (2021 entry) only got in two open days of his own, and no in-person offer holder days, but fortunately had come along with DD to a few universities and was quite familiar with Birmingham by then, so did have opinions about enough to make a choice re where to apply. Which did include Birmingham(!), but he chose to firm UEA, which is where he is.

At my insistence, we mainly travelled by train, as that is how they would mainly be travelling themselves.

We visited two with DD as she was living 40 miles from home at the time. She eliminated one.

Two of her other options were 300+ away from home, so I went up there with her to have a look around in the holidays - both unis were doing talk and walks in the holidays. DD emailed ahead and asked if anyone would be available to talk about the course in details and one uni arranged an appointment with a lecturer - the lecturer came well prepared and had put aside 90 mins just for DD.

She then had three unis she couldn't get to or visit on open days, so phoned them all. One was absolutely useful, she got passed around departments, no one knew anything about the course and no one phoned back. The other two unis were really helpful, so could be worth a call to any uni she can't get to.