Thoughts on WIWIKAU

[Newtothismother]

A friend of mine suggested I join this group on Facebook as my son and I are researching university courses (he is in year 12). I did so a few months ago. I am disappointed in it - posters congratulate students on getting a 2.2/third; literally every other poster has SEN; there are multiple posts by mums saying they dreading their kids going to uni and will swoop them up at first sign of adversity. Did my friend send me down a rabbit hole or is this a reputable group? Have only just joined MN HE group but it is much better and speaks hard truths which may be difficult to hear but are invaluable

I think it is somewhat ungenerous to object to people congratulating others on the achievements of their children.

No, it's not, when the purpose of the group is for parents to find out what they need to know about University.
I agree that it is really annoying, and clogs up the group.
There are thousands upon thousands of people in the group - it is for asking for advice, and for people to answer those questions. Announcing your child's degree classification is something you can do on your own FB page, where presumably the friends and family who want to know / might be interested are.

Yup.

I am flabbergasted by the number of replies saying "ring the University".
No.
These are adults, who have chosen to go away to study.
They are supposed to be the most intelligent / academic / capable young adults in the country.
A major part of them going away to University is to grow up and to "adult" for themselves.

I suspect these are then the same parents that complain about "how much they are paying" without making the link that actually employing all these people to jump to every whim of the helicopter parents might actually be an expense that Universities didn't used to have to cover.

As a parent of a student with SEN at a non-traditional uni taking a vocational course after BTECs at 6th form there is literally no point in me posting on the HE board here, it seems totally focussed on RG/Oxbridge/earning potential.

Whereas with WIWIKAU there are parents and students from everywhere, studying anything, very little judgement, masses of useful and very specific replies. I agree that sometimes all the “woe is me” empty nest stuff and packed cars, pictures of DC’s bedrooms etc is a bit much and to some extent there is over-sharing of DCs personal information but on the whole it is a very useful and supportive group and a lot more diverse than MN.

Shocking = judgement, you've found your home on these boards OP!

I am disappointed in it - posters congratulate students on getting a 2.2/third; literally every other poster has SEN; there are multiple posts by mums saying they dreading their kids going to uni and will swoop them up at first sign of adversity. Did my friend send me down a rabbit hole or is this a reputable group?

It is (was) a cracking group set up with the best of intentions, and there is a vast amount of really helpful advice on there for people who don't have experience of going themselves, or don't have people close to them who know what they are talking about.
But you are right, that sadly it has been flooded with people missing the fact it is supposed to be for finding out information about going to University.

Ideally, it would work so much better if posts all had to be approved, and they filtered off all the posts that aren't either asking genuine questions or signposting to things like the UCAS webinars, but I guess that would take a team of full time admins, not a couple of volunteers who set the site up with the intent of it being useful.

There IS loads of useful stuff on it, but it is like wading through treacle at the moment, to get to it.

It's been really useful to me at a parent whose child has just finished her first year at uni. I'd like to help others in the way that I was helped when navigating things like accommodation. MN doesn't have enough people looking at the same uni to have that conversation.
Having said that, the thread on here for DC who were the gcse Covid year is brilliant and so supportive.

It's horses for courses, isn't it? I was on the GCSE Covid year thread prior to GCSEs and through all the "what random results are they going to get today" angst, but I dropped off at some point during Year 12 because I didn't have a super academic child and he wasn't going to university and I felt entirely out of place there. I think it's great that there are different types of forums to support different types of people in different circumstances..

Agreed. WIWIKAU can be a bit too ‘all degrees are perfectly equal in quality’, MN can be a bit too RG or bust, and actually sherry about universities considered ‘lower’ RG. Both have overly vocal posters who get repetitive, I imagine both have lots of lurkers rolling their eyes.

In reality, I suspect the answer is much more in the middle.

You might find "The Student Room" website helpful as an alternative. Lots of knowledgeable people and students who are currently or recently at the universities answer questions.
Just avoid "Oxford mum" who I'm told thinks she knows everything but actually gives a lot of false information. She came over here once when she was humphing with the people there and they were most disappointed when she decided MN was worse and went back again. 🤣

The Student Room

The student Room is very elitist though. Terrible snobs on there!

I'm also not convinced that's exactly what happened with Oxford Mum. But that's a story for another day.

What is interesting about TSR is ow many parents are on there, especially the Oxbridge threads. The mods do try and get rid of them.
But,as a site, I don't know many young people who use it. It's full of that Reddit kind of banter and quite a lot of internecine rivalries and sneering all of its own. At least the bits I've seen. There are helpful reps on there from various unis though, that's true.

Definitely WIWIKAU is the least unpleasant. But I think some people like the debate.

I've found some of the more generic forums on TSR useful/interesting to read.

But, on the university specific threads, especially the applicant ones, there's a lot of incredibly brattish/entitled posts.

I followed the Durham thread this year, and the responses from certain individuals, when they didn't get their desired college allocation, were more suitable to 5 year olds. A lot of maturing ahead for some of them.

TSR felt like it had a very alt-right undercurrent when I was last using it, definitely agree with the Reddit like ‘banter’ comments. Not too surprised to hear it’s a lot of parents now!

DD said the student rooms are full of trolls just causing chaos for the 'lolz'

Yes, lots of misogyny and incel stuff in various corners recently.

Occasionally those teen trolls have popped up on MN. Pretty easy to spot. I think one ventured to HE about a year ago. It was a weird old episode.

I joined WIWIKAU a number of years ago and found it interesting at first. Now I am just waiting for my youngest (graduating this year) to be done and I'll be out of there! It started off well but as a discussion group I think it's just completely unwieldy and repetitive now.

No one seems to be aware of how to use a search function or even bother looking back through previous posts, and the same questions about what to take to uni, what should go on a personal statement, what deadlines for various things are, et cetera et cetera keep coming up over and over and over again.

Even if you've never had a child go to university and you haven't been through higher education yourself I can't understand why people think that they should ask their question about a specific university or moving in dates or student finance questions on there, rather than at least making an effort to look on the SFE website or the University website or whatever first. It very often seems like people expect everyone else to do the work for them. Facebook posts also don't lend themselves to laying out answers in a coherent fashion. Very often, you will get a bunch of answers to a post asking which university?, Which course?, Or something along those lines, and once this is clarified by the original poster somewhere in the middle of the thread, the targeted answers get hidden somewhere in the middle of the thread and keep being answered over and over again by different people.

As people have mentioned, there also seem to be a huge number of parents over there who are completely over invested in their child's university application and time there. The amount of headspace some people give to bed sizes, en suites, kitchen cupboards etc is mind-blowing. It's like they have to micromanage absolutely every aspect of the application and university experience.

I think MN is more about debate. I also think if mums want to ask about non RG, they can. One of mine went to non RG. Also posters on MN are keen to say where they went. Even the Art course discussion “lead” is Oxbridge. And said so!

I do see posters suggesting uni courses that a DC cannot possibly get into with their predicted grades and engineers are always directed to Imperial. Advice can lack an employers view point! A purely academic one is not always useful.

For non uni students, there is the FE board. I don’t think anyone should be afraid to ask about non RG. Many of us rate them for the right course. That’s the key: the course! It matters little where you do nursing. It matters more for law. So advice should be tempered to degree and possible employment.

Good Summary @unfortunateevents

I must admit, I like the debate/discussion even if threads get derailed here. I know it's not everyone's cup of tea, but that's true of MN in general. It's useful for me to consider that other people have different opinions about the university world, and sometimes I've decided, on balance, that I was wrong about things!!! I haven't checked WIWIKAU and might have a look at some point.

Although I do my bit on the weekly Student Finances?" threads, I'm most active in Art/Design discussions. It's true that I did go to Oxbridge for an academic subject, but I would like to think that the reason I mention that is to highlight my very different experience from my DD, and how my own background didn't really help me in understanding her situation. But it's perfectly possible that I've just been inflected by the default MN elitism, which is a very real and sometimes unpleasant thing!

I’m so MN I was banned from WIWIKAU.

What on earth did you do? Point out that you'd managed to get more in your car boot without even trying? Find the UCAS site without 100 people telling you where it was? Actually left your DC to make their own university preparations?

I left it because I couldn't relate to all the maudlin sadness about kids leaving for uni. My kid is bloody lucky to have reached 18 and independence after a terrible period with their health and I'm not in the same vibe as others on there.

@redskytwonight

I think I was probably just a teeny bit sarcastic.

posters congratulate students on getting a 2.2/third;

I haven't seen anyone being congratulated on a 3rd. The only one I saw about achieving a 2.2 was the parent of a graduate who achieved this in spite of adversity, so it was a massive achievement fot the student in question.

I find that there is a huge disconnect between the higher education topic on mumsnet which seems to only be populated by parents of A/A* students who attend or will be attending RG plus universities, and the real world of WIWIKAU.

I find MN hugely competitive, boasty, sneery and snobbish.

I agree about the sneering. It is rampant on some of the threads, usually by the same two or three posters. One of them actually said on one thread that DD's fist class STEM degree from an RG university wasn't worth the paper it was written on because it wasn't a top 10 university. This particular poster knows nothing about STEM degrees and lives in an extremely privileged bubble. (Sorry about the not so stealth boast, I just wanted to show an example of the bigotry on some of the threads, and heaven help you if you don't want to be a leech lawyer/banker/work for a big 4 organisation)