Fully booked Offer Days?

[JediKnightingale]

My son has an offer at Russell Group uni and they have been spectacularly unhelpful regarding visiting on an offer holder day. He only got the offer a few days ago and immediately followed the link to book a place but they were all already full.

There was an email to make contact ‘if all dates were taken’. DS dutifully sent an email but was told they were full and to book onto one of the general undergrad open days (in July) instead. This is no use as he has to make his choice months before that. He is autistic so really needs to see the place to see if it is the right fit.

I called them today and explained the situation about my son’s condition and that he really needed to see the campus and department in person. I was told offer holder days were full and he should do the virtual tour instead - explained again this was not going to help. Then I was told to book the undergrad day in July - again not helpful for my son. I asked about a wait list - was told no. Asked if the disabilities team might be able to help - was told they only helped existing students.

The whole call left me with a bad taste tbh. I felt the attitude of the member of staff was flippant and bordering on rude. Yes, I know they must set a number of places for offer holders but surely it should be inline with the amount of offers given? He applied in Nov so not a late applicant.

DS has attended other offer holder days and they were brilliant. It really helped him get a feel for the course and the campus.

Should I try to reach out again or just suck it up? I know he won’t be the only one in this position and I don’t expect them to be able to just magic up a space however I feel they could have dealt with it better and more politely.

Do you think your DS would be ok with the uncertainty of just turning up? Reason I ask is that I don’t think there’s usually a high emphasis on an admittance list as such, or at least not at the many I’ve attended (I’m sure there’s some exceptions- so there is a risk you get turned away, but I don’t think it’s high). I bet you could just walk in pretty much. I find uni open days and offer holder days so badly organised- why can’t they start marginally later to allow for trains vs an overnight stay, ditto why no schedule until just beforehand. Anyway- not what you’ve asked, but if it’s not a mammoth journey and your DS could cope with the uncertainty, I’d just go to be honest.

@Bibbetybobbity At the last one we went to he had to sign in but no one checked after that so I suppose we could go. My older son is at a uni about 45m from this one so we could visit him instead if we got turned away.

My only issue is DS is a worrier and I know he wouldn’t relax if he didn’t have an ‘official invite’ - I’ll have to give it some thought!!

Which RG is it? Do they have an outreach team who’d support disabled students? They might be able to sort it - we would at my RG

My DS received his Warwick offer last week and also tried to book the offer holder open day immediately, but it was also full. We have emailed and are awaiting response.

Don't just turn up. That would make him feel even worse if he was turned away. Holders' days are usually a very different beast from open days with name badges pre made for you, events and trial lectures with students sorted by name into different groups and rooms, meal allocations, goody bags etc.

I would contact the disability services office at the uni tbh. I'd hope that an exception would be made for your son and he'd be accommodated.

Good luck!

I would definitely try contacting the disability support people and the department head. The people you have talked to so far are probably just following a script without the authority of making exceptions. If you still don’t get any joy, I would consider it a possible warning sign and think carefully about accepting the offer.

I have an autistic child too and she would definitely have to be there in person to make any kind of informed decision. Was your DS’s diagnosis on his UCAS? Is it was, you could reach out to the disability team. My DD has two offers (of 3 applications) and one (RG) has been proactively contacting her about their support. The other hasn’t and it’s already making me feel that the first one might be a better fit.

Im amazed they didn't offer a private tour! All the universities we looked at said if it wasn't possible to attend an open or offer day that either they were welcome to come look around on their own or have a tour and chat arranged.
If the university is willing I'd have your son ring them and ask if he can have a student ambassador (preferably doing the same course he's interested in) show him around. At the very least if he can go walk around on his own.

As the parent of two autistic students If they are that unhelpful now it would be a massive red flag in terms of actually attending.

Which university is this? It's not outing as they are loads of students at each uni.

This was my thought.
As someone with SEN if the Uni wasn't helpful before I arrived I wouldn't have considered going.

That's not great at all

I'd call again and speak to someone more helpful

Maybe this person was just covering the phones ?!!

I called one of DS unis today where he has an offer and the lady was really lovely actually and we had a good helpful conversation about the question I'd called about

I work in disability services in a RG university. We speak to both applicants and current students and I'd be very surprised if that wasn't the case elsewhere. Whilst the day might be full, I would recommend he just go to the campus himself and walk around. He might not be able to get on to the talks but actually, I'm not sure that matters as all that info will be available elsewhere.

He can see the campus "in action"'and then if he has questions about disability support he can make an appointment to talk to someone in their service.

We have a stand at our offer holder days where applicants can just come up without needing to be registered. It might be worth checking if that's the case too.

Have you looked on their website to see if they do individual tours at different dates? Many universities advertise that they do tours on Wednesday afternoons for example. The student ambassadors run them.

Universities are huge institutions just because you have a bad experience with one issue it doesn't mean the whole Uni experience would be poor.

I think they might be more helpful if your ds contacted them.

We are currently doing Offer holder days and I suppose that after the initial sign in you could wander as there have been no further checks but theres no guarantee of that and my DD would be too anxious to do it.
As a PP said though unless my DD was really certain she wanted THAT uni the lack of help for your DS at this stage would put me off a bit

Yes - your DS needs to make the approach. He will need to be able to this sort of thing for himself once he starts uni, so it's good to get the practice in now.
I would advise contacting the department covering his course rather than admissions. They may be able to arrange a private tour with one of their existing students.
If not have a look in the uni website under the 'visit us' section. Most unis do campus tours throughout the year. If he can book into one of those, he may be able to arrange to meet someone from the relevant department at the same time.
Failing that, it's possible to just have a wander round most unis on your own. Some have self guided tours that can be downloaded from their websites.

Many offer holder days are held before all offers are made! DD2 had spectacularly late offers.

For an autistic person it is a pretty big indicator.

Seriously, OP, just show up.

Just head to the university and there'll be loads of people milling around to help. They'll direct you to the right building.

When you get there, if you're asked to 'check in' on the door of an event just say that you've had issues booking and someone from the recruitment service was meant to make a note against your name. Look puzzled and stressed. The person checking you in won't care.

Just tell your son it's booked so he won't stress beforehand.

I run the offer holder events for my programme, I speak from many years of experience 😆

Would you feel comfortable to share the university name, via DM? I'll see if I can help more.

@KStockHERO

So your university doesn't have any provision for students with specific needs who didn't manage to book the offer holders' day in time? That's not good.

Neither is advising people to just turn up putting them at risk of further embarrassment at best and being escorted off the premises at worst. Are there no security provisions and safeguarding procedures at your holders' days? That's pretty shocking.

@JediKnightingale listen to the people who know what they're talking about here. Holders' days are important, well organised and at decent universities very informative (both for students and parents) and professionally run. These will be the same universities with good provision for students with disabilities. What would be a red flag would be if when you ring disability services, they can't accommodate you.

So your university doesn't have any provision for students with specific needs who didn't manage to book the offer holders' day in time?

I didn't say that. At all.

Neither is advising people to just turn up putting them at risk of further embarrassment at best and being escorted off the premises at worst. Are there no security provisions and safeguarding procedures at your holders' days? That's pretty shocking

Security procedures are that each programme has a list of offer holders who're booked to the attend the offer holder day. But these are mostly to keep a check on attendee numbers and to know which booked people actually showed up, rather than a security measure.
We get a list of people who're booked for each offer holder day to check against who actually shows up by the two rarely correspond.
There are always people who don't bother to show up. There are always people who come to an alternative offer holder day than what they've booked. There are always people whose bookings have screwed up for some reason and so they're not on the list but have 'permission' to be there. There are always people who just show up.

The OP and her son won't get turned away and definitely not escorted off the premises. The offer holder days are sales events, designed to convince offer holders to choose that university as their 'firm'. Embarrassing or escorting away a kid and his parent isn't going to sell the university to them, nor anyone in the vicinity who witnesses this occurrence, is it?

Agree with previous posters, reach out to a contact in the department your DS is interested in to ask about a visit. We did this for my DC (no SEN or other requirements, we just wanted to see if the uni was a good fit) the university were so accommodating, they arranged a parking permit on campus, we had a full tour of entire department, a half an hour meeting with tutor where we were shown examples of the type of work students were doing. The tutor also offered to shown us round the campus, I only emailed the department on the off chance that we could have a look round as we were going up to visit the town.

This university does rank very highly for student satisfaction and I can see why, my DC is in 1st year and is amazed at the great quality of teaching and tutor support.

I'm a university lecturer - my contact details are easily found on the department's page on the uni website. I often get emails from students asking for 1-1 meetings or chats and I will do these. So do try and find the programme lead and email them.