Southampton Uni open day

[RoundsRobin]

My DC is down to attend the Southampton Uni open day and I’m at that stage of booking train tickets, can anyone advise how long we should allocate for the visit? Is 2-3 hours enough time? Or longer? Thank you!

My daughter went to Southampton uni, she enjoyed the uni life there, she was in Halls the first year, then houses for the next 3, there's a lot of student accommodation.

It's a compact city, London was another choice but I think she'd have been a bit lost there. I'd allow at least 4-5 hours to get from the station up to campus, then to allow time to look at Halls and get a feel for the city.

I attended Southampton and now work there. I would recommend it, the standard of lecturing is excellent and much of the research is world class. Pastoral care/careers advice is great.

I think it's reasonable to assume that a department would put forward to talk and give tours lecturers and students who were keen to do so. If they are totally uninspiring and seem uninspired themselves, my DCs would have felt free to draw the conclusion that the whole department might be less than inspiring… that seems a valid point of view to me.

I think it's weird to be defensive about a university one of my DCs went to – it's no skin off my nose, I didn't go there! On this thread people are writing about their personal experiences, having a different experience doesn't invalidate the first one.

I would not say defensive. I find it baffling as it’s not an experience DD recognises. I’ve asked her and she did go there. So maybe you have all been unlucky. I have to say DD felt the same way about Manchester. Lecturers with a personality bypass. No doubt someone whose DC went to Manchester would totally disagree. It’s just a discussion as far as I’m aware. Lots of DDs friends did engineering at Bris and enjoyed it. I’m not sure they all chose based on an open day though. I think geography mattered.

It seems as though quite a lot of people have been 'unlucky' with their experience of Bristol - perhaps its notable because it's somewhere most of us were expecting to be impressed by? (Fwiw Manchester didn't make a great impression on my DD either)

Fwiw Manchester didn't make a great impression on my DD either

Nor mine. Too big.

@ErrolTheDragon Your sample size is??? Thankfully you aren’t running polls.

Oh, not huge but it's the one name that seems to crop up like this surprisingly often.

My eldest hated Bristol at the open day. My youngest has had the most amazing 4 years there and loves it with a passion. I love the city as it's so pretty and vibrant and near the water.

Go where you like the course/city. There's lots of choice.

Go where you like the course/city. There's lots of choice.

Quite so. It'd be rather disastrous if they all adored the same place!

@ErrolTheDragon Your sample size of those not liking Bristol. There’s more than me who did think it was good. As you can see above. So what one name keeps cropping up that didn’t like Bris?

Probably mine @TizerorFizz 😁
Although, DD had several valid reasons for not liking it - distance and regular train cancellations being the final nail in the coffin.

Pretty sure she meant me, @RampantIvy
I don't always note and remember posters names from other threads, so maybe it's mostly just us two and we caught the place on a memorably bad off day.

My son wasn't mad on Bristol when we visited last week either. It didn't feel very organised and waiting 45 Minto get the bus back to the park and ride didn't help

@Wakemeuuuup Only 45 minutes! At Exeter a few years ago now we waited 1 hour 45 minutes for the bus to the campus from the park and ride. She missed her first talk.
Omnishambles that day. The cafes ran out of food too. 100m queues for food trucks. Didn’t put off loads of DDs friends. Was not the best for DDs subject so she decided it was a bit too much like school!

To be fair, long waits at open days are par for the course, and don't tell you anything about the day to day aspects of attending university.

Open days have thousands of visitors so long waits are bound to happen.

I agree so that’s why DDs friends didn’t care! I cared about the food. We left after a bag of crisps and a coffee for lunch.

Im not actually convinced open days really get into the nitty gritty either. All seems superficial really. At city unis, just going for a day out gives you some info and feel about living there.

I know this thread is a bit old, but it might help people looking to tour in future:
Southampton was our 4th Open Day. DD booked at the start of June but this was the 1st Open day where we could just turn up to subject talks (parents too) without booking.

A fortnight before the Open Day a personalised "we're looking forward to seeing you" flyer/map arrived in the post. A week later, they put their programme on the website. A couple of days before the Open Day an email arrived telling us where we could park (a field at Wide Lane Sports Ground). The shuttle buses worked well - we didn't need to queue at 11ish and 4:30pm.

Maybe because the campus is more spread out, it seemed far less manic than Bristol or Exeter ( we'd visited the other Uni after a day of near biblical floods that saw most trains cancelled, so that wasn't busy either). There were plenty of staff and student volunteers around to direct us or simply explain things.

The accommodation self-guided tour around Glen Eyre had long queues to see inside some of the student accommodation so we just looked at a couple. With most of the students back home it would have been better to have a few more rooms (or perhaps other floors) open.

We went to Cardiff and Southampton at the weekend. Both were good. Southampton is son's favourite uni so far (we've been to 6 open days) but he's unsure about the course.

We enjoyed our visit to Southampton too although it was our first open day so not much to compare. The trains were reliable and the uni buses too. The lecturer who give the subject talk was very engaging and I could imagine the subject would be interesting, there seemed to be a nice feel to the place.

We were also impressed with Southampton- though no freebies