Are university open days usually on weekdays or weekends?

[Stowickthevast]

Hi, just wanting some advice if people can remember whether universities tend to have open days on week days or not?

DD has just started Y12 and signed up for a taster day at a Cambridge college which is on a week day. Her school only lets them take off 2 days a year for uni visits. I'm just wondering whether it's best to leave this one and save them for the summer? I thought most open days would be on weekends but have heard quite a few are during the week.

This is a taster for two of her three A level subjects and could help her choose what she wants to do going forward.

At the moment, I think she is interested in Oxbridge so likely to be doing an early application this time next year.

Another factor to consider is, if your child has a part time job, they will need to plan ahead and book time off and/or swap shifts. It is an extra complication but actually useful experience for adult life.

Additionally, particularly with Open Days in Y13 and subject to your child being happy with that, they could attend some if their Open Days unaccompanied - that would reduce pressure on a parent's leave allowance.

Maybe too late for you but of use to others, but nothing stopping them going a year early to spread them out. There may still be some this month rather than waiting till next year. We did that with our DS and had two June/July and two Septembers which took away the stress of going every weekend in open day season, especially as we ended up travelling large distances all over the country!

A year early maybe too soon to look at specific courses, but you get the feel of the uni and can do the generic talks, accommodation tours, and departmental tours.

You can also do your own tour of unis at virtually any time if you don’t need the talks and tours - even during Summer. Yes theres nothing formal going on, but you can walk around to get a feel of the uni and the city. It’s what we did during Covid - we got a security guy asking us what we doing at one campus uni but he was only being chatty/friendly and gave us a few tips as to which buildings were open to look around.

@Stowickthevast My dds were allowed 3 days off and we couldn’t get to some as they boarded. We toon them to have a look around others in the holidays. Durham were great about a non open day visit and do was UCL. You don’t need to go with hoardes of others. Just visit the top 3 choices. It’s not as if you cannot visit Cambridge colleges as a tourist! We did that at Oxford.

Just visit the top 3 choices.

DS used open days to determine his top choices and eliminate others that looked good on paper.

Yes we went to several during the summer of 2020 with DS2. We were definitely not the only people looking round Leeds uni campus one August day. It gave us a sense of where it was, where the halls were, where his dept would be, what the city was like.

I think we're going to do this with Bristol in a few weeks as the actual open day clashes with Halloween so will impinge on her social life.

But as she's not decided which subjects she wants to do, I'd like her to go to a few subject talks too. Also until she decides, it's hard to pinpoint which unis have the best course for her. So I guess we're just considering the more academic ones for now.

If you’re clearly a young person plus parent and you mention to the porters at most oxbridge colleges that you’re a potential applicant they’ll usually let you in even if they are “closed” - as long as it’s outside the main exam period (April/may/June time)

My DD’s initial top 3 choices were not her choices at end. Some were an absolutely no after visiting despite being popular eg Durham is marmite I think.
Some left field ones like Queens Belfast (they paid £100 travel to GB students so we went) ended up way up her list.
Fond memories of time we spent together visiting open days.
Ironically she ended up at one we missed official open day for as train was cancelled due to a storm but we did visit and have a campus tour. Most universities offer these.
There are also offer holder days in spring.

Subject talks are very similar across many Universities, so try to do different talks at different Unis and you get the gist of the structure, topics, etc. Obviously some will be very different, but most have pretty common content. The content, i.e. structure/modules etc is also usually shown on each Uni's website so even if you don't say, go to a subject talk on Maths at Durham, a subject talk on Maths at Warwick along with looking at Durham's Maths' webpage will give you/her a pretty good idea of how the course will look.

My DS was similar, hadn't a clue what subject, so we did subject talks in Maths, Physics, Engineering, Business/Economics, Actuarial Science and Natural Sciences!! Obviously not all at the same open day at the same Uni! He soon decided Physics and Engineering weren't for him after just one subject talk in each. Likewise decided actuarial science was too niche. He was good at Maths but didn't really "love" it, and only drawn to Natural Sciences because it was basically a "mix and match" of lots of different subjects, so ideal for someone who can't decide!

He ended up doing Financial Maths at a Uni where he hadn't even attended an open day, let alone a specific subject talk anyway on Financial Maths nor even an offer holders day (cancelled due to Covid!!). We'd just been to the campus and had a walk around on a "normal" day and he decided he liked the campus and researched Financial Maths courses on that Uni's website and other Uni websites (the few that do it). He didn't even know Financial Maths was a thing until he sat through a Maths subject talk at a different Uni and decided he liked the idea of it being a mix of Maths, business, economics, etc. Turned out well in the end, despite Covid restrictions and a miserable first year, he was generally happy and came out with a First, and is now an actuary in one of the UK's biggest insurance/pension firms!

@Stowickthevast Clsshes with Halloween ?! Heard it all now. She needs to focus a bit more next year.