University Open Days - views/insights/opinions etc.

[hellsbells99]

We have just done a couple of open days and wondered if anyone else has. Do we want to share views on this thread?

Good idea, hellsbells99!

We went to Warwick yesterday and ds was pretty impressed!

The campus is huuuge (998 acres, apparently) and it is about 30 mins by bus from Coventry station. It is like a little town, quite cut off from everything else really. A number of people we spoke to said it was definitely a "bubble" so students were happy to move out into the "real" world after 1st year.

The architecture is standard 1960s concretesville but it is beautifully landscaped and there is a lot of greenery. The accommodation is off to one side of the site. Sadly we didn't get inside any accommodation as the queues were massive but from the photos online it all looks pretty standard. After 1st year students tend to live in Leamington Spa or Coventry with a few living in Kenilworth (about 10 mins away). Both areas are well served with buses to the university. The buses all follow a circular route around the university and there is more than one bus stop (giving an indication of the size of the site!!). Students told us that the difference between Leamington and Coventry is that, in the former, the students have colonised particular areas, including whole streets, and in the latter students are more dispersed amongst the "ordinary" population. I was assured that both areas are safe.

The Arts Centre was fantastic - apparently it is the biggest outside London and is frequented by ordinary folk as well as students. There was quite a large Costcutter shop on site. There were quite a number of eating places on site including a cafe at the library.

We visited the science block which was very well equipped and all of the staff and students were friendly and chatty and seemed pretty honest! Everyone was very approachable and no question was too dumb to ask.

One thing ds immediately picked up on, though, was a lack of ethnic diversity. We live in London, though, so our perspective may be a bit distorted and the ethnic mix may have been pretty standard for anywhere outside London!!!! I would say that about 95% of the people we saw were white which seemed tiny to us but it could be that more of the white students just happened to volunteer that day, who knows?

This post is now massive but if anyone is interested in Chemistry in particular I can provide some further info on that.

Here endeth the sermon.

There are lots more posts on Open Days on the Higher Education section too.

I went to Liverpool with DD yesterday. I was also struck by the lack of ethnic diversity in the city centre and also among the current students and applicants. I come from London by the way.

DD is applying for Vetmed which tends to be white, female and middle class dominated, but I noticed this among other courses as well.

Compared to other Vet schools I have seen (RVC, Notts) etc I thought Liverpool was a bit shabby. DD went to Leahurst alone and thought it was great, but I though the main campus was not exactly impressive.

I must say though that all the staff and students were very pleasant and helpful.

Don't your teen Dcs mind you going with them? Mine objected strongly to the thought of having mum there, so sorted themselves out.

Most students I have seen on open days so far seem to have parents with them. Some of the presentations are specifically designed for parents.

I went by myself. The thought of taking my Mum would have horrified me!

DH & DS went to M'cr yesterday. DH very impressed with Comp Sci Dept; he said the teaching was impressive. DS thought it 'good' (he rarely shows enthusiasm though) but less impressed with the accommodation that he saw.

Birmingham & Nottingham this w/e.

We are doing a mixture here. I took DD1 to Manchester yesterday but she is going to Cardiff on the train with a friend. Lots of parents there yesterday. I took DD2 (year 11) to Liverpool on Saturday and she really liked it - I knew a small campus, with a friendly feel, would appeal to her.

We are doing Birmingham on Friday with the intention of also going for a quick look at the Aston campus. Then staying in the midlands overnight to do Nottingham on Saturday.

Re: Manchester. DD1's initially was not very impressed - busy main road through the middle of the 'campus'. We went to the 'life sciences' talk. The presenter, Ben, was a fantastic public speaker and very funny - but we didn't actually learn much about the courses - apart from there were 22 different ones. You couldn't go and look at the labs either. The uni had some lovely buildings and 'green' areas. We went to the pharmacy talk later and DD was very impressed. Loved the sound of the course and the 2 presenters including the 'Head' were very enthusiastic. Students union building had a lot going on. We didn't see the accommodation as none of it is on campus - most is in an area called Fallowfield which was approx 10-15 mins on a bus.

Sorry re: earlier post on Liverpool - we went on Friday not Saturday!

Hellsbells99, I'll be the fraught looking parent at B'ham & Nottingham!!!

My DD and I did Liverpool on Friday. She loved it, and I was pretty impressed. The campus us a mix if old and new buildings, and there's a pretty impressive, newly refurbished students' union. She's looking at Economics, and there's a course with a year in industry that appeals to her. The business school (Economics/ marketing etc) seems to have good links with industry. There's a year or a semester abroad option, with some Erasmus funding available if within Europe.
We were not impressed with the halls. Pretty much all the halls in the off campus student village are catered, and the meal choices look very 1970s school dinners to me ( with quite restrictive serving times as well). They are building new s/c accom on campus which will open this year, but we were told that the rooms were small - and I reckon that means miniscule, as the catered room we saw looked cell- sized, and badly in need of some TLC.

Off to Birmingham and Newcastle next week!

Hi. Just to say I went to Liverpool Uni not that long ago and had an absolutely fantastic time. It's an amazing student town and I loved the Uni campus being all together and in walking distance of the town. Admittedly the student accommodation is shabby when I was there so is probably worse now! In my 2nd and 3rd years I stayed in 'Unite' student halls. I stayed in Grand central which were opposite Lime Street Station. Altho slightly more expensive the rooms were soooo much bigger, nicely decorated, ensuites, much more secure and better set up. Also have common rooms and people to contact most hour of the day. I would definitely recommend looking at them for Liverpool uni as I found them much more pleasant and convenient for nights out on the town (no taxi or bus journeys home).

Thanks hardest, that's really useful. Will look at unite if she decides to go there (and gets an offer...and the grades!!)

hellsbells we were at that Life Sciences talk in Manch too. Were you the mum who pulled her daughter's hand down? I didn't realise until we came home and looked him up that Ben isn't actually a lecturer/scientist there. He's just a PR guy hired by the dept.
Ds was very taken with the course though (basically because he doesn't know what subject to choose).
Then we went to the chemistry talk yawn. Much less well-presented and very dry with lots of rambling about how close the peak district is but afterwards ds toured the labs and was impressed.

It's hard to extract the truth from the spin

You have disappointed me now Haffdonga - that is very sneaky!
No I wasn't the mum who pulled her DD's hand down - but that comment did make me laugh!

Can I ask a question from the other side of the visit? I'm an academic and I'm currently responsible for running the open day offering for our department. We have a talk from a very charismatic professor for a range of related degrees - he is genuinely one of us, not bought in. I am amazed that a university would buy in presenting talent when public speaking is meant to be something we can all do! Then we have lab tours, which I do, and I mostly devote these to talking about where the subject is going, career prospects and our philosophy and approach to teaching. I specifically don't talk about the structure and content of our programmes because that is all in the literature we give out, although I happily answer questions on that aspect. Also in my subject the differences between programmes at different universities are not pronounced. There is also a stand where specific questions can be answered. Does this sound like what people are expecting? Anything missing?

Hello chemenger
I've asked ds your question. He said he found most interesting the info about that areas the subject covered, where it's going and careers leading from it. He wanted details on things like how the course is structured in general e.g. if there is a year in industry, how it's managed. He also wanted to know stuff like what he would actually spend his time doing. e.g. amount of contact time, amount of lectures and seminars.

What neither of us found helpful was the sales job of the city/ university (we already know where manchester is on a map, thanks, and number of bars is not ds's priority yet). What we both felt we didn't get enough of was exactly what made this course different from other university's equivalents. E.g. if ds did chemistry at Manchester, what would be different and better (or worse) about Manchester's course than studying chemistry at Birmingham or Leeds. What are the specialist research areas that the department has? What are the current areas that post grads are researching etc.

Having listened to a few of these now, I think that it really helps when the speaker explains what studying this or that means. E.g. the chemistry guy at Manch brushed briefly over the first and second years all study 'core chemistry'. For an AS student only in his first year of A level chemistry, it is hard to envisage what 'core chemistry' actually covers. What do you actually do in the lab?

And as a non-scientist, I can say that an engaging speaker makes all the difference.

Hello chemenger. I agree with everything Haffdonga has put. DD wanted to know about structure in terms of lectures, practicals etc. For Pharmacy, She was very interested to hear she would have a personal tutorial once a week in a group of 6 - she said that was 5 people she would be able to get to know straight away. She was also pleased to hear that the same group would have another session each week with a mentor from year 2 or 3. She wanted to know about careers, industrial/clinical exposure, the chance to do part of the course abroad etc. The talks needed to give out all the information necessary as it was difficult to get information from the display stands as everywhere was so busy. The problem with the Life sciences talk at Manchester, in DD's opinion, was it tried to cover 22 different courses and didn't really tell you much about the courses at all - although it was a highly amusing talk and very well presented. HTH!

Thanks Haffdonga and hellsbells99, that's really useful. I think we assume that everybody reads all the bits of paper we give them so we should talk about something else, but I think that is not as true as it was in my day (early middle ages to today's students). I try very hard to deliver information rather than a sales pitch and I try to avoid comparisons with other universities because a) I don't know enough about them to be confident I am giving a true story and b) we have been subject to outrageous hatchet jobs from other universities in the past and I don't even want to give an appearance of doing down other places. For me the important thing is to get students who will be happy here as well as fill the course, and you only do that by giving them as much realistic information as we can. It isn't all about a sales pitch.

I'm currently having battles with DS who will NOT read any of the literature that is sent.

He wants to go to uni but is very lazy and expects us to do all the arranging for him! Both DH & I are refusing to do the leg work and leaving it to him, but is is soooooo frustrating.

We are going to look at Chichester in Nov

Going back to when DS was looking around unis, the person looking after the group is SO important to the success of the visit. What we found useful was combining visits to four unis during Autumn half term, with a family week away. Although I know some people feel it isn't necessary, most prospective students seemed to have parents with them.

I have no strong feelings about parents coming along, except that it makes the day much more difficult to manage in terms of numbers. Its easy to talk to a group of 10 people in a lab, when you double that for one parent each it is more difficult to physically fit them in and have them hear everything. I have found that even suggesting that only one parent per applicant comes on a lab tour, so that I can take more potential students, causes outrage.

From parental experience and as a 6th form tutor I would strongly suggest that you need to be aware of the smallest details when visiting/reading the literature.For example some will have small print regarding payments due before loan date for halls, distance from cheap shops, ease of travel to and from home etc. I have known past students who weren't aware prior to them starting about how much this affects their lives and a couple have left due to these types of issues even when the course was brilliant