Uni visits - when?

[tenbyeight]

Just want to know when do people take their kids to visit universities? 1st or 2nd year of A levels? Or as soon as gcse results come out?

How does that work, turning up for open day if you don't have an appointment to visit a specific department? I thought each dept. set up its own special tour for its own applicants or prospective applicants. Rather than open-to-public drop in sessions.

tenby, if you google university open days there is a good website which lists them - both RG and others.

lljkk, I think you can, but you may not get onto a department tour/talk if you haven't already signed up.

Our local uni and fe college only offer catering type courses. My dc is more interested in food sicience type subjects. So far I think University of Reading seems to offer the best options. Have you studied there before?

Ljjk, each place is different - some you have to pre-book, some you sign up on the day, others run enough sessions that you can just turn up. Most ime your dc registers and they get a qr or barcode which you present somewhere on arrival to get your bag of general info and maps.

I think I will short list about 6-9 max, some top, some middle and some okay ones. I think I would spread the visits over two years as I expect some of the visits will involve overnight staying too. So I can have a plan A , plan B and plan C.
Thanks a lot for joining in the discussion. I didn't go to uni until I was in my late 20s as a pt student so I don't have any experience of visiting and choosing Unis at a young age.

Sounds good to me - except for one small detail which is that you should ensure your DC is engaged in the process, I'm sure you know that, just sub 'we' for 'I' in the above.

tenbyeight A site my ds and I found really useful was Push

You have to register, but they don't spam you with stuff you don't want. You can play around with all sorts of options it's worth taking into consideration - you can filter by Geography, by the expected grades or points your dc will be likely to get, by cost of living, and all sorts of things.

Far more useful than asking MN as - as you have seen- MN tends to be dominated by people who think all dcs will be fighting for places at some supposed 'top' university list, and that all our dc are of course going to get 4A*s at A-level. It doesn't always reflect life for so many of us.

I just tried Push - you don't seem to need to register to use the search - looks quite handy but when I specified the 'what', the list included places that dont actually offer the relevant course so you may need to crosscheck with other sources.

Thanks BackforGood
I will visit the site Push in a near future may be tonight.