Corona Cohort - Year 12 - 2021 - NO 'Self isolating' please.

[Oblomov20]

We just want our kids in school. Please. If at all possible.

And driving lessons. And good Mental Health. And happiness.

In-and-amongst all this Covid nightmare and lockdown debacle.

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I did happen to notice in your link shimy that the targeted by employers list was basically Russell Group. Employers aren't very imaginative. it does just essentially mean they turn up to careers fairs there. Birmingham are probably very insistent on getting them there, too. They have a crack PR / marketing squad!

Btw, business management not one I know a huge amount about but I think the sine qua non of the unis there is Bath. But Birmingham is always a good choice imo. It's not bad for anything. Kids I have taught have always loved it whereas other big unis get mixed reviews.

Business and management are available at so many unis it must be very hard to choose!

There is someone here who works at Birmingham can't think who?

I work at Birmingham Uni but not in a student facing role. I used to work in a big four accountancy firm in the city until two years ago. Certainly most graduates on their graduate scheme seem to come from Birmingham/Warwick/Nottingham. My impression is that Birmingham is a well respected and solid choice for any subject, so you can’t really go wrong.

Unfortunately, Bus.Mgt and the very nature of it is quite general (which is why the right uni is even more important), so as long as they include an elective for 'Entrepreneurship', ds is quite happy with all of the aforementioned unis but he can only choose 5!. The course content across all of them looks equally interesting, unlike 'Social Policy' which is far more specific.

I thought there must be something 'extra' about Birmingham that makes it so highly targeted but like Piggy said, they've probably just got a good PR team.
I doubt the city location is a factor as the London unis on the whole, don't seem as highly targeted. @orangecinnamon I will give LinkedIn a look again! Lots of good tips.

@crazycrofter I notice you didn't mention Bath there, in which order would you have rank Notts, Birm, Bath & Warwick when you were at the accountancy firm?

Hi @shimy, it was the Birmingham/East Mids branches we were recruiting for so the candidates tended to come from the local unis. To be honest, other grads joined at different times from a much wider range of unis. The two best I worked with were from Aston and Coventry, but the ACA grad scheme entrants seemed to be from a narrower range of unis.

I don’t think any of the unis you mentioned would be preferred over the others to be honest.

@Croft thank you. Echoing Piggy's point about so much emphasis on RG unis, I'm not sure whether the study/survey didn't include any non-RG because they didn't make the cut or simply because they didn't bother. I saw another source yesterday that put Leeds Becket as the most targeted uni in the U.K, perhaps it is, who knows? it's all a bit bonkers really with each research body having their own agenda.

Sorry @crazycrofter!
I guess @shimy this is where those little qualifiers come in I.e how close to a city, campus based, distance etc although I understand it can.be hard to get teenagers THAT engaged at present.

I've just had a big. Got DD to sit with me on the PC looking through a few different Biology Course summaries. She had no idea they would be so different to each other. I said I would print some out for her. It's now very late but she was engaged for over well hour talking about it all :-)
I showed her the table I had made using the list of the top 30 uni for Biology league table. I had entered what grades were needed and whether an EPQ or core maths made a difference. How long it would take to get there on the train (and how many changes) cost, and how long it would take us to drive there and lastly what the hockey standard is like (either uni or nearest club).. DH says I shouldn't be doing all this, she should - but I know she won't so I don;t mind. I do expect her to focus on the courses itself and start looking at online open days etc. It's not me that's going after all :-)

I think it is so hard when they have to research a 'big' subject (such as business, biology, history) because the choice is vast. I guess it becomes easier if there are other variables , such as distance, sport (for some people whether it is RG). It's actually especially hard if the ability is around BBB - AAB as a lot of unis plonk offers in that area and not many too far below, so you get the whole glut there!

There is nothing wrong with parents helping. Everyone needs a sounding board and a wise head when making a huge life decision!

I’m going to pretty much ignore employability tables for DS as although he isn’t sure exactly what he wants to do it will be STEM and he has ruled out engineering . He’s lucky as once college get going he will get a lot of support and they know what they are doing with these fields.

My criteria is somewhere they can switch to an integrated Masters if they want to further down the course and where placements are an option .

It is going to depend so much on the subject I think.

What a great result Heifer, your spreadsheet of the things that matter to your DD was enough to ignite her interest. Trawling through the different websites isn’t the easiest either, when they still can’t imagine when they’ll be able to practically visit these places before deciding. I assume much of this Y13s would be working blind/off virtual visits only if they didn’t visit pre March 20. My DD was really surprised how course content varied by Uni.

Wow I've just read my post back and you can tell it was 2.00am when I wrote it - missed whole words out! :-) It was a big WIN :-)

Yes I think my table helped her. I haven't looked at employabiliy tbh as DD has NO idea what she wants to do. In some ways doing a Biology degree is keeping her options open. She likes Biology (doesn't love anything) and knows that it's a good degree to have in other fields too.

Most of the courses were asking for AAB (Durham AAA) so it's definitely doable. DD is aiming for AAA (A in Biology) recently been given early predictions of AAB. (A Psychology) but has NO interest in doing it at uni.

It's really hard to know when to try to talk about uni as she was feeling very overwhelmed last week with school stuff. She had an online Zoom chat with her 9 friends last night until 1.00am and was just in a good mood and started chatting to me about needing a backup plan. if she didn't get an A in Biology. It was then I showed her my spreadsheet showing that a lot of courses at good uni, made offers with a B. and it went from there really.

As most things with teenagers it's all about the timing :-)

Thanks to all who post on here as the information is so helpful.

I did catch DD rolling her eyes at DH the other day when I said "I read on Mumsnet" .... :-)

I said to DS the other day that the rest of you on MN are talking about University and please could we in the not too distant future. He kind of sighed and said ‘go on then’ and was more receptive than he had been so thank you all !

@orangecinnamon All little qualifiers considered. @Heifer well done, that's pretty meticulous with spreadsheet, good skill for DD to learn about planning. DS did a community project during the first lockdown and I had to convince him to use a spreadsheet to record his results instead of using Word. He did a fantastic report at the end with proper data analysis & charts and was quite pleased with himself.

I really don't get the whole 'don't get involved, leave them to it mindset'. I think my idea of supporting your dc is very different. 'Each to their own', as they say!

@piggy even It's after all those variables had been taken into account that we ended up with the conundrum of targeted universities .

@FoolsAssassin An Integrated degree is very important for that field as is for Architecture i think. They're not going to get much 'employabillity' with just a BEng. All the unis that ds is looking at are with Placement. Did the same with DS1 and he's got a placement for this yr (hoping lockdown doesn't mess things up).

It's fun looking at Universities though! Why shouldn't we indulge? I only went for a year straight from school. We had to find courses in the big 'UCAS' book (may have had a different name). The paper was so thin it tore easily. You'd be bussed to a big universities fair and in between picking up free pens would get a prospectus or order one to come through the post. Even things as simple as knowing where a Uni was located or was campus based seemed like hard work. I remember not cottoning on that Sussex Uni was anywhere near Brighton..and I loved spending time in Brighton then.

@Shimy I do remember being very impressed with my sister's boyfriends Birmingham prospectus...he did some kind if Business degree. I shall stalk Facebook and report back...I know he has done well for himself as was able to stay living in Surrey after graduation..many of us moved away to cheaper parts of the country.

DS is not interested in looking at virtual open days yet. School are running an intro to UCAS Zoom next month so hopefully that will be a spur.

Anyone any tips on Architectural courses? Dd has narrowed down a few Unis. She wants to be based down South mainly, in a large city. She's identified a few in the top ten. Any, apart from Bath with a very international outlook? Her friends are mostly all from Overseas and DD was born in H.K. She has always said she wants to work overseas and feels absolutely stifled in our very rural area!

I know very little about Architecture, as we are all Science/ engineering/ medics/ vets here ☺️.

@orangecinnamon at being impressed by somebody's prospectus. I'm sure you meant the 'content'. I'll await feedback from FB stalking.

@teta The one person I know studied 'Architectural technology' which isn't exactly the same as architecture (focusing technology to design whilst the other is more just designing???) . They went to Coventry then followed it up with a postgrad at The Florence school of design, in Italy. Now doing very very well indeed.

I really hope our lot get to visit universities in person and not have to do virtual again.

Blimey. I better start! On Ds1. I'll make a Heifer list!

I too have the Shimy problem that's ds's interest is too general. He's looking at 'Business'. So vague, I'm gonna struggle to narrow it down.

Do your schools have Uniforg? It's great!

@oblomov20 The more the merrier. I am so grateful for this thread.