What to do ? Uni visit

[LottieandSeth]

DS17 has uni interview in London on Saturday. He wants his best friend to go with him (incidentally this friend had interview at same uni 2 weeks ago). Uni is train ride into London (approx one hour) then tube ride (DS knows his way round tube) .

Interview apparently takes 20 minutes (showcase of digital work ) .

Question is : do I go ? DS will sit on train and tube with mate - not me. They don't need me on tube and it's a 20 minutes meeting.

Want to be supportive but wondering if it's unreasonable to send him with just his mate ?

God no at 17 he won't want you hanging around.
Let him go with his mate !

If you want to feel involved make sure he looks clean and tidy and give him a tenner to get some lunch.
Good Luck.

What would your role be?

Who went with his friend? I wouldn’t be keen on him going with a friend in case he gets distracted/late and doesn’t do as well as he could in the interview.

My role would be paying for the train ticket ! When his friend went the friends Mum drove and then went and got a coffee while friend had interview .

I'm leaning towards letting him and friend just getting on with it

Yes just let them get on with it. I went to one open day with DD but quickly realised I was (rightly) a spare wheel and never went again. Definitely didn’t go to the interview.

It’s hard really because you are so used to doing stuff like this for or with dc - in this case the lecturers and staff mostly don’t talk to you at all so it’s best to chuck them in at the deep end imo which is exactly what I plan to do with ds

Just let him go with his mate. His mate obviously knows exactly where your DS needs to be and will be able to give him more info than you can. Just give him the money for his tickets and wave him off.

If he’s confident alone, I’d say don’t go. None of my friends with children who’ve had university interviews have gone with them, even when the travel’s been much more (my niece had an interview in London just yesterday and that’s about 3 hours of travel across 2 trains from here, and she went alone then met up with a friend in London after. Probably wouldn’t have wanted my sister tagging along )

Looks like I'm going - the friend has pulled out 🙁

How's it going? We took DS1 to a few last year and once we had booted him out at the Unis had a couple of really nice days at places we had never been to before.

I'd be keen to hear how it went, too.