Uni open days

Shit!  I had 21 hours of lectures, plus expected lab time, and obviously reading and assignments. Plus we had field trips in the holidays to pay for.

I lived with some fine art students who had 2 hours of formal lectures to go to and they missed half of them 🙄

Cletus – she chose St Mary’s . Closest of the Hill colleges and lovely grounds . Also right next to the Bill Bryson Library and science site. Yes, price was for private houses in Y2/3 . Cheapest was about £180pppw.

Shes a grammar school girl, and was worried about the posh private reputation at Durham. Reality is there are all types there. Her friendship group cover all sorts including 1 lad (much to her surprise when she found out!) from Eton. Very much not the Boris type though.

Shes a grammar school girl, and was worried about the posh private reputation at Durham

I went to Durham 87-90 – weirdly I didn’t have much idea of colleges and went for ‘no preference’ (not sure if that’s an option now) and got given University College, it was unpopular at the time because it was single sex (as was Hatfield, Mary’s and Trevs). So we most definitely weren’t the demographic that Castle now has!

I’ve fallen down Mary’s steps a few times, I will freely admit. Great times.

And when did a ‘full time’ course become a lecture or two a day (same lecture repeated morning and afternoon for ‘those who like a lie in’!) and a couple of labs a week.

If that were actually true, why run the morning lecture at all?

Shes a grammar school girl, and was worried about the posh private reputation at Durham. Reality is there are all types there. Her friendship group cover all sorts

One of my biggest fear with eldest looking at Oxbridge was this, but its worked out fine. Private school students vastly outnumbered by state schools at Cambridge, when he’s worked open days he’s had to deal with private school parents complaining that their little darling might not get in.

Curious about the college system at Durham – eldest didn’t get the college he applied for at Cambridge but their pooling system – which bears no relation to a Sorting Hat – got him into a college that he says now was a much better fit for his personality. Is it similar at Durham?

dantsw13 – thanks for the reply. Glad to hear about your daughters experience as mine is also a little apprehensive about private school sprigs.

RE. colleges she had to list all 13 (iirc) in order of preference and was allocated her 8th choice – Van Mildert.

I am not aware of any “sorting” process – she is planning to study law and is from a (good) comprehensive school if that has any bearing.

Durham college system different to oxbridge, in that you apply to the uni, then are allocated a college. Lectures are all central, but with a college tutor. Social and societies very college based.

i think in many ways you see more private kids in Durham than reality, because the Bailey Colleges with shared rooms (old town, central) attract that type, whereas the State kids prefer the single en-suite  rooms & facilities of the new colleges.

My Daughters mate is at VM and is loving it btw.

aka the Poly on the hill ;-)

MoreCashThanDash, I’m at the Lancaster Open Day on Saturday ;) as I’m an admissions tutor, so will be presenting.

I hope you have a good day. If you need any info on Lancaster and the uni experience, then just let me know.

@reggiegaskett only just spotted your post while killing time before the physics lecture!

May take you up on your offer – she’s loving the look and feel of Lancaster, so am I.

They have pros and cons. Main con being that I was so shallow at 17 that I picked my first choice university on the grounds that they gave us free pizza on their open day.

Not sure about shallow, but the first supermarket I saw up into Lancaster itself was a Booths

If anyone is doing the Cambridge open days, Trinity College is maintaining it’s reputation for the best range of freebies

For anyone confused about how student ‘debt’ currently works there was another go at explaining it by Martin Lewis in this podcast.

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-martin-lewis-podcast/id520802069?i=1000661080814

His main message seemed to be that the amount of debt is irrelevant. The ‘loan’ should be considered a graduate contribution scheme. One in which the more you earn over £25,000 per year after graduating, the more you pay at 9% on earnings above that £25,000 threshold.

He expressed concern about the maintenance loan being too low and problematic as it is reduced to a minimum as parental income rises from £25,000 to about £50,000.

As a follow up, #1 child got a 2:1. Now needs to take that next decision: what to do next?

All the best to those choosing where to go and what to do.

Thump is off to Strathclyde to study Prosthetics and Orthotics..

Limited choice of uni’s to visit because he wanted to do physio in Scotland, but came back buzzing after the Strathclyde open day.

Had a face-face interview  – they were impressed that he does his own bike maintenance and knew what allen keys were. I’ve trained him well.

Got an unconditional based on his Highers: Has 35 hours contact time a week and gets an NHS stipend (plus elite athlete grants etc). Sounds like he  knows half the uni already ! It’s meant to be an excellent course so good luck to him :)

Great to hear the open days are helping kids plot a future course, LittleMissMC is pretty set now on her first two choices now, just Bath to see in September.

Was funny at Cambridge yesterday, hearing two separate parents express concern at the “low” number of private school kids getting in – presumably 25% isn’t enough when merit comes into it.

Heads must have exploded when they heard that the uni offers bursaries for kids from families below £62k income. And college bursaries as well.

Back on the trail again today at Bath Uni – decent course and accommodation, nice campus, fantastic city, bloody big hill between the two. Lots of very sporty folk, she thinks she should have worn one of her British Gymnastics tops.

She’s decided not to bother with Lincoln next week, so our travels are now complete and she needs to tidy up her UCAS stuff to get it in.

Was funny at Cambridge yesterday, hearing two separate parents express concern at the “low” number of private school kids getting in – presumably 25% isn’t enough when merit comes into it.

Heads must have exploded when they heard that the uni offers bursaries for kids from families below £62k income. And college bursaries as well.

Cambridge suits some people. Glad to hear that there’s support for folks whom it suits and who can be helped to attend.

Yeah I was at Bath too (first full-campus we’ve looked at). The focus they put on a placement year was a real eye opener.

I just read an article on Guardian where a student advises taking a plug adapter because the rooms are lacking. Those Bath flats had fourteen sockets!!

Yeah I was at Bath too (first full-campus we’ve looked at). The focus they put on a placement year was a real eye opener.

We were looking at sciences, and they really are keen on the placement or year abroad. And there was no shortage of sockets, even if they were rather crudely retrofitted in the older rooms.

Slightly strange vibe at Bath. Eldest went to Cambridge and we’ve done the open day there, but it felt to both of us that there seemed to be more “flaunting” of wealth and status than at Cambridge, in the way folks looked and talked, very much “Look at us, we’re looking at Bath” which seemed a bit pretentious. Daughter mentioned it first as I didn’t want to sway her opinion, but we both felt it.

Cambridge suits some people. Glad to hear that there’s support for folks whom it suits and who can be helped to attend

The Cambridge colleges are some of the richest organisations in the country, they want the best students, regardless of background and make money available to those who need it. I’m sure there’s cliques of private school bell ends but they aren’t obvious and easily avoided. Encouraging number of ordinary folk at the open days looking round wide eyed at the history and Hogwarts side.

And as the accommodation for all 3 years at Cambridge is all college owned, it’s competitively priced and there’s no dodgy private landlords to deal with.

We were at Sheffield uni yesterday looking at the accommodation and it’s not cheap, fortunately she has at least decided on a course. We still have one or two to look at but I think she will be staying up north. We sat in a presentation about the course and it seemed really interesting and I was sold ( even more than my daughter). All she needs to do now is some actual work to get the grades…

We have been doing a few recently, my daughter has wanted to do archaeology since primary school.

She wants to do a BSc which discounts a few of the big universities.

so far we have had Newcastle which was pretty good

Preston is surprisingly well setup for archaeology but maybe lacking in some other areas. They organised a very good open day.

Glasgow made practically no effort, it felt like they are sitting on their laurels. The course tutors seemed bored and ill prepared.

York was great, they made it easy to get to, a full program of activities and really enthusiastic tutors. I think she will end up here. I like the open spaces, accommodation and brutalist architecture. If she wasn’t doing archaeology she would study chemistry and she can mix the two very well here. I think she will have a lot more transferable skills here than Preston which could be important as many archaeologists end up in other roles but always keep an active interest in the field.

We have Durham in a couple of weeks. They are making a lot more effort than Glasgow which is good. It is the closest to home in Cumbria but actually the hardest to come home from, we would have to pick her up in the car. We like Durham but I suspect it will feel a bit small as a city to live in

jp-t853
Full Member

Glasgow made practically no effort, it felt like they are sitting on their laurels. The course tutors seemed bored and ill prepared.

So one of the problems of an open day is that it really can just be a sales job, but on the other hand a ton of the department staff simply do not want to be there. There’s a weird feedback effect, a lot of individuals and courses and departments insist that the admissions tutor stuff be done by senior academics- sometimes it’s seen as a promotion/opportunity, most times it’s seen as a massive inconvenience but even in the best case scenario where they’re really bought into being part of the admissions process, even then a ton of the staff just do not want to do the coalface stuff and have to talk to hundreds of potential students.

I’ve heard flat out “this is a waste of time, we see no benefit whatsoever” and then seen the guy who said there was no benefit still get made to do it, so he turns up on saturday and makes damn sure there’s no benefit to him heing there.

But suggest to the same arseholes that they give up the power of student selection and decision making and have admissions professionals and that’s when shit really hits the fan. A glorified administrator representing MY course? Just, they forget that they chose this when you make them come to work at the weekend and talk to youths.

Sometimes you really do get useful info from all of this but you’ve always got to really keep it in mind that you might be getting the grumpy arsehole that puts you off the perfect course, just as much as you might be getting the superb sales job for a course or institution that you’ll hate.

(when I went to the open evening for my uni, I met a grumpy arsehole who did not want to be there, he was flat out insulting and just the worst student experience imaginable. I ended up on his course anyway, he ended up being my main lecturer and academic contact for 2 years and he was absolutely brilliant. Great lecturer, interested and engaged and helpful and supportive. Still kind of an arsehole, to be fair. He eventually said to me “Oh you met me at an open day? Well I see my job at those as being just to put off timewasters, if you came to the uni anyway despite that it proves it was meant to be”. Just, get to ****

I expected that was the case but for me Glasgow didn’t get anything right apart from look beautiful.

No effort to help make physically getting there easy

No helpful signs or people helping to point visitors in the right direction

No organised activities for the relevant courses

No free drinks ? half joking it is not hard to organise

No accommodation to view

It is also a big extra cost coming from England as it is four years so they at least need to try not to put us off

Yeah that does sound poor. I always figured that basically if someone felt lost we’d ****ed up, theirs is a confusing campus so make it unconfusing! Nothing worse than going to a new place and just feeling lost and confused and frustrated, it’s so offputting.

In case they didn’t mention it, second year entry is often an option for a level students but it’s not for everyone, coming into the established 2nd year is a big stress for some. Parents tend to latch onto it a bit but I know I’d have dealt badly with that frinstance.

Also do always check out bursaries and scholarships, scottish unis often offer pretty wide deals for RUK students just because otherwise competing on 4 years for 3 is pretty damn difficult. Like, my lot literally just did “buy 3 get one free”

But do that anyway, you’d be amazed what’s available- when I went to uni I just assumed because I was an average middle class student I’d get nowt, so I didn’t bother to apply, in 2nd year I found out I could have got a decent amount but I just missed out because I didn’t look. So when I ended up working with this sort of thing it drove me ****ing crazy. Donors specify mad stuff like “One grant of £1000 a year to be given to the most worthy student from an NW postcode studying dentistry” and then you go 10 years and literally nobody is eligible, or there’s one person and they’re minted but they get it anway. Squeaky wheels and all that.

Too many years ago I had 12 hours of lectures a week….including one year with one lecture at 9 on a Monday and another at 2 on a Friday.  It was tough getting to those I can tell you.

Blimey – that would have killed me. Pretty sure I had some much shorter weeks than that. My Dad thought it was amusing to call our house at 7am every day to say “I’m at work why aren’t you?”

I remember going to as many open days as i could, driving myself in my Mum’s car. Sheffield was notable as i’d recently passed my test and it was snowing, so driving around the hills trying to find my accommodation was fun. I ticked the overnight stay box so I could check out the Union and spend the night on someone’s sofa and get the full experience. I was mildly impressed that it was Wednesday and they still hadn’t washed up the dishes from their Sunday Roast.

Durham was random because I got interviewed by my History teacher’s postgrad tutor. I remember discounting it on the basis that i’d die of alcohol poisoning as there wasn’t much else to do there.

Birmingham was a long train journey with a terrible hangover.

If she wasn’t doing archaeology she would study chemistry and she can mix the two very well here.

I work with several of the York academics in that area, and they really are world leading scientists, as well as really nice. One of the few (only?) places in the country where the two seamlessly blend, as the BSc side of archeology can be a bit patchy. If that is her thing, certainly recommended academically.

I also work with a Glasgow archaeology academic and hear mixed reviews. I was at Durham geography for many years which has close links with archeology (though it’s a different faculty) and they are also a good team – especially on the external contract side so they get involved in lots of cool commercial projects.

We were impressed by York, made a real effort on the open day with the free P&R (as did Bath).

@ahsat thanks for that feedback it very much reflects the conversations we had with the tutors

@Northwind she has predicted grades of 3 x A* so she should qualify for £1,000 per year grant at Glasgow which helps. We have also identified a £1,000 grant based on my wife’s maiden name :-) and there is a generous trust fund in our village that contributes to the first year of university. No doubt there are others to be found. Maybe we should add them to the PSA’s. I was actually born in Maryhill but pay my taxes in England so miss out on free places.

I don’t think joining in year 2 is an option we dismissed that after a very short conversation.

I was at Durham geography for many years which has close links with archeology (though it’s a different faculty) and they are also a good team – especially on the external contract side so they get involved in lots of cool commercial projects.

I might have asked this before – do you know Pete C then?

Not sure about shallow, but the first supermarket I saw up into Lancaster itself was a Booths

I certainly never shopped there when I was a student!

Anyone go to Imperial at the weekend? My first experience (amongst Sheffield, Bristol and Bath) of no academic staff because why would they bother on a sunny weekend in the run up to a new intake? It’s clearly an accomplished establishment and luckily for us we were primarily there to answer the ‘student in London’ question. Which of course is where you need the voice of the undergrads.