Viewing 27 posts - 1 through 27 (of 27 total)
  • University Open Days – midlife crisis
  • hamishthecat
    Full Member

    In Edinburgh with my daughter.

    Wish I was starting at university here… 🙁

    I really like Edinburgh.

    NZCol
    Full Member

    I’ll be honest, I didn’t know where this thread was going to go !

    hamishthecat
    Full Member

    🙂

    Fresh Goods Friday 696: The Middling Edition

    Fresh Goods Friday 696: The Middlin...
    Latest Singletrack Videos
    kcal
    Full Member

    lol also!

    daughter is starting out study in Edinburgh, about 4 weeks in – at school of art though, so not strictly university or college. Though glad to go (as were we) it’s an education in itself being away from home all round 😉

    thegreatape
    Free Member

    Took mine to St Andrews on Wednesday. Dropped her and her mate off then buggered off to watch the pros practicing on the Old Course followed by a nice pub lunch with my mate. No way could I attend a university open day with out (a) falling asleep and/or (b) arseing about to alleviate the boredom.

    km79
    Free Member

    I was hoping this thread was more along the lines of…

    CaptJon
    Free Member

    You should try being a lecturer. All the students stay 18-22 while every year i get older and older. This year i’m going to be twice the age of first years. And next year the freshers will have been born in 2000!!! THAT’S WHEN I STARTED UNI!

    teamhurtmore
    Free Member

    TGA – too many distractions? Which pub?. Hope you daughter loved her time at the best Uni in the Uk

    Was sent an awesome photo from mini THM from the stand behind 18 today. Before he claimed to be going to library to work

    If you need advice…

    hamishthecat
    Full Member

    at school of art though, so not strictly university or college

    Precision noted. My daughter has been looking at the Scool of Art too.

    miketually
    Free Member

    You should try being a lecturer. All the students stay 18-22 while every year i get older and older. This year i’m going to be twice the age of first years. And next year the freshers will have been born in 2000!!! THAT’S WHEN I STARTED UNI!

    Similar here teaching in a sixth form college. I’m now as old as some of my students’ parents.

    thegreatape
    Free Member

    Cheers THM. It’s her favourite at the moment. We went to the Jigger – first one we saw!

    teamhurtmore
    Free Member

    A good choice. The halls choice takes a bit of inside knowledge so happy to help.

    Ah the good old jigger! Did you go and have a putt on the Himalayas afterwards?

    (Bear in mind that accommodation in St A is v expensive and it’s not for everyone. It’s a unique culture and a special one. But doesn’t suit all.

    matt_outandabout
    Full Member

    I had same thought about Strathclyde Engineering today – making freakin’ F1 cars, flying drones and planes, autonomous cars, robot wars robots, sattelites, and aeronautical general coolness….

    Eldest_oab came away suitably inspired, the main aim of the day, as did I.

    leffeboy
    Full Member

    Cant decide if I would like to be starting again. It’s incredibly exciting but every course seems even more specialised and even more difficult 🙁

    am excited for my daughters doing it though. Eldest is now into second year at Hogwarts, sorry St Andrews…

    thegreatape
    Free Member

    Did you go and have a putt on the Himalayas afterwards?

    Not this time, but took the boys there last year. It’s a lovely place.

    cynic-al
    Free Member

    A pal brought her daughter up for this too today.

    Sadly as she’s sitting her As in 2 different years, they said they wouldn’t even look at her application (Psychology).

    Poor thing is bereft, loved it up to that point.

    Frankenstein
    Free Member

    A great moment in life at any age, university open days sign.

    Enjoy!

    Edinburgh is nice.

    Caher
    Full Member

    So so glad I’m not starting now. Mid 90’s with the ability to clear my debt in the summer.
    But it’s the best experience of your life.

    Northwind
    Full Member

    I was running an open day today 😆 Good halfway house, I get to hang around the university and they actually pay me money to be there. I’d struggle to get into a good one, these days. Though I was looking enviously at the BASE Downhill HND today, that’d be alright!

    Oh OK, I spend all day at work on STW, let’s do some work at 2.30am

    cynic-al – Member

    A pal brought her daughter up for this too today.

    Sadly as she’s sitting her As in 2 different years, they said they wouldn’t even look at her application (Psychology).

    Yeah, some unis are very uptight about single sitting- it does make sense on the face of it if you’re comparing like for like then achieving a set of grades in one year is obviously way harder than 2 or 3. And edinburgh’s entry standard for psychology is one of the UK’s hardest

    But not everyone’s so fussed, we (Heriot Watt) basically find it’s not actually a very useful indicator after all, because it just ignores all the reasons that someone might not do it all in one bite, it correlates strongly with disrupted education, learning challenges etc and that tends to grow a better student not a worse. And after all most scottish kids do 2 sittings. Basically every university has their own ideas of what makes a good student. (and their own supply/demand pressures! It’s not really about quality at all, except tangentially)

    If she’s really got her heart set on Edinburgh- they are good for psychology, especially research psychology- then there’s longer roads to get there, college etc. Edinburgh’s college articulation is frankly not very good, I think it’s basically not in their DNA so they work really hard at it and it just doesn’t really stick… But they do take it seriously, they have a really good guy in charge of it all.

    All 4 Edinburgh unis do psychology, if it’s the city not the uni that she’s so sold on. Our approach is a bit different, it’s very applied, less research/theory and more practice based, we actually beat Edinburgh handsomely on student satisfaction (Napier beat us both) and match them on graduate prospects, but we get killed on other metrics- entry requirements and research, we don’t do much psych research. And we have way better trees, and 8 more swans.

    davidr
    Full Member

    A like for Northwind because I went there. Employability is a big thing, I don’t want researchers, I want people who can do stuff.

    yourguitarhero
    Free Member

    I studied Psychology at Edinburgh – 99-2003, Multimedia Design at Napier in 2004 and am doing Brewing, Distilling and Entrepreneurship at Heriot Watt this year, so…. if you have any questions about universities in Edinburgh, drop me a line!

    I’m also from St Andrews (well, couple of miles away)

    midlifecrashes
    Full Member

    I had a long day out to Edinburgh yesterday too. Up at 5 am for the train, back at 11, sharing the last hour of the train journey with two different drunk hen parties and creepy drunk guys trying to get off with them.

    Still, middle kid likes Edinburgh quite a lot, and the student accommodation is a lot cheaper than Imperial. I think she likes it for the nerdcamp at King’s Buildings and the history of the geology department. The views of the crags help for a rock nerd too.

    Some of the open days could do with an extra hour at the end of the day, yesterday it was all packing away at 3.30, which doesn’t give you a lot of time if you have to travel to get there and the earliest we could make it was for 11am.

    I like Edinburgh too, that was probably only my fifth ever day in the place though, I ought to go more, and I’ve never had a night out or stayed over there.

    Roll on Birmingham next week, nice little campus one and only a couple of hours in the car.

    kcal
    Full Member

    @hamishthecat — I wasn’t being precise as I didn’t know where you were headed! I took her down for her interview, so that was a 3 1/2 hour drive (and return) for 15 minutes interview…

    email me if you want more chat / background. She is loving it – very hard work which is good. DOing a 1 year foundation so she can re-apply to get into ECA or GSA in some form.

    She was getting knockbacks from a slew of institutions on her UCCA application, trouble is that applying at say Oct / Nov in 6th year doesn’t give you much time to show a portfolio so that’s what she’s devoting herself to. Plus chucking stuff into the John Byrne Award and such like.

    [ son is now in 3rd year at Strathclyde doing aero mech, starting to find it quite tough, the more so as he’s on an ERASMUS year in Denmark !! ]

    DrJ
    Full Member

    Similar here teaching in a sixth form college. I’m now as old as some of my students’ parents.

    Young whippersnspper. I occasionally meet people I used to teach and think “f*** – you’re looking old”!! Then look in the mirror …

    DrJ
    Full Member

    Still, middle kid likes Edinburgh quite a lot, and the student accommodation is a lot cheaper than Imperial. I think she likes it for the nerdcamp at King’s Buildings and the history of the geology department. The views of the crags help for a rock nerd too.

    As an Embra geo-grad I may be biased but I think it would be a much nicer place to study than HW, notwithstanding that part of the geology department has decamped out there.

    jamiep
    Free Member

    I used to work at Edinburgh’s Psy Dept as a research fellow and p/t lecturer. It is very competitive to get in. I say consider Heriot or Napier if set on living in Edinburgh. I’ve pals still working in the Psy depts at all 3. Edinburgh uni has a better research rating, but that kinda only impacts on masters/phd students, not really undergrads. The specific uni is only part of the overall uni experience for undergrads

    hamishthecat
    Full Member

    @kcal – not a dig, a note to self. We flew up from Bristol Thursday night and made a long weekend of it. Daughter has a friend in first year of animation course at Edinburgh so she has some info. She’s also doing a foundation year but at at college down here in Devon. Many thanks for your kind offer.

Viewing 27 posts - 1 through 27 (of 27 total)

The topic ‘University Open Days – midlife crisis’ is closed to new replies.