Destination Education
00:05:03 · Barbara Lestak, Ruth Benny
[00:05:03] S1: in [00:05:03] S0: their, and they're entering the upper sixth year or their last year of school, they're going to get quite busy with these applications quite quickly, aren't they? In the September, October?
00:05:15 · Barbara Lestak
[00:05:15] S1: Correct. Yes, absolutely. They will. And they need to really, really prepare. So if you imagine these students come in, they have their summer break, they come back to school in early September, some of them a little bit earlier, and they literally have a month to do their personal statement, to also get on top of their final year curriculum, which is even harder than the previous year, know, to take stock of all of that, get used to going back to school and making a life changing decision and writing the personal statement. So there's a lot to do, which is why we always highly recommend that your run up is at least before the summer holidays, particularly if you're just writing personal statement and you're just making your five choices. A lot of the universities do their open days at the beginning of the summer, so between sort of June and July time. Go to them if you can, they do have virtual ones. That should really be the beginning of the end of your decision making process, if that makes sense. You should have already looked at prospectuses before then and going to these open days virtual or in person is the sort of, is your final decision making. So, you're not going to go to twenty open days, but you'll probably go to three or four of the universities that you really like the look and sound of. And that should really just solidify your decision. Do you think that open days are really, I'm sure they're useful, also in
00:06:51 · Ruth Benny
[00:06:51] S0: my experience in my sort of circles, the courses speak for themselves. The brand names of the university speak for themselves. Peer pressure is the most important factor in a teenager's life in my experience. I mean, do think that, do the majority of students go to open days, do you think?
00:07:08 · Barbara Lestak
[00:07:08] S1: I think there is a solid mixture of them. Every time I've been to them, they have been always very, very busy. They are always packed, including sort of the taster seminars and the taster lectures. They are always, you know, full to the brim. So they are well received. My biggest advice to students is look if you can attend them, go to them. I wouldn't suggest going to you know all five of the universities that you've selected but maybe the ones that you're thinking about your last two choices because out of your five you have to make two. Go to them if you can because you get a lot of information from the website, you get a lot of information from the videos and YouTube clips, etcetera, etcetera. But what you don't get is the feel for the place. And don't forget, you have to live and breathe and potentially work depending on your student visa, in that location for three, four plus years of your life. And that's quite a long time. You'll live, breathe, eat, socialize. That's where your bubble will be. And if you go into that city and you think, oh my gosh, you know, I love it or I hate it, it's Marmite, at least you have had that experience. Yes, it's a little bit artificial because it's an open day and there's a lot of energy and feeling, but you walk around the city centre, you can go into the student accommodation, you can see it for real and talk to the students that live there and study there and get a good idea if it's, if it is actually for you.
00:08:37 · Ruth Benny
[00:08:37] S0: Yeah, I agree. It's very sensible advice, but got you to convince your teenager. We've probably just jumped one step ahead because we're talking about visiting the top two to three choices. How before that, how do we actually get to the choice? How do you choose the right university, the right course within that university? Are the ways that, you know, as parents we can guide them?
00:09:03 · Barbara Lestak
[00:09:03] S1: Yeah, so good question. So there's a number of different factors. So obviously there are the renowned universities here in The UK, Top Class, so Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial, I'd say LSE and any of the G5 Russell Groups. So students will always sometimes pick based literally on its legendary status, if you will. Prestige. Yeah, on its prestige, which is absolutely fine. That's no problem at all. But the first thing that I would do with students who are taking that pathway and those first steps into deciding is sitting down with them and saying, okay, you've obviously picked your GCSE subjects, you've picked your A level or A level equivalent subjects. What is it that you've picked? Because you've obviously picked them for a reason, you must enjoy them. What do you enjoy out of them? And getting that conversation going and seeing where there's a spark, or there's always a spark in one or two subjects. And then saying, okay, well, what TV programs do you watch that are not Star Trek, for example. And what reading have you done? Are you subscribed to any journals? You know, things like that. And trying to kind of understand where's that spark. And some students will naturally have it because they've developed that, you know, into sort of a hobby, into their own love. And then it's taking a look at, okay, going, okay, well, how does that fit into a degree, an undergraduate degree? And then looking at those undergraduate degree options. Now, the other important element is you can look at the prestige of a university as a whole, but actually what you need to do is also look at the ranking of the department that you want to apply to. Because the ranking of the university is done as one university, but that might be because three or five of their departments are absolutely top class, but the department that you want go to might not be number one at that university. So take a look at the ranking of departments.