Oxford Open Day

I was told the earlier I go, the better.

Hey,

I was told the earlier I go, the better. So currently, I am Finishing my Year 10 Courses, and I wanted to go visit on the Open day. I realise the colleges are open for touring and there are some admissions talk, however these Tutor sessions, What are involved in these??

Am I too young for these Tutor sessions??

Any Information provided is better than none!

Somebody done told you wrong! What exactly do you expect to get out of this that you couldn't find out in a couple of years when you actually know what you're planning to do? These open days are really targetted at year 12 students and others who're planning to apply in the upcoming admissions cycle.

So, Anyone, Who has any other opinions??? I will feed you a forum later, as well as a few of my mate (who are going to Oxford) which says go as early as possible.

Are you sure you didn't misunderstand i.e. they were saying you should go early in the day, as opposed to two whole years early?! Because i literally cannot see one advantage of going to an open day in year 10.

Why did these people say it was a good idea?

Most people go at the end of Y12 / beginning of Y13. However, there's nothing to stop you going in Y10. In fact, universities quite like it when students are thinking ahead - very often we see students who scuppered their own chances of getting into a particular uni / course because they didn't get the right advice and so did things like choosing a BTEC and then wanting to study medicine. There's a good reason why many universities start working with kids as young as Y6.

However, at this stage you're going to be using open days in a slightly different way to the sixth formers there. They're trying narrow down which course at which universities they want to apply to in a matter of weeks.

You should be going there to
- see what a university is like
- explore some different subject areas. You can study anything that you study at school now, but there are lots of new subjects available - politics, engineering, anthropology, linguistics, Middle Eastern studies, Japanese, biomedical science, physiotherapy.... the list goes on. On an open day, there will be a talk for each subject offered at that particular university, so you can go along to find out what new subjects are all about
- have something to aim for
- find out what qualifications, subjects and grades you need for different subjects (bearing in mind that these requirements will vary from uni to uni)
- talk to some current students and find out what uni life is like
- see where students live (i.e. have a look at the halls)

So, because you're not really trying to pick out a particular university, there's no need to travel a long way. If you were, for instance, from Birmingham then visiting Warwick would be entirely reasonable, but Edinburgh would be a little excessive until you're a bit further down the line.

Overall you should visit all the unis that you want to apply for, but for now there's no need to go to more than one or two unless you really want to.

i've never seen a year 10 before in the 9 college open days i've helped at.

We had one at Magdalen a couple of years ago but they were slightly confused about what "college" meant in the Oxford sense and they were looking for somewhere to take their A levels....

That must have been a very awkward conversation!

Anyone assisting at the open days this year?



You get quite a lot of people turning up to your college, sometimes sounding really enthusiastic about research they've done, only to say they're interested in a subject not offered there.

You also get people saying they're interested in courses that don't exist e.g. 'economics'.

And then there's the completely under-qualified people who you have to tell they don't stand much chance. Much harder than doing it on here!

Year 10 is certainly early for open days, but it's not that early - there will be plenty of year 11s around next week.

Thinking earlier about university, especially thinking about which subject/course you want to study, is certainly not a bad thing.