Visiting Days

This is the time to visit individual academic departments and go in depth into the details of your child’s preferred courses.

Unfortunately, there is no agreed name for this kind of day: we at Aberystwyth call them Visiting Days; other Universities may call them different things. 

Check out the dates, and other information for Aberystwyth Visiting Days

We would always recommend you to visit the Department if you can. You will get a feel for its ethos and atmosphere; and you can ask the nuts and bolts questions:

• how many hours of lectures a week?
• how much of the assessment is done by exams?
• what percentage of a Drama course is spent on performance?
• what percentage of a science course is spent in the lab?

The answers to these questions can vary dramatically, even between courses which have the same name and the same UCAS number. 

You and your child should make every effort to find out these answers and to ensure that he or she is happy with them: nearly half of students who fail to complete their course in the UK say the course was not what they expected.

Once you've found out everything you can, and your child has made his or her choices, you will know what the A level targets are and you will be supporting your child through the stressful period of revision and examinations. Again, there is a balance to be struck between being really motivated to get the grades to go to the place he or she really wants to and being open to the possiblity that it might not happen, and that other Universities on the list have much to offer. The issues will become clearer on Results Day.