Going 2 uni or kolij

Way back in the dark ages when I was yooni-going the choice was remarkably simple: I went where my father and his father had gone.  This was, being a Scottish highlander, Glasgow.  It didn't matter too much what I did as it was simply having a degree that mattered.  But, even in the '70s times were a-changing.  I took Computing Science as a filler, found it really easy, and fell into a wide range of job opps as a trainee programmer.

This trend has continued, with a little of the pre-70's thrown in.  A friend of mine, now one of the army of vice principals at one of my old alma maters, St Andrews, has noticed that the days when a MA from that ancient pile got you a job, even if it is in the apocryphal Mediaeval Basketweaving, are gone.  Its what you can do that counts.

Its also who you know.  If daddy works in the city then it's a real advantage.  If daddy is a lawyer in Edinburgh then you are far more likely to get a job devilling in a chambers there than someone with a better degree who comes from a former mining family in Lochgelly in Fife.  The Elite still exists, if getting slightly more dilute in their powers.  (But don't take that necessarily for a long-term trend.)

The majority of people going to College or University these days are the first person in their family to do this.  Its a bewildering array of establishments and courses (aka 'programmes') on offer.  I'd like to take this opp to put some of my experiences as a father of 4 uni/college-goers on paper, with an admixture of my own experiences as student and educator.

1. Go to degree fairs - these are organised by such as local authorities in school assembly halls of an evening.  All the local unis and colleges will be there, plus some professional bodies (e.g. medicine, law, civil engineering), some major national unis, and some advisory bods.  Go there with a strong bag and collect every prospectus you can see.  Go with an idea in mind (e.g. I'd like to be a Vet/Games Developer/Artist) and ask questions off the staff at the stalls.  There won't be any real hard-sell.  If they ask you to fill out a card, do, but don't give a phone number (email and snail-mail addresses are OK.)

2. read the prospectuses - well, not every word.  I'd skip the welcome to "Rutland Technical University from the Vice Chancellor" bit.  Go through and see what courses are on offer.  There will be some you haven't even thought about.  You should consider everything.  Use pens, postit notes, fold pages over.  At the end of a few hours you will have a pile of thumbed and annotated prospectuses (or, prospecti, if you prefer!)

3. sit down and consider this debris - what are you really interested in.  My eldest son found the only uni offering History & Politics as a single subject (i.e. not taught by two departments as effectively two half-degrees, but by one department as a single subject-degree).  My younger son found the three local yoonis offering Geosciences.  I found Zoology at the very back.

4. make a decision or two - local yoonis/colleges are cheaper to go to.  Accommodation can cost thousands over a year.  But, a good course is worth it in the long run (=life.)  Get your list down to a couple of different degrees (one is even better) and around half a dozen establishments.

5. make contact - phone them up.  This is wonderfully easy and a very telling way of learning a lot about a yooni.  If they don't answer the phone, try a couple of more times.  You'll probably end up talking to an admin jonnie.  (S)he will be able to answer questions about such as accommodation, travel, the going rate (i.e. what the likely entry qualifications are going to be, which can be quite different from that given in the prospectus), any interviews to get on the course, portfolios to be submitted, etc.  Get your list of questions written up in advance and make notes in the prospectus on what (s)he tells you.

6. make contact - speak to an academic.  These are the real people who teach the real course.  You will have to thole them for 3-4 years, so you must feel comfortable with them.  This is the really telling point: if they won't make space for you to make a personal visit and chat then write them off.  They are simply not interested in you as a person if they won't do this.  Make an appointment to see them and go.  Expect to spend 1-2 hours at the yooni.  Ask the really awkward questions: pass rates, drop-out rates, degree classifications gained, graduate destinations, staffing, equipment, course content, etc.  Yes, you can get this at Open Days, but, frankly, they are small beer compared to what you learn on a one-person visit.

7. make a final decision - go where you feel the vibes were right: happy, friendly academic staff, clear and Ok answers to questions, a course you fancy doing, geographical location (although I rate this one less as I happilly went to a non-city centre excellent uni and a small-town excellent one as well as a great city centre one.

8. you now know what you have to do to get on.  UCAS form compelted, etc.  Yada, yada.

9. what if your chosen course demands a subject you aren't currently studying?  Ask if there is a summer school to make this up or another equivalent you can get in the next few months.  If not then you have little choice other than to plan to read for another degree or to take a year more to get that extra qualification.

10.  straight to yooni or a year out?  Humanly speaking, a year out makes a huge difference when you are young.  An 18 year old is world-smarter than a 17 year old, and a 21 year old is an adult over a post-schoolkid 18 year-old.  It can also help earn a bit extra dosh.  But, any years put off are - think about this - chopped off the end of your working life.  This is the highest earning years of your life in all probability.  A year spent travelling to Jerusalem, Rio de Janiero or Rome is a year more working before retirement.  The choice is yours.

11. be prepared to work hard and enjoy yourself.  I loved all that generic classification stuff in Zoology (in the days before the proto-religious tree huggers and the anti-religious scientismists took over Biology *sigh*).  I loved how some lines of Algol made the processor jump.  And how you could write a program to write a program that didn't look finally like a program I would have written - ooooohhhhhh!  There are dull and heavy bits that have to be tholed: I hated reading all that French post-modernist philosophy (beautifully taken off by the Pythons in the line "c'est un choux?') at Edinburgh; bollocks, but bollocks that I had to pass.  There wouldn't be light without darkness, would there?

12. clearing - if you don't get the asked for qualifications there might still be some hope, especially if the course is not regularly oversubscribed.  They may ask for BBC, and you only get BCC, but they may have an extra 5 places, and they get the results a day before you (didn't know that did you?), so may have decided to take you anyway.  So - phone up.  If not, phone round the other establishments you were interested in and see if they will take you on clearing.  Move fast!  Some people have been turned down by a lowly Salford to be accepted by an uppity Manchester.  Its amazing how easy it can be to get into a major university to read a standard degree (e.g. natural science, social science) in clearing.

A final word in What Not To Do: don't just fall for the first thing you see offered locally.  An ad on a bus or in a newspaper is just that: an ad.  A visit from a college to a school with a speaker on the joys of being a psychologist is just that: a chance to begin thinking about courses and colleges.

Enjoy!