The essential questions to ask at an Undergraduate Open Day

In this blog, BSc International Management student Mario has prepared his top questions to make sure you can make the most out of attending an Undergraduate Open Day, whether that be online or in person.

I decided to write this blog so that you can get an idea of what to ask when you attend an Open Day online or in person, so that you can make the most of it and avoid making the same mistakes I did when I attended my first Open Day. The first university Open Day I attended was at another UK based University and I remember feeling quite overwhelmed at all the information that was being thrown at me. I don’t think I had fully prepared for what the day would entail and what information I really wanted to find out about. But after attending the first few Open Days, I got the hang of it, and I knew what questions I wanted to ask and when to take notes so I could refer back to the information I was given. Of course not everyone gets the luxury of attending multiple Open Days at different universities and it’s good that more universities are hosting online Open Days due to the current global situation, as it means people from across the globe can book to attend without needing to fly to the UK. It also means more family members who may not have been able to attend an on-campus Open Day can attend virtually without leaving their homes.

To start with, it’s important to realise what information you can find out beforehand. You can then focus your questions around the specific areas that you want to find out more about. Here’s a rough list of the information that you should be able to already find out online:

• Location
• Tuition fees
• Courses offered
• Reputation
• Course structure

Now that you have a rough idea of what you can find online, you can narrow down the information that you want to find out about during an Open Day. While you can find all the information you could possibly want about a certain course online, you might still not really understand the aims of that degree and sometimes degree titles can be quite confusing (or all sound the same but cover different topics). These specific questions are excellent to ask at an Open Day as they are best answered by one of the course directors or undergraduate team.

There are often existing students from the University who are present at the Open Days or are hosting online Q&A sessions at some point during the day. At the University of Warwick Open Day, for my session at WBS there were student ambassadors available throughout the day, in the course sessions they gave brief introductions about their experiences of studying the course and then you had the opportunity to ask them questions. Definitely take the opportunity to ask them about what they think about the University, if they feel they made the right course decision, what they do in their spare time and if they’re a part of any societies or sports clubs, as that will give you an indication on what life is like at that University.

To make this a little more concrete, below you can see a screenshot of the list of things I wrote down before I went to my first open day back in 2017:

If you want a quick list however you could use the below, and please note that there is no right or wrong questions that you should ask, it really just depends on what information you want to find out about:

• What is the difference between course A and course B?
• What are the career prospects for this degree? What companies do graduates work for?
• (If you’re doing a placement year) What kind of support will I have before and during my placement?
• (If you’re doing a year abroad) What partner universities could I apply to?
• What do you look for in a personal statement?
• How many contact hours do we have per week for this degree?

Here are some of the specific questions to ask the student ambassadors:

• What do you like about this University?
• What societies or sports clubs are you part of?
• How did you find the transition from college/school to university?
• Which accommodation would you recommend?
• Which elective modules did you like and why?

There are lots of other possible questions you can also ask but hopefully this list will get you started and will make you feel more comfortable in knowing what to expect when it comes to attending your first University Open Day. If you can’t make it to an Open Day, most universities will also offer some form of live chat on their website, where you can ask their team all the questions you would have asked at an Open day. WBS runs their online live chat service daily from 10am to 12pm which you can access using the chat icon on their undergraduate course pages.

Finally, I hope my blog has helped to prepare you for your first Open Day and remember, there are no silly questions, but if you are nervous to ask questions at the time of the Open Day, just contact the recruitment team after. Good luck!

If you do have any questions or queries you can always contact our Undergraduate Recruitment Team via email at wbsugenquiries@wbs.ac.uk.

Interested in attending our next Open Day? Join our next virtual Open Day here.