Going to a taster day for your subject can help to gain insights into it, and students can often come back feeling motivated.
Some Year 12 students enjoy going to University Open Days during the Autumn of Year 12. This can help to give you direction and motivation about what you’d like to do in the future and what you need to do to get there.
With both of these ideas, there are the following health warnings:
- a taster lecture, or what you hear about at an Open Day, only gives you a brief insight. Degrees are made up of a huge range of topics, delivered by a large number of teaching staff, so don’t base decisions on just one experience;
- taking days out of school can be counter-productive so when it comes to Open Days in Year 12, choose the ones which are on a Saturday (there are plenty!), and going to one Taster Day/lecture might make good sense, but going to several is unlikely to be a good use of time (there are plenty online, and look at the Channel Talent offering as well).
Remember that we will have a significant Higher Education Programme in the summer term, when we visit two different universities (which are likely to be the University of Birmingham on Friday 20 June 2025 (date tbc) and Lincoln University or Nottingham Trent University in early July). We will also have two universities visiting us for our Higher Education Evening on Thursday 12 June 2025).
You can do your own searching, but here are some links to get you started for Sheffield and Nottingham, our closest centres.
University of Nottingham (unitasterdays.com)
Subject tasters | Undergraduate study | The University of Sheffield