Supporting your young person with university research

For many parents, it can be daunting as their young person decides to take the plunge into the university world. It can feel like an overwhelming decision to choose a course and decide where to spent the next three years. As a parent, you'll want to guide them, but might feel adrift yourself. To help you, this article offers three pieces of advice to give you the confidence to offer them support.

It sounds straightforward as a starting point, but it’s important that your young person doesn't rush their course and university research. Being determined to make the right choice can sometimes mean they dive into the specifics without looking to see what else is out there.

A simple UCAS search will help your young person find all the possible universities that offer their chosen course. You never know what variations they might discover. There are thousands of course opportunities available. For example, did you know that students can study a combined degree of Geography, Spanish, and Latin American Studies?

Create a mind map, table, spreadsheet – whatever works best for your young person to visualise all the different options. Together, you can prioritise what is most important to them. This will help them to narrow down their choices.

Does the course offer the modules they’re interested in? Is the location exciting to them? Does the university offer the facilities they need?

Whatever their criteria, make it clear which universities tick these boxes, so you can start to see the true contenders.

Our biggest recommendation is to visit the universities if you can. It isn’t always possible to do this: open days might not fit into your calendars that easily. Also, some universities are far away and costly to visit.

However, if you can, encourage your young person to join you for a visit. There’s something about stepping onto a campus for the first time. It can’t be explained, but they’ll soon gain a feeling if the university isn’t the right fit for them... or whether it could be their new home for the next three or four years.