Going to a UCAS fair is a must for people considering going to university.
To be fair even if you aren’t considering going to uni it could be well worth going, you may speak to someone that changes your mind or just confirm that you have made the right decision to not go into higher education.
A UCAS fair (may be referred to as an ‘education exhibition’) is when lots of universities gather in a venue to promote themselves. Depending on where you live in the country and how big the fair is will determine what universities go to that fair. I went to a fair in London so it was a big one that most of the UK’s universities will attend. The each have a stand that normally consists of a banner explaining who they are and what courses they offer. There will be prospectuses, which is a book of every course that university has to offer and other information regarding the campus, accommodation and student life etc. Most uni’s have bags/pens/badges and little gifts to give away so its worth going for the freebies.
The first things you need to decide on is which course to study, not every university will offer the course you want so at least you don’t have to visit every single stand. Then a rough idea of the location: how near or far you want to be from home. Once you have these in your head go and chat to the people on the stands, sometimes it will a lecturer you speak to or an admissions officer that will know lots of details about the course that interests you. However the best people to speak to are current students. At Staffordshire they send Student Ambassadors to education exhibitions to tell you about how they are finding it so you get a genuine answer to all you questions.
It is important to ask all the questions you have in mind and really find out if it will be the right uni for you. I would recommend preparing questions before you go these could be, if you have a hobby do they have a society for it or are there facilities in the local town, what is the accommodation like, what’s the campus like- is it in a city or the countryside.
You can find out about universities you hadn’t even known about or conclude that some unis are just not for you. You only have 5 choices when choosing your universities so you need to start eliminating some from you list of options by gathering information.
You can book onto a UCAS fair via their website https://www.ucas.com/events/convention-exhibition
