Who should you take to an open day?

When getting ready to book your open day visits (which you can do using our handy Open Day hub), you’ll want to have a think about bringing somebody with you. If you're struggling to make a choice when it comes to your open day buddy, we’ve got some handy pros and cons lists of potential options for who to bring with you...

Parents

Lots of students choose to bring a parent with them on open days, which makes sense. Parents will often have an eye for detail and be able to offer useful second options. Just make sure you remind them that the day is about you looking at university choices for yourself. Though they’ll likely be as invested in your choice as you, don’t let them take over the day.

Older sibling

Older siblings make great open day partners, as they might have been to uni already. They’ll know what you should look out for and what you should avoid. That being said, they can be a bit distracting sometimes and can sometimes be a little embarrassing, but hopefully they can control themselves.

Younger sibling

Bringing a younger sibling is an interesting choice, as once again there’s the potential for them to embarrass you, but there’s also the chance that they’ll wander off somewhere and get lost (I say this as a younger sibling myself – it happens). However, they can give you a unique opinion on the university and give you warm glow of being a good older sibling by helping with their future university search.

Best friend

Bringing your best friend along on an open day is a great idea, since you may both be considering going to the same university, you’ll be able to get second opinions on the campus, and it can simply just be fun.

Don’t get too distracted chatting though, and make sure you get what you need out of the visit – if there’s questions you still need to ask but your friend is ready to go, let them know you’d like to stay a bit longer.

Going by yourself

You don’t have to bring anyone with you if you don’t want to. Going by yourself can be handy if you want to focus on finding out everything you need to know, and it can also help you build confidence, which will be handy when you eventually head off to uni. It might be a bit lonely, but that might push you towards chatting to other students and making a few friends along the way.