On Tuesday 12th June the year 12s and a few year 11s took part in a Q&A Alumni evening. The purpose of the event was to give them an insight into what to expect at university and how to choose both a course and a university. The students were eager to learn from first hand experiences and asked lots of questions.
The Nations Alumni represented a good mix of countries and courses, which meant that for every question there was a rich variety of responses and opinions. One of our alumni had gone to the USA, but found his choice was not for him and our students benefited from seeing his pragmatism about his choices and lessons learned. Another alumni studying law in London had done a gap year and despite not getting into Yale, Stanford or Oxford was very happy with London and her course. A third from Leiden University, the Hague studying liberal arts was very open about the emotional side of going to university and how lonely it can be. All alumni offered lots of ideas as to how to overcome this. One alumni studying film in London fascinated our film students whilst another had already completed her bachelors, an MA and a PGCE (at 3 different universities) so could offer a more reflective perspective. Finally a student studying sustainable development at Edinburgh was able to contrast her peers experiences of England to the Scottish university system and was able to calm fears about maths studies!
For 45 minutes the students were engaged and at times we had up to 10 students with hands up to ask questions. Once the official event was over around 25 students remained. We continued the panel style Q&A until refreshments were served and we moved to an informal format.
We'd like to thank the year 12 PTA for supporting this event and our 6 alumni for giving their time for a very productive and informative evening.
