Strong turnout for Virtual Open Days
Thursday, 25 June 2020
Last weekend, the University opened its doors - virtually - to thousands of prospective students and their families taking part in our summer Undergraduate Open Days.
Over 2,600 potential students participated in our Virtual Open Days on Friday 19 and Saturday 20 June. The majority of bookings came from students based in the UK looking to begin their studies in 2021.
Our aim was to replicate the experience of a live Open Day as much as possible in a virtual space. Attendees were invited to join live presentations from individual subjects, with opportunities to ask lecturers questions about their subject as they would in a typical open day setting. In addition to subject talks, live discussions were also given on key aspects of student life, such as finance, studying abroad and graduate careers. Vice-Chancellor Professor Robert van de Noort also took questions from guests in a live Q&A session.
Running parallel to these talks was the Unibuddy live chat, where prospective students could talk to current students in real time about life on campus and the subjects they study.Feedback so far suggests the events have been a real success, 99% of visitors sharing feedback rating their experience as Good or Excellent.
We would like to sincerely thank all who contributed to the Virtual Open Days. From the ‘faces' of the Open Day - our academics, support staff and students - to all behind the scenes, we are extremely grateful for your hard work and determination in making these events a success, and believe we now have a really strong foundation to build on this virtual offering for future years.
All talks and presentations are available to view on our Virtual Open Day page (to view, use opendays@reading.ac.uk ). Later this year, the University will hold two further Open Days in the autumn on 3 and 10 October 2020.
The University also recently held its first ever Master's Virtual Open Day on 12 June. The event also proved to be a great success, attracting more than twice as many bookings than previous face-to-face Master's events. Feedback so far has been extremely positive, with 97% of survey respondents rating their overall experience as ‘Good' or ‘Excellent' and 68% now more likely to accept their offer or to Reading. The event's webpage has had over 760 direct interactions to date.
Like our undergraduate Open Days, the Master's event featured live subject sessions presented by academic departments and opportunities to talk to current Master's students through the Unibuddy chat platform.
A big thank you to colleagues in Global Recruitment and Admissions and Marketing, Communication and Engagement for working together and supporting the live events.
If you'd like to find out more about our open days, please contact Phil Etherington.