Tired of answering the same questions over and over? Here’s the solution

If one thing unites university counsellors across the world, I suspect it is the sound of our own voices saying the same thing for the fifth time. We say it in assemblies, in one-to-ones, on carefully designed slides and in emails with the important bit in bold.

And still someone knocks on the door with the question we shared the answer to last week.

It isn’t that students don’t care about what we have to say. Instead, it’s like there’s an impermeable barrier between adults and students, and some messages just don’t make it through.

Yet when the same advice comes from someone a year or two older, who sat in the same classrooms and survived the same application process, students hear it, loud and clear. Their peers know who your students are, what life at your school is like and what pressure they’re feeling.

University advice morning

That efficiency of communication is the whole idea behind our university advice morning, and it has become one of the most valuable hours in our futures calendar.

Recruitment starts before our year 13s (17- and 18-year-olds in their final year of school) have even left. We give them the date a year ahead and ask them to put it in their calendars, so coming back becomes part of leaving.

What draws them back a year later? Lunch. Nothing fancy: we cook the most popular dish from the school menu, a classic British school dinner with a proper hot pudding, and it’s free. Add in the chance to catch up with friends, wander round to see favourite teachers and a generous helping of nostalgia, and that is the whole offer. And, I promise, it works.

We run the morning at the end of June, when most universities have broken up. Everyone is welcome: freshers, finalists, graduates and master’s students. We also invite alumni whose original plans didn’t quite work out: someone who has switched course or moved to a degree apprenticeship, for example. It’s real life and we want our students to be prepared.

The biggest factor in success is numbers. Aim for at least one alumna for every 10 students, and more if you can. Each wears a name badge showing their university and course, and we share the list in advance with our year 12s (16- and 17-year-olds who are starting to plan applications) so they can do their homework.

Teaching teenagers to network

Teenagers are not natural networkers and most have never been shown what to do. Therefore, the week before the event, we give them a short talk and a printed question guide illustrating three kinds of conversation:

A straight match: right university, right course. Ask everything, from contact hours to accommodation to what the alumnus wishes they had known.

Half a match: right course at the wrong university or the other way around. These conversations open eyes to alternatives and carry plenty across the divide – how courses and modules are structured, housing, clubs, the city.

No match at all: the conversations students are most tempted to skip are often incredibly useful. How did alumni choose between options? How long did it take to write their personal statement? How have they kept up friendships from school? What’s student finance actually like? Do they know anyone who regrets their choice? What would they tell someone applying now?

The goal is simple: talk to as many people as you can in an hour. Students bring a pen, make notes and, if an alumna is standing on their own, they have to go and talk to them.

The benefits of conversations with alumni

The clearest change I see is a willingness to look further afield. One student found me straight afterwards, buzzing: she would never have thought to talk to someone from a particular university, and now she was planning a visit. Another spoke to an alumna on a course and at a university she had no interest in, and came away with practical advice on making the most of all her open day visits.

Our feedback survey said the same: almost every respondent named a conversation outside their own subject or shortlist as the one that surprised them.

“I talked to someone from a uni I wasn’t really considering and now I am motivated to do more research into that uni and others.”

“I spoke to an alumna who wasn’t doing my course or at a university I was considering but I was still able to ask her about finances in London.”

They also came away with things that are hard to teach from the front of a classroom: how a campus feels in term time compared with open day, what it costs to get home, how a part-time job fits around a demanding course.

The first university advice morning takes some organising: invitations, badges, the lunch order, the briefing. After that, the morning almost runs itself. Once it is embedded in your futures programme, students expect it, and the year 12s who hovered nervously at the edge of the room this June will be the ones wearing name badges two summers from now, because they remember how much it helped them.

On the day, my job is mostly nudging the shyer students towards alumni. And in the autumn, when applications are being written, I find I’m repeating myself a little less.