Initially, I did not expect the event to have as much of an impact on me as it did. I had visited one university open day at Sheffield Hallam and decided on just that one. Luckily, within the first hour of the event, I had come across 3 additional choices; Leeds, Huddersfield and London which offered interesting courses with entry requirements that were safely within my reach and that mainly relied on my portfolio.
Attending the workshop was also useful as it gave advice on how to present our portfolios, for example; end with your strongest piece- this is what will be looked at for the longest period of time while you speak with your interviewer/ member of staff, keep it simple, keep it clean etc.
It also gave some reassurance to us regarding how the interviews will go, informing us that it will not be as long as we expect and the questions a lot simpler than we perhaps anticipated.
I enjoyed talking to the various members of staff from various universities, they put my mind at ease about a lot of things- mainly entry requirements, as a lot of the universities informed me that the acceptance grade is a Merit and also that their end decision a lot of the time relies on the strength of my portfolio.
The booklets and handouts from each university also were very useful when making the final decisions at home to apply for through my UCAS, I was able to refer back to them when deciding which universities offered the courses that applied most to my existing works content as well as which line of work I may go into in the future. The whole experience that came from attending the event has boosted my confidence and strengthened my resolve in my choices a lot, I was able to decide without much hesitation after the event, which universities I felt were best suited for me course wise, as well as location wise, along with which catered to my abilities and strengths the most.
Overall, I feel that if I had not attended the event, I would not have been able to make a well informed enough choice to decide on the right selection of universities for myself, and instead would have panicked and decided on the one option that I felt comfortable with, mainly because of how close it was to my own home as well as the fact that an Art and Design course at Sheffield Hallam was familiar enough for me to apply and complete easily enough because I had experience with the field during my time at college, which looking back on now, I know is not the correct choice for me and the university is also not what I want for myself as a first choice. I wouldn’t have considered applying for the foundation course at Barnsley College without having gathered the information from the UCAS event that I needed to make the correct final decision for myself and for my future.
