Before I worked for City, University of London, I was a UCAS coordinator at a large college and responsible for organising our annual higher education fair. I knew little about how to do this at the time, though learnt by doing and organised three successful events. In my role at City I have attended hundreds of exhibitions at schools and colleges up and down the country and have seen what works well and what doesn’t. I hope in this blog I can bring together everything I have learnt in the 8 years I have been involved in higher education fairs and can give my tips for sixth form teams on how to organise a brilliant higher education fair and any accompanying workshops.
The nature of the pandemic means that you might want to run these in person or virtually, so I will give some tips for both!
When should you arrange your event for?
The date of your higher education fair
March, June and October are the busiest months for university outreach teams; on some days we have six or seven events a day, including fairs, talks and exhibitions. If it works in your yearly timetable, it may be best to avoid these months, or if you can’t, try and avoid Wednesdays and Thursdays which tend to be the busiest days.
It may also be worth consulting the UCAS and UK University Search events calendars (available on their websites) and to try to avoid putting your event on the same day as any of those events, particularly the big ones such as London UCAS – as these events may tie up entire university outreach teams and limit exhibitor attendance at your event.
At City, we work with a lot of schools and colleges who tend to run their events on the same day every year, so working around these existing dates may help you to increase the number of universities who are able to attend your event as well. Please don’t be afraid to ask us which dates to avoid when planning when to hold your fair, or even ask us to vote on a few dates.
The earlier you can let universities know the date of the event the better, so it is planned into events calendars early. We have had some schools approach us only a couple of weeks before an event which makes attendance difficult with little time to arrange the logistics and ensure colleague availability.
The timing of your higher education fair
Events at schools often vary in length, with the most common time being 11am – 2pm. The event obviously needs to fit in with your school day, but don’t feel they necessarily need to go on all day (we would rather work a shorter, busier event). Some schools have fairs in the evenings so parents and guardians can attend as well.
Inviting universities to your event
How can you contact new universities?
Many schools will have a list of university contacts who they invite every year. But what do you do if you want to find new universities to invite, or you’re organising an event for the first time?
Universities will have either outreach or recruitment staff/current students who attend higher education fairs, and we know which schools fall under which team if we have multiple teams that work with schools. When contacting a university for the first time, we would recommend avoiding general university-wide enquiries email addresses and spend some time on the university’s website looking for the specific team you want to contact. Visit the university website and look for a section called something like schools liaison, outreach, or working with schools/teachers. UniTasterDays is also a great way to reach out to universities to see if they will attend an event such as a higher education fair through the request an event area of the UniTasterDays website.
It’s best not to approach academic staff directly with career fair invitations – it tends to be outreach teams or student ambassadors (current or ex-students) who will attend higher education fairs. If you would like to have talks at your event in addition to the fair, let us know and we can work with academic staff and student ambassadors to facilitate these sessions for you. We know which academics can support with school events and so it’s still always best to come through us.
It’s up to you how many and which universities you invite – but our recommendation is to look at the destinations of your previous students to try and invite universities who your students most want to see (though we know some schools who invite others to try and increase the scope!).
Tips for organising an in person higher education fair
What information do universities require before the event?
It is really helpful if you can send universities all the information for the event in one go and with lots of notice before an event (it doesn’t have to be at the time you get us to sign up, just before the event). We often have to arrange our couriers at least six weeks before an event, so if you can send us logistics information in advance it is a huge help. Ideally the pre-event information will include:
- Delivery information – for example, restrictions and where and when things should be delivered.
- Details of refreshments or lunch – we don’t expect you to provide lunch but it’s helpful to let us know either way if this will be available, and it is always appreciated if you do offer it.
- Whether WiFi is available and whether there are electrical sockets – many schools ask universities to say if these are required as it may affect the floor plan if you have a limited number.
- Travel information – please include how to travel by public transport and driving instructions as your attendees will use both options, and parking information (or lack of) is useful to include too.
- The shape of the tables if they aren’t rectangular – we will usually bring our own tablecloths and these are rectangular but we know not every school has tables of this shape!
- Whether it is going to be particularly cold or warm in the venue.
- The schedule for the attendees throughout the day – if you have split by year group or by courses it’s really helpful to know this.
- It is best not to assume that our representative will have a DBS, so if your school specifically require one please make sure you let us know so we can choose the attendee accordingly (and ensure the certificate is with them!)
University courier companies
Some universities will bring their own equipment to a higher education fair, but some of us (particularly in London) may need to have some or all of our items for the stand couriered in advance.
Many universities use logistic companies who specialise in university event delivery, and will deliver for many universities at one time. The nature of this means we don’t always know when they will deliver, so if you have specific requirements for this e.g. don’t deliver before a certain date, we need to know that with as much notice as possible to tell the company (a month can be too short notice as we may have already put the order in with the logistics company).
It is worth making sure that your reception staff are aware that deliveries will be arriving for an event, and for you to consider where everything will be stored in advance of the event as well. We have worked at a few events where reception teams have had no idea the event is happening and so our deliveries go missing! It’s never ideal to do an event without prospectuses, so anything that can be done to avoid them going missing is really appreciated. Usually schools then put the boxes on our individual stands, or put them all in one place near the fair so we can collect them when we arrive.
Tips for your event
- It is a really good idea to prepare your students for how best to utilise a higher education fair before the event itself. We recommend doing a short talk that covers what the event is and what sort of questions to ask. I have seen schools create sheets which prompt questions (and have space to write answers) and produce guides and maps on the attendees and where their stand is – this is a great way to engage students.
- If you are inviting a range of year groups to an event it is best not to mix them in each slot; it’s quite difficult to jump from speaking to a year 7 to a year 12 and back again. Universities may also decide not to give prospectuses to younger students as so much can change before they apply. If you are inviting younger years it’s a good tip to give them a document to work through with questions for the universities that are appropriate to them.
- It is up to you whether you put a plan in place of where each university’s stand will be in the room (most do). Alphabetical works quite well as a fair way of allocating stands, but you may prefer to group by location or by interest levels.
- If you can provide drink refreshments it’s always appreciated – we are grateful for tea, coffee and water whilst we speak all day!
- It is quite unusual for universities to bring free bags to give to students at higher education fairs, so you may find it helpful to provide a free bag for your students so they can collect more prospectuses (this is very rarely done but I have seen it work well in practice!)
Tips for organising a virtual higher education fair
Which platform should you use?
We have attended so many virtual events in the last 18 months and they have all been arranged differently. The main thing I would suggest you do is use a platform you’re comfortable with, especially if there will be multiple ‘meetings’ running simultaneously. We have known some schools to pay to run an event on an external platform, so another company will organise this for you. This often means universities need to pay to have a stand, which we may not be able to afford to do for all schools, so please don’t feel you need to use a flashy platform to arrange a good event. We are used to using Teams, Google Meet, Zoom etc and so if you use one of those for your event that still works for us!
If you’re organising a HE Fair on a platform such as Teams you will probably need to have multiple ‘meetings’ running at the same time, with teachers hosting your speaker from the university. Make sure your teacher knows how to use the platform and has some tips on introducing the speaker, and chairing any questions from the students.
Make sure you test the meeting settings and chat with your IT department to find out if there are any restrictions for external speakers. We have attended some virtual events where settings prevent us from unmuting our mics, sharing our screen etc, so make sure you check these and plan to do a test event with us if you want to make sure everything is working as you expect.
What information do universities require before the event?
As with in-person events, its really helpful to have the event information a few weeks before the event to ensure everything runs smoothly. Ideally the pre-event information will include:
- The platform you will be using
- The content you would like us to cover
- Who to contact on the day if there are any technical issues
- If there is a test event and when this will be
- Safeguarding requirements for your school e.g. will your students be in class or at home, will they have mics/cameras on or off
- The schedule for the attendees throughout the day – if you have split by year group or by courses it’s really helpful to know this.
Tips for your event
- We know it can be daunting for students to ask questions at online events. It may be worth gathering questions in advance for the students and a teacher asking this on their behalf to ensure questions are asked
- If you’re inviting multiple universities to speak in the same meeting, make sure you’re clear what each university should cover and how long they have. Let them know you’ll need to interrupt them and cut them off if they run over time, or agree a signal to let them know how long they have left. Letting them know this in advance can save awkward moments later!
- Make sure any teachers helping you are prepped on the running of the event and what to do. We have worked at a few events where the teachers don’t really know what’s happening, and it makes the experience less effective for the students
We hope that you have found this advice useful. Please do always reach out to us at schoolsliaison@city.ac.uk if you want to talk about running an event – we are always happy to help!