Advice on choosing a uni

I misread things all the time.

I recently read online, that this year universities will be all face masks and no Bras!

On a second reading, I realised it said no Bars.

Absolutely feel your pain - our son never talks to us as he always says we don't understand him and so we always find things out too late.

He is very difficult we us, although I don't put it all down to ASD, as I too was diagnosed with ASD but consider myself more sociable if I have to? Maybe he is fine with other people.

There is no point trying to suggest things eg he is very into football and Durham have discounted tickets for Newcastle FC - but he would rather go to all the other small clubs in the area on his own??

We said that if he went regularity to the Newcastle matches, he would start seeing the same people and perhaps start up a football friendship/

He was able to make plenty of friends at School and still keeps in contact with them on the PS4 and they all still go out together at holidays (except recently, because of Covid).

But as we keep trying to tell him, over time, they will all go their separate ways and he will need to make new friends somehow.

To be honest, we can't see how we are ever going to be rid of him - he doesn't like being with us and visa versa :(

I don't where you live, but we are near Southampton and they did actually offer a very similar course and it's only an hour or so to London, so he could have gone to Imperial.

Either way, he would be able to commute from home if there was an issue or have an easy bolt hold Ie he could easily come back for the evening or weekend)

Being over 300 miles away is not a good idea  or a long distance from home was a very Bad idea. The complete of support from Durham (certainly at the beginning) just made things worse.

With any luck you will learn from our mistakes and make sure the University is well aware of your daughters condition and that there are strong lines of communication :)

There different ways of defining families.

There is the obvious family linked by blood.

The street where I lived as a child was also a big dysfunctional family.  Terraced houses where almost everyone knew who lived where or at least their race and nationality.  In our case, neighbours helping our family in getting children into school.

The university is also a family.  You spend at least three years making both social and professional contacts.  And a friend, who had two Oxford degrees, told me that getting into a top university is very important because you mix with the best and these friends and contacts stay with you throughout your career.

JohnS Thank you so much for this, you have articulated all of my concerns around what may go wrong. Especially the promise lots and deliver little aspects of the university support services, and then not knowing what is going on - with my daughter we have this with friendship issues and it is only at the point of total disaster that we get to hear about it when something could have been done to resolve the issue if only she had said something sooner.

Your learning points are really valuable and I will make sure my husband reads them and we bear it in mind. It seems like it is such a balance of enabling them to be adult and make their own decisions whilst trying to protect and be involved so it (hopefully) works for the best.

Robert124 I am so sorry to hear about your experiences, and thank you for sharing them with us - it is important I think to understand what other people go through.

I was (and still am) the only person who has been to uni in my family and there was definitely a 'get above their station' vibe from my grandparents and to an extent uncles and aunts too. It's very sad. My husband's family is very different - lots of PhDs/Doctors/Oxford grads there but that has its downsides of expectations that are required and a denial that ASD is even a thing as it is linked with a lack of 'intelligence'. The irony is that the most academic members of my immediate family are clearly on the spectrum and yet deny it completely and criticise me for getting the kids assessed and 'labelled' (in their words). 

Families hey??

As was I!

Plastic said:

my wife's is 16 years old

I was so happy when I realised I'd misread that.

Very interesting and detailed account. I think the lesson to be learnt is that we should carefully choose the best fitting university for the student.

By best fitting I mean not just the best ranking, but look at distance from home, support available etc.

Robert124 said:

she just pretended the problem didn't exist and would  go away.

Ostrich mode - always a clever response.

Well we have had a pretty toroid time with our eldest son with ASD (he is worse than me (As i coped OK at University).

He managed to get 11 A* and got into Durham, as they did the course he wanted to do. We live on the South coast and so Durham is a 5hr train journey or an 1.5hr by Metro & Plane.

Luckily, my wife's sister works at York University accommodation office and so was able to get our son in a quiet room opposite the cathedral.

His first experience of Durham, was when he arrived to take his room, and to say "rabbit in headlights" was an understatement !!

The University knew about his ASD and said that they would provide a "Mentor" - at the same time our son had to apply for a disability grant for his ASD (about £2K) that the University takes to fund the mentor.

However, things didn't go well (totally unknown to us!!!) - Firstly, our son was OK on the academic side but the social aspect was causing so much stress that every morning he suffered IBS and as a result missed a lot of morning lectures.

The he got the Flu and this only came to light when the cleaner found him in bed and eventually the University contacted us. This caused a number of stressful days for my wife, as she wasn't able to help. During this same (around the middle of the first term), the mentor tried to make contact but as our son was very ill, wasn't able to answer the door and the mentor never followed up!!!

At the end of the year, our son managed to take a resit and pass and we sent a rocket up Durham University for being totally useless!.

We also found out that our son's GP had stopped his Sertraline, just before he went to Durham, without any alternative - no wonder he got so stressed.

He had to arrange a house for the second year, but basically with a stranger from his course (and two others from another course) - he never made any friends

He went back to Durham for the second year, to this house and by November had been signed off with stress/anxiety and was back at home - his course suspended. Luckily, our son managed to off load the room onto someone else.

Our son was a mental wreck until the new year and my wife got him a job at a local store. At the same time we got him weekly private counselling, arranged through the local Autistic services.

He was able to re-start the second year and we found him a quiet room in a private halls of residence. On his first night back, he was on the phone to my wife in tears, saying it was too noisy and wanted to come home. My wife refused and read him the riot act and he stayed on. He was OK after that but because of Covid all students were sent home March 2020.

He hasn't returned, even though we have had to pay for 51 weeks contract for the halls of residence. 

He passed his second year with a 1st and is now going through the final year of the degree, with the option of carrying onto do a Masters degree.

When our son re-started the second year, the University got their act together and he now speaks to a Mentor once a week and studies are going OK.

At some point he may well have to go back but says he doesn't want to go back to the private halls of residence NOR does he want to go back to a Durham University halls of residence (for the 4th and final masters year).

So, he has to decide where he is going to live for his masters, starting October 2021. He has the option of doing a Masters at another University.

When he had problems after the first year, we offered our son to restart an degree at a closer University but he refused.

Hopefully, in your case things will be better but our experience shows how things can go wrong and our son doesn't share anything.

Our take on this.

It was mistake going to a University that wasn't commutable from home.

The GP shouldn't have stopped his medication without offering an alternative.

We should have made sure that the University provide contact details of the Mentor.

We should have insisted that the University provide plans on how they would assist our son, again with contact details

We made sure that certain emails do do with our son's ADS were also copied to us.

The accommodation is still a problem that we have to solve.

The bottom line is that our son having ADS is considered a vulnerable adult and as such the University has a duty of care to him.

Just just don't their word for it, make sure that you are prepared. It just shows that even a top University can fail to provide the necessary support.

Hopefully, you and your daughter will be better prepared than we were??

Best of luck :)

In my family it was worse, it was and is all mixed up.

For a start my parents were immigrants/refugees who never learnt to speak decent English.

One of the excuses my mother gave me for not sending me to school was that there wasn't any point since I didn't speak a word of English, I wouldn't understand any thing that was being said to me.

The real reason was, she didn't have any idea how to send me to school so she just pretended the problem didn't exist and would  go away.

Wow - I'm really sorry to hear of your experience.    

My wife's family are similar - no-one is allowed to 'get above their station' so they hold each other back in the gutter - and if anyone dare step out of line, they are instantly excommunicated by the whole family.

Naturally we've done something wrong so they haven't spoken to us for over 7 years......

They've always made it very clear that 'I'm not family'.

I had a very different school life, the older I got the worse it seemed, when I looked back.

I will start in the middle.

When I was in my mid thirties, my mother was reminiscing about our former neighbour, she was telling me about what a fine woman she was, how she saw me playing in the garden one day and took an interest in how old I was and why wasn't I in school.  It was that neighbour who actually registered me with the local primary school, around four months late.

Naturally, I asked my mother why I wasn't in school at the same time as other children and why was my sister was in school and not me.  She gave me a list of excuses and said that she didn't send my sister to school either, another neighbour did that.

A couple of weeks later I mentioned this to my sister.  I got no sympathy, she claims that she started school a  full year late.  The neighbour took her and her own daughter together to the school on the first day and my sister was placed in a year above the other girl.

Later I mentioned this to my older cousin, his reply was that the neighbours should mind their own business.

In our family it just neglect and neglect.

When I went to university, my father just got very angry and called me a stupid weirdo.

You'd be surprised - almost all the people who send their kids to private schools are not rich - they sacrifice everything for their children's education - my car is 19 years old - my wife's is 16 years old.   

Most of the cars in the car park were not new.      Of course, there were some with plenty of money - but mostly is was people wanting the best for their kids.       The very best, highly motivated teachers, classes of just 12, the best facilities - it's well worth the high cost..

My daughter went to some very well-known schools with extremely famous alumni.    Their standards were so high that they act as a feeder schools for Oxford & Cambridge.   She actually attended a boy's school for 6th form.  

My daughter graduated last year with a 1st Hons.

I remember a work colleague saying it was a waste of time educating girls-  they're only going to get married - until he found out that a millionaire businessman friend's daughter (who went to the same school as my daughter) had been offered the job of a lifetime during her summer uni break job because she was able to speak properly and could interface to the wealthy clients that the company dealt with.

As they say in Kingsman, "Manners make'eth the man." (or woman).

Your daughter was privately educated!

When I was growing up I thought private schools were the stuff of fictional television series.

Then at uni I discovered that half the students had gone  to private or grammar schools.  It was a different world.

Off the wall thinking - if you're paying for a UK boarding school, have you considered renting a 2-bed flat for your daughter and hiring a 24/7 contract helper for her during the term times?       Someone to 'mother' her - cook & clean, drive her around etc.    It would solve a lot of your immediate issues by the application of finances freed up from the boarding school fees.

If she's been in the uk for more than 3 years, DSA.should help her with any extra needs.

My daughter was privately educated all the way through - university was a lot cheaper!

I've been through a few universities, so I've learnt first hand from my mistakes.

Always visit the places on open days to get a feel of the physical environment, is it in the city, out of town? Does it have a proper campus?, Academic standing and reputation? Social life? Distance from home?

My first university was actually a polytechnic in 1981, in hindsight it was a third rate dump.  All lectures in a single building which looked like a cheap office block, no proper campus, library built in 1970s had no atmosphere, it felt like a local branch library, students Union too small.

A year later I did a master's at a Russell group university.  This had higher standards, a proper library, about four times bigger than the previous place with ancient book collections.  In fact there were several libraries.  The specialist maths library reminded me of my school library and was a peaceful place of refuge. A students Union full of character.  A pleasant green campus with a lake.  If only I had come here in the first place.

Anyway, good luck.

Thanks - we had been looking at Lancaster so interesting to hear your experiences.

Thanks for those positive points - I will pass this on to her as I think she will like to hear your points about large unis and courses.