On Tuesday we held our ‘Springboard to the Future day’ for Year 12 students and those at our partner school, St Aloysius. The day started with talks about life as a university student and how to move successfully from school to undergraduate level study, given by representatives from Manchester, Exeter and Lancaster universities. A recap of all the factors that should be considered when choosing a university and course was then given by the University of East Anglia, and students asked excellent further questions of a panel of all the speakers.

After break students had a choice of talks from visiting academics, organisations and alumnae which included the pros and cons of a gap year; studying abroad; art foundation courses; what an IBM degree apprenticeship involves; how to make competitive applications for medicine and Oxbridge and what studying a range of subjects from Mathematics to Liberal Arts via Art History, Politics and Engineering involves. The day concluded with the Futures Fair in the New Sports Hall with stands from around 30 universities and other organisations keen to engage with the students, and later their parents.

This student summed up the aim of Springboard perfectly in their anonymous feedback form: “I enjoyed the Springboard Day and had a better insight into what uni life is and how to go about making decisions on what university would suit me.”