Successful u-days at Tech with many visitors

For the 19th year in a row, educational institutions in Aarhus threw open their doors for u-days on 23, 24 and 25 February. Enthusiastic students, teaching staff and student counsellors from Tech were ready at Navitas and the Ambulatory by the Mathematics canteen to welcome prospective students and answer their many questions.

"U-days is always one of the more fun events to plan. Our students love to talk about their degree programmes, and so do the lecturers. The young people who visit us are extremely inquisitive, and there’s always a good atmosphere and plenty of interesting conversations," says Anne-Mette Mikkelsen from the Student Guidance and Information office, who is the project manager for u-days at Tech. She continues:

"One of the advantages of u-days is that it’s a three-day open house event at educational institutions across the city. This makes the trip to Aarhus especially worthwhile since it’s a great opportunity to visit several different programmes and find out which programme might be right for you.”

Clarifying, exploring and an increased career focus
U-days at Tech were attended by more than 1,700 prospective students. The majority came to learn about our engineering degree programmes, while others wanted to learn about our Agrobiology programme. Visitors could learn about these programmes at the various stands, through presentations and during a joint event across different lines of study. This year, one particular topic came up again and again.

"We can see that young people have increasing focus on their careers and life after graduation. Furthermore, they were all at different stages in the process of choosing a degree programme. Some had already decided, while others were still weighing their options. U-days is great because it can accommodate such a range of visitors,” says Anne-Mette Mikkelsen.

That said, u-days is not a sales event for individual degree programmes:

"The overall objective of u-days and our guidance in general is to help potential students make an informed choice. This is why we focus on gauging and matching expectations with the young people when they visit us. We try to give them a realistic picture of what it’s like to be a student at Aarhus University and on the individual degree programmes," says Catalina Kjær, head of section at the Student Guidance and Information office at Nat and Tech.

Student Guidance and Information will be compiling and evaluating experience from this year’s u-days. If you would like to watch some of the online presentations that were included in this year’s programme, go to the individual study programmes on bachelor.au.dk.