Plan your open day

A well-planned open day will help you get the most from your visit, giving you a real feel for the excitement and advantages of Manchester student life.

As well as reading about the sessions, exhibitions and tours below, take a look at our top tips for making the most of your open day.

Subject-specific sessions

Gathering information about the courses you are interested in is a crucial part of your open day. We recommend that you plan your day around your preferred subject sessions. Most sessions are held more than once during the day.

Sessions may include a presentation, a formal or informal talk, a Q&A session, demonstrations and perhaps a tour of the facilities.  

You can also visit relevant academic School exhibition stands, situated around the campus, where a member of staff or student ambassador will answer your questions about your chosen subject area.

Student Experience Exhibition

The Whitworth Hall (the location of our graduation ceremonies) will be filled with stands to give you the inside story on the full University of Manchester student experience.

The Student Experience Exhibition is where you can pick up information about the University’s main student services. This will include the Careers Service, the Student Support Stand (covering student finance), the Accommodation Office, IT Services, Sport, the Library and the Study Abroad Unit.

You'll have the chance to speak to staff and current students at these stands and find out more about the University. It’s a good idea to plan ahead and perhaps write down your questions in advance so you don’t forget something important on the day.

Tours of the campus and our facilities

We're very passionate about providing students with a great experience. To help you get a feel for the University we'll be running tours of our campus and facilities throughout the day, so that you can find out what we have to offer. We anticipate that these tours will be very popular, so self-guided tour maps will also be available so you can take a tour in your own time.  

General information sessions

A series of general information sessions will be on offer to tell you about the support available at the University and some of the extracurricular activities you can be involved in. Please note that many of these sessions are very popular and we may need to limit these to one student and one guest, or to students only. Further information about what sessions are available will be published in our open day programme.

Student accommodation

With more than 8,000 places available we offer a variety of accommodation types, costs and locations, and almost all our halls are within two or three miles of the University campus.

Each hall is unique in both character and design, and we offer all first year undergraduate students a guarantee of a place in one of our halls of residence. At the open day there are three ways you can find out more about our student accommodation:

  1. Attend a student accommodation panel talk on the main campus.
  2. Speak with staff from our Accommodation Office in the Whitworth Hall as part of the Student Experience Exhibition.
  3. Take a tour of one of our accommodation areas in Manchester.

Accommodation tours are always very popular, where queue times can be over an hour. In addition, places will be limited to one student and one guest. The same information will be provided at each of the options above, so if you're interested in finding out more about accommodation you should plan to only attend one of these options. As mentioned above, we recommend planning your open day experience around the degree subject you are interested in, and supplementing it with non-subject specific sessions.

You can also find out more about accommodation at Manchester prior to the open day on the accommodation website.