Running throughout January and February, the webinars are free and open to those considering university, as well as those who have already chosen a route and are preparing for life in higher education.

The first session, ‘UCAS Next Steps’ begins at 4pm on Tuesday 12 January and can be registered for via Eventbrite. The webinar will focus on UCAS applications, the deadline for which has been extended to Friday 29 January 2021.

Clive Sheridan, Student Engagement & Recruitment Officer at Bedfordshire, organised the series and believes the webinars will help pupils make their university applications more attractive. He said:

This series has been developed to help prospective students who want to go to university understand the different steps they need to take and how to prepare for the future.

We hope to provide these prospective students with the opportunity to understand the university application process better. It will explain key dates and deadlines so that nothing is delayed. It is also a chance for students to make their applications more attractive to prospective universities.

Along with helping with the UCAS process, we will also be offering insight through Student Q&As and some subject specific sessions which we hope people will take advantage of before their deadlines.

As government advice surrounding coronavirus continues to prevent prospective university students from visiting campuses, the Student Recruitment Team are putting on these informative webinars to help guide school pupils with their post-16 choices.

Although it is not the usual pre-university experience, Student Engagement & Recruitment Manager Lee Bowling hopes the webinars will go some way to filling the gap left by face to face events. He said:

As a team we feel our webinars and virtual events are an essential way for us to engage with prospective university students and our school and college partners.

We would normally attend hundreds of schools, colleges and careers events to share information and advice around university and the UCAS process, but the pandemic prevents this. By running a series of webinars we have gone some way to replace the face to face engagement that we would normally deliver across the year.

There are multiple sessions per week with the final webinars taking place on Thursday 25 February. To view the full webinar and book a place on any of the events, visit Eventbrite.

For more information about the webinar series visit: www.beds.ac.uk/webinars