A flying start on Thursday: Master’s Open Day
With 36 information sessions and 65 colleagues and working students giving presentations and answering visitors’ questions, the Master’s Open Day was a success. This year, the RadboudCSW again offered information sessions so that prospective students could discover how they can continue to develop after their Master’s degree in the context of lifelong learning.
San Schoenmacker, a second-year Cognitive Neuroscience student (CNS), helps with the information sessions of his Master’s programme. “I don’t necessarily enjoy presenting in front of a big group of people, but I do enjoy talking about my study programme. Now I’m in my second year, I find it easier to give information sessions. I can go into detail more and I am even more enthusiastic about the programme. After the presentation, many visitors stayed behind to chat, and I really enjoy those conversations. They are more personal, and I feel like I can be of significance to prospective students.”
Friday & Saturday: the Bachelor’s marathon
On Friday, the focus shifted to the Bachelor’s Open Evening, followed by the biggest public day on Saturday: the Bachelor’s Open Day. In total, we offered 53 information sessions, with the support of no less than 95 colleagues and working students. A special first this year were the two hybrid sessions aimed at international students, which allowed us to give more distant prospective students a taste of the campus experience.
Natalie Cappaert, programme director of the Bachelor’s programme in Human Neuroscience (HNW): “For our new programme, we were present with a team of nearly ten information officers this year. Because HNW is an interfaculty programme, we had two information stands: one at FSS and the other at the Faculty of Science.
Our student information officers talked with a very diverse group of prospective students. Some were still exploring their options, whereas others knew exactly what they were looking for. Many parents were also enthusiastic; we heard multiple times that they would have liked to have taken this programme themselves.”
Preparations: months of work for three open days
What visitors experience in a few hours is the result of months of preparation: putting together programmes, booking rooms, arranging catering and decorations, communicating with visitors and internal teams, printing name tags, fine-tuning presentations—and that is just a selection of everything that happens behind the scenes.
It is no coincidence that the open days belong to our most important recruitment activities of the year. And every year, we raise the bar a little. The hard work pays off. This year we received a record number of registrations:
- 9,209 Dutch prospective students and 364 international registrations for the Bachelor’s Open Day (both evening and day, source: DMC).
- 4,088 registrations from Dutch prospective students and 687 registrations from international prospective students for the Master’s Open Evening.
Raoul Doomernik, Admission Officer: “It is always nice to answer questions face-to-face instead of via email on the open days. What’s extra nice is that we often get to talk to international students. This year, for example, I spoke with a student from Costa Rice who had flown over just for the Open Days.”
And afterwards… it’s not over yet
After the open days, prospective students get the opportunity to rewatch the presentations and other videos via an online platform. They can also sign up for follow-up activities such as being a student for a day or an experience day. In the meantime, we evaluate the entire three days: what went well, what could be improved and what improvements will we implement in the next edition? Do you have any ideas about this? Please contact us via communicatie.fsw [at] ru.nl (communicatie[dot]fsw[at]ru[dot]nl).
A huge thank you to everyone who made this possible. Thanks to your efforts, thousands of prospective students got to experience a warm, informative and inspiring welcome to our university. On to the next edition!