TAP helps prospective students choose dream university

TAP – The Access Platform – makes life easier for students who are gathering information about universities in different countries. To serve its target group, TAP helps universities in different ways, for example by distributing personalised information and offering one-to-one chats with student ambassadors.

Crastina had a chat with one of the co-founders: George Olesen from London who ”is passionate about helping young people make more informed and confident decisions about their future”.

Hi, George. Tell us a little about your new social media tool!
TAP helps universities harness the power of their student community online to help prospective students make more informed, confident and ambitious choices about higher education. Our mission is to make personal information and advice about higher education easily available and free to everyone. There are two core features within TAP: TAP Chat, which allows any prospective student anywhere in the world to chat to real students through the websites of our partner universities. TAP Content enables universities to crowdsource social media content from their student community to tell a more authentic and interesting story about the opportunities and activities available to students.

In which way can this be interesting for early career scientists?
Our service is aimed at universities so we can’t, unfortunately, support early career scientists directly. However, our service will indirectly benefit early career scientists if they are interested in applying to one of our partner universities because that university will be able to offer online conversations with their student ambassadors and more content production from their student community. This will help early career scientists understand more about what it’s really like to study at those institutions to be able to make a more informed decision.

Please give three pieces of advice to students to help them make more informed, confident, and ambitious choices about their future.

  1. Going to university is a big decision. Make sure you understand the reasons you’re going and what you’re looking to get out of the experience. It’s thoroughly worthwhile but knowing why you are there will help you get the most out of the experience.
  2. Universities are very different from one another. They all give degrees but the student experience ranges dramatically depending on factors that you might not have even thought about such as whether the university is campus-based or within a city; or whether you live in colleges or in rented flats etc. Take time to understand the opportunities and experiences that current students are having at different universities as that will help you to understand what institutions you’re best suited to.
  3. Don’t just look at the league tables and brochures, get under the skin of the university. Visit the campus, check out their social media and speak to their students if you can. It’s important to make a confident decision about which university you choose to go to and that comes by being informed.
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