HE Tasters and Summer Schools

Looking for a way to increase students’ interest in university? Taster Courses are a way for students to experience life at uni and take their preferred subject area on a trial run.

Most universities offer taster courses and/or summer schools. If you have a student interested in a specific uni, it’s worth searching the individual university’s website for what they have to offer.

Another great way to search for summer courses is simply to put in “University summer” into any decent search engine and filter by UK results only, the list is fairly endless. More specifically, for “taster” courses only, the best search is “university taster courses”.

Here are links to some resources we found useful, covering higher education tasters and summer schools.

The London Taster Course Programme offers a range of courses in a variety of subject areas at 23 London area institutions. These can be searched by subject area, university or keyword.

One week taster courses are offered through Sutton Trust Summer Schools. These courses offer a mixture of academic and social activities that allow students to experience life at uni.

Headstart run intensive residential courses that introduce Year 12/S5 students interested in mathematics and science to the world of science, engineering and technology. Attendees experience life as a first year undergraduate participating for up to a week in design, build and test activities, lectures and seminars, visiting engineering firms and talking to academics and recent graduates. Opportunities to meet employers are available on most courses.

Students interested in maths and science can get an introduction to engineering through the Smallpeice Trust courses.

Future Morph gives real life examples of students who have been inspired through these courses.

Brightside UNIAID offers Student Finance Masterclasses for school students looking to learn more about university life and student finances.

If you have students interested in one of the Russell Group universities, taster courses can be searched for on their website. 

Students can also experience uni online through All About U’s virtual experience of student life.

Summer Schools Directory offers a search facility of academic summer courses.

The university and college open day directory.

Summer Uni London offers thousands of exciting opportunities for young people to try something new in the summer and year round in sports, art, technology, business, media, careers, fitness, beauty, cookery, science, the list goes on and on.

University of Cambridge 1-6 week summer courses.

University of Newcastle Summer schools for international students.

Oxford University summer schools and short courses aimed at international students.

UCL 1 day tasters for year 12 students.

AimHigher SouthWest Uni Tasters 2010.

Summer University at Oxford Brookes for year 10 and 12 students.

University of Portsmouth Summer schools for year 10 students with emphasis on Marketing and Communications.

Summer taster lectures in Mathematics from the University of Portsmouth.

Free three day tasters in teaching from Sheffield Hallam University.

Summer schools in Business from Manchester Metropolitan University.

London Metropolitan International summer schools organised by the departments of Law Governance and International Relations.

Bournemouth University information about previous summer schools for year 12 students.