Taking place twice a year, the Bachelor’s Day is an important event for the UvA during which prospective students come to the university to find out about the programmes they are interested in. These are large-scale events attended by over 12,000 visitors, spread over 10 locations and including 3 information markets.

We have been closely monitoring developments surrounding the spread of the coronavirus in recent days. The number of cases of contamination in Amsterdam does not appear to be very high at the moment and the recommendation to cancel events does not yet apply for this region. However, the Bachelor’s Day is a unique event where high numbers of visitors from the whole of the country come together in a limited number of spaces.

We want to follow government guidelines strictly – these take precedence for us. In this way, like other organisations, we want to help prevent the further spread of the coronavirus. Based on the assessment framework for events, in the case of the Bachelor’s day the risk was too high, given its large scale and spread of visitors from around the country, the high numbers attending, the duration and the fact that it is an indoor event. This makes cancelling the Bachelor’s Day the right decision for the UvA, in line with government guidelines.

Naturally this is disappointing for all the people who were going to come to the UvA to get information and find out more about the programmes  they are interested in. For them, the Bachelor’s Day is an important moment, an essential step in the process of making the right decision about what to study. That is why we are doing our very best to provide an alternative: in the course of next week we hope to provide prospective students with the information they would otherwise get on location at the Bachelor’s Day as best we can online, in the form of video recordings.

We will inform all participants directly. We hope they understand why we have taken this measure. We cannot yet say if the Bachelor’s Day can be organised at a later date, as this depends on developments in the coming weeks.