The BBC said:"It's important to talk about the cost of going to open days," says Rachel, a sixth-former from Plymouth, in Devon, who is looking at university choices.
"Not everyone can afford to go out of their area. Train tickets are expensive and there's most likely accommodation as well."
This is peak season for university open days, when tens of thousands of teenagers and their families are criss-crossing the country viewing places where they might study.
A return trip by train from north to south can cost £200 or even £300. And even with railcard discounts, when there might be four or five universities to visit, the open-day season can soon become an unaffordable closed door.
For those driving, there are still fuel costs. And longer journeys by coach can mean having to pay for an overnight stay.
But these costs seem to have slipped below the radar - even though they might be directly limiting the choices of disadvantaged students.
There is no charge to attend these events. But Rachel says the travel costs mean she has effectively ruled out universities in the North of England.
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"I wouldn't want to apply to a city I hadn't been to before, in case I'd regret it," she says.
Anne-Marie Canning, director of social mobility at King's College London, says this is a much bigger barrier than has been recognised.
Among all the theoretical debates about social mobility, one really practical problem that gets overlooked is the eye-wateringly expensive price of train travel.
'Number one problem'
"We invited parents to talk about reasons for people not going to university," says Ms Canning, who has been working with disadvantaged families.
She expected responses to be about tuition fees and student finance and whether their children would get the exam grades.
"But the number one problem was, 'I know I can't take them to an open day. I can't afford those train tickets,'" she says.
"It's a major barrier," she says, particularly for families where going to university is already "unfamiliar territory".
There is no obligation to attend an open day but Ms Canning says parents saw it as a necessary step before making such a big financial commitment.
'It is unfair'
Rachel has been supported in her studies by the Villiers Park trust, a social mobility charity that works with high ability youngsters from disadvantaged backgrounds.
The charity's programme director, Deborah Richardson, says the cost of getting to open days is a direct limitation on choice.
"It is a major factor in what students are choosing to do and which universities they are choosing to go to," she says.
Spotted this article on the BBC:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-48711619
which suggests that the high cost of train fares is the number one factor influencing where students choose to study.
A couple if things strike me - students have, for the past few decades been the goose that's laid the golden egg for the railway, in terms of encouraging future business. Is this situation losing future railway business.
Also, we all know there can be ways to split tickets and reduce fares (albeit these are by no means universal for the journeys one might want to make), but if the railways are perceived to be expensive, it's the perception that will influence potential passengers choices, rather than the reality. In this respect, whenever TOC's defend their outlandishly overpriced through fares by saying "hardly anyone ever buys them anyway", are these high prices acting as headline fares and dissuading people from travel.
Another thing is that some students like to travel to open days with their parents, which obviously puts costs up (I tended to sod off on my own).
I can't help but think that life might have turned out very differently, had I not felt enabled to travel across the country by rail to my potential and eventual Universities back in the mid 90's.