IT'S A STRANGE THING, but UCD's campus, when seen from above, looks like a big head - the neck at Clonskeagh Road, the top of the head at the Merville residences and the various departments corresponding to different parts of the brain.

It's a veritable relief map of phrenology, the long-derided "science" that posited the size and shape of the cranium as indications of character and mental faculties. First there are the science buildings, further up are the arts and up at the top is engineering.

Where the students fit into this analogy isn't entirely clear: depending upon your point of view, they represent either the blood pumping through the system or a nasty infection which threatens to disturb the delicate balance of academia.

Tomorrow and Thursday, tens of thousands of second-level students will swell the numbers on campus as they are given the chance to experience the environs of Belfield first-hand, during UCD's annual open days. This is the seventh year in which UCD has opened its doors in this way; the numbers attending have risen from 8,000 in the first year to an anticipated 21,000 this year, from 29 counties. Each faculty will mount demonstrations and/or displays, details of entry requirements will be available and a "show flat" will be open in the Merville residences.

For some students it will, in a sense, be a dry run for the day on which they enter the university as students for the first time. The sprawling, intimidating Belfield campus may seem less so after they have had the chance to wander around it, poke in the corners and get lost, all accompanied by their friends.

"They get, first of all, an experience and sight of the campus," says Dr Kevin Clancy, UCD's open days' co-ordinator. "For a lot of them the university is the name of an institution and they have no concept of what it actually looks like. We also try to give them a lot of information on whether they should be going to university or not."

Increasingly, universities are taking it upon themselves to familiarise students, their teachers and even their parents with the college environment.

UCD will offer teachers access to the university's deans and lecturers, at whom they can level their comments, questions and complaints. The university, in turn, gets a chance to showcase what it has to offer, the diversity of its courses and the quality of its support services, including career advice, welfare services and the students' union.