NationStates Jolt Archive

This is for British posters mainly, but American posters are invited to join in.

Anyway,today is the day that I have to start looking for a uni, it's a year and a bit away still but according to school I have to start visiting and making applictions and so on. So I'm looking for advice basically, which si the best, in your experience, which is the worst?

I'm hoping to take Poltics (Hopefully with International relations or International Goverment), so I figured this would be the best place to ask around. Currently on my visiting list are:

Cambridge (If I get in)
Hull
Nottingham
Warick
Durham
Leicter
Cardiff
Bath
UEA

Any advice and so on would be useful. :D

Durham is a really nice city, but for anything interesting, you have to catch the train to Newcastle. *nods*

If you do decide to apply to Warwick or Leicester, I advice you spell them correctly in your application.

If you’re willing to travel further north, Glasgow has a great Politics department, and runs International Relations courses to boot. I’d highly recommend it; I’m in 2nd year doing Politics, and I love it. Good lecturers and tutors, strong support from the staff and department, and it’s highly funded by the uni too. Can’t tell you much about the other uni’s, so I’ll talk about mine :p

For the past two years the course has been split 50/50 between political theory and political practice. In 1st year the course was basically an introduction to politics, focusing on Liberal Democracy and the British political system for the first half of the year; then a look at comparitive politics, examining and comparing the systems of the US, China and Russia.

2nd year’s not even halfway through, but the first term is a whistlestop tour of political philosophy from Aristotle to Marx, dropping in on Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Kant and Hegel along the way. Next term is labeled International Relations, and the bumf for the course says it’ll “identify the important actors, institutions and pressing problems” of international relations.

Glasgow’s a beautifully green city, with the best shopping and nightlife outside of London (if that’s your thing). However, it’s the west coast of Scotland, so it rains. A lot. Big student community (about 20,000 at Glasgow Uni alone) with a really laid back, bohemian West End where the Uni is located. The Uni is gorgeous itself, with a few ugly 70’s concrete buildings dotted around the campus. Two unions, independent of the NUS.

Well, I’m raving a bit, so I’ll shuddup. Hope you make it to a good uni, Politics is a really worthwhile subject if my experiences are anything to go by.

Well I've applied to:

City University London
Roehampton
Northampton
Staffordshire
Lincoln
And everyones favourite place......Brighton

I'm going to be studying English and Journalism

This is for British posters mainly, but American posters are invited to join in.

Anyway,today is the day that I have to start looking for a uni, it's a year and a bit away still but according to school I have to start visiting and making applictions and so on. So I'm looking for advice basically, which si the best, in your experience, which is the worst?

I'm hoping to take Poltics (Hopefully with International relations or International Goverment), so I figured this would be the best place to ask around. Currently on my visiting list are:

Cambridge (If I get in)
Hull
Nottingham
Warick
Durham
Leicter
Cardiff
Bath
UEA

Any advice and so on would be useful. :D

Cardiff is a shithole. i went there and left on medication for depression. don't bother.

the politics department is tiny and kinda shite, and unless you like uninteresting, non-progressive courses that stick to the knitting and are generally crap, don't bother

What are you going to Uni for?

Yes, I know you are going to get a degree etc, but is that the prime motivation, or is it as much about becoming independent and learning about life as well.

Deciding on where to go depends heavily on how you answer this question. Strong academic institutions (Cambridge, Oxford, Durham - come to mind) tend to be in cities or towns with little to do other than study.

Some institutions are more just excuses for a three or four year rolling party. (These tend not to have such good reputations and shall remain nameless for now.)

I would recommend a middle path here. Uni should be fun, there should be mornings where you simply don't remember, when you wake up, where you are or how you got there. But it should also stretch your academic ability.
To get this mix right look for a Uni that is well established and in a fairly important urban center.

From your list this boils down to:
Nottingham
Cardiff (but PM's experience is significant here)
Bath (expensive city)
and maybe Leicester.

I would suggest that you look at places like: (in no specific order)
Birmingham
Leeds
Manchester
Liverpool
Newcastle
Edinburgh
Glasgow
Dublin
Belfast

edinburgh is awesome! unless your surname is walker in which case edinburgh won't be good for you.

Brizzle and Sheffield have good politics departments, (beware though, Sheffield's Politics Dept. is atop a very large hill, and walking up and down that mother every morning with various states of neural health would not be fun).

Warwick is a very good university, but their politics department leaves a lot to be desired.

Also, I suppose I'm pretty much obliged to recommend the University of Lancaster. The place is full of character (don't let the 1950s architecture fool you) and has all the fun of a collegiate university without all the thickheaded snobbery of Oxbridge. The Politics Department is very good, although I have to point out that for a supposedly internationally-focussed course it is very Atlanticist (I've been tallying in my last few lectures how often a country other than the UK or USA is mentioned, the most was three times (one was a passing reference claiming the Social Democrats messed up Sweden, and the other two were simply the phrase 'Stalinist Russia)), but that won't be the case if I get to do my Erasmus next year!

Erm, where was I? Oh yes, Furness 'till I die.

I currently do Politics and International relations at the university of Kent in Canterbury and I cannot recomend the course to you enough. The only problem thus far is the statistics module you encounter in the second year but most people can get through that.

Brizzle and Sheffield have good politics departments, (beware though, Sheffield's Politics Dept. is atop a very large hill, and walking up and down that mother every morning with various states of neural health would not be fun).

EVERYTHING in Sheffield seems to be at the top of a very large hill. :p

And everyones favourite place......Brighton

What's wrong with Brighton?

Seriously, I've no idea. Is it a "bad" uni or what?

Dundees Politics etc department is supposed to be good. I went there to do psychology and i didnt much like it lol. Now im at UCLan which is MUCH better, though I am doing a completely different subject (Deaf Studies) I dont know if UCLan has a politics department, i think they do but if they do i would reccommend going there. The town has a good selection of nightclubs, pubs etc, is relatively crimefree but big enough for you to maintain yr independence or gain it as the case maybe. Plus the Uni is fantastic - its really good at handling student problems and even loans you money if you need it and all the lecturers are very friendly

What are you going to Uni for?

Yes, I know you are going to get a degree etc, but is that the prime motivation, or is it as much about becoming independent and learning about life as well.

Deciding on where to go depends heavily on how you answer this question. Strong academic institutions (Cambridge, Oxford, Durham - come to mind) tend to be in cities or towns with little to do other than study.

Some institutions are more just excuses for a three or four year rolling party. (These tend not to have such good reputations and shall remain nameless for now.)

I would recommend a middle path here. Uni should be fun, there should be mornings where you simply don't remember, when you wake up, where you are or how you got there. But it should also stretch your academic ability.
To get this mix right look for a Uni that is well established and in a fairly important urban center.

From your list this boils down to:
Nottingham
Cardiff (but PM's experience is significant here)
Bath (expensive city)
and maybe Leicester.

I would suggest that you look at places like: (in no specific order)
Birmingham
Leeds
Manchester
Liverpool
Newcastle
Edinburgh
Glasgow
Dublin
Belfast

I would argue that Cambridge falls into that list (well, a bit biased, since I actually go there...)
I mean yeah, work is a lot more than other places, but at the same time it's not like we are strangled of our free time. I still have feckloads of time to go to formal dinners, curry evenings, play football, see plays, go to pub quizzes, go clubbing if I wanted to. And I reckon that with all the time I do waste procrastinating, I still have more space to expand extracurricular actitivies - like I really should start looking into CV-filling society committee memberships now :p

I suppose it does come down to what sort of motivational energy you have. In any university, what you get out of it does correlate with how much effort you are willing to put in. If you decide to just purely work (as some people do here), then I'd imagine that life gets very lonely... but maybe pushing yourself a bit further, and making the most of what you can get out of the uni, be it Cambridge or elsewhere, can change your experience.

iam applying to
University of St. Andrews
and
University of Aberdeen
I am planing on taking Religious Studies/World religions with a minor in International Relations...so yep :)

What's wrong with Brighton?

Seriously, I've no idea. Is it a "bad" uni or what?

i don't know that that was necessarily sarcasm there. brighton is a decent university, it may have the stigma of being a 'red brick' uni or an ex-polytechnic (can't remember which it is) but it is certainly not one of those unis that people smirk at.

What's wrong with Brighton?

Seriously, I've no idea. Is it a "bad" uni or what?

Hey I love Brighton. Its got a great social scene. But for some reason some people believe its a 'bad' university though from the people I know who go there have a great time and are challenged academically. I mean Brighton has given me a conditional offer that means I have to work a lot harder to get place than some other unis. Its just one of those myths! Plus if I go I'll be living with my friends in their house which is an added bonus....

I studied Politics with a philosophy class thrown in for fun at Manchester Met, for the love of god don't go there.

Nottingham
Warwick
Durham
Leicester

Any advice and so on would be useful. :D
These are the ones I had a look at when I was applying.

Nottingham is great. It has a great reputation, lovely city, pretty good nightlife (ignore the reports about shootings - just never go to Radford or St. Anne's), and is amazing if you like live music. The campus is just wonderful, with a massive boating lake and some nice architecture. First year halls are on campus so you can roll out of bed into your lectures if you need to.

Warwick's ok. The city's not much cop, but the castle's quite cool. :p The university has a very good reputation, AFAIK.

If you can get into Durham, go to Nottingham.

Leicester's ok (says the guy who's recently graduated from there). If you like big cities, don't go. Sheffield, Nottingham, Bristol or Manchester would be better. The university is in the top 20 of the Guardian's university list, but that's mainly because of the science and medicine faculties, which are easily among the best in the country. The teaching can be a bit crap. They're building an extension to the library right now, so at least there'll be a lot of resources for you to use. Nightlife is, to be honest, rubbish.

Visit Hull

It will shorten your list by one

I'd recommend Cambridge any day, probably because I'm there at the moment, but its not for everyone. Even if you are pretty bright and good at your subject and 3/4 As at A level won't be a problem, the admissions process is a lottery, and if you do get in, expect to do alot of work. Its known for being very intensive, and that is very true, when you consider theres probably more work set than other unis and its all in a shorter timespan (8/9 weeks).

Consider what you want to get out of your time at uni. A degree isn't everything you will receive/do. Cambridge degrees are highly rated, but that would come at the expense of a less active social life (read: parties/clubs) compared to other unis.

I'd very much recommend Queen's in Belfast for politics. Not only is it a great university with an excellent politics department, you won't find a better city than Belfast. Anywhere.

History for me, and, having sent in my form, here goes;

Oxford; interview on the 7th and 8th, but couldn't care less at the moment.

Kings (London); good course and teacher/student ratio

St. Andrews; applying for medieval, and for the golf and proximity to Edinburgh

York; Love the city, the Uni's alright aesthetically, and nice socially. Got an offer of AAB

Warwick; renaissance based course, with a term spent in Venice. Offer of AAb. Life is hard.

UEA: Insurance offer. AAB.

History for me, and, having sent in my form, here goes;

Oxford; interview on the 7th and 8th, but couldn't care less at the moment.

Kings (London); good course and teacher/student ratio

St. Andrews; applying for medieval, and for the golf and proximity to Edinburgh

York; Love the city, the Uni's alright aesthetically, and nice socially. Got an offer of AAB

Warwick; renaissance based course, with a term spent in Venice. Offer of AAb. Life is hard.

UEA: Insurance offer. AAB.

Bah, Oxford :p
I wasn't too impressed with KCL, it didn't look too nice, the history dept. seemed cramped and small, and living in London is generally quite expensive.
My mate is loving it up in St. Andrews right now.
Got several friends in York, and they're enjoying it quite a lot. I didn't get around to visiting it, but I was tempted.
Warwick was my second choice precisely because of the history course :D
UEA... never been, haven't heard much so can't pass comment.

Good luck

I'll have to investigate some of these./ Currently I'll probably go for:

2 higher Teir
2 middle
2 reseve

Cambridge
Nottingham

Hull
Shefeild

Leicter
Essex

Bah, Oxford :p
I wasn't too impressed with KCL, it didn't look too nice, the history dept. seemed cramped and small, and living in London is generally quite expensive.
My mate is loving it up in St. Andrews right now.
Got several friends in York, and they're enjoying it quite a lot. I didn't get around to visiting it, but I was tempted.
Warwick was my second choice precisely because of the history course :D
UEA... never been, haven't heard much so can't pass comment.

Good luck

York's a damn nice place, but then I'm not a fan of Durham, and the two are diametrically opposed at times.