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| . . . University & Careers Advice - Choosing a Uni |
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It's more complicated than it sounds - you need to find a place that suits you both physically and academically. League tables do not necessarily help either because they compare universities in a very general manner. For example: Imperial, LSE, Oxford, Cambridge, University College and Warwick may be ranked in a different order each year for research or teaching, but no one seriously disputes that they are all in the top ten British universities. You need to develop a shortlist of places that are right for you. Here are some criteria to get you started.
Location & environment
It is very important that you find a place in which you will be happy to spend the next few years of your life. Do you want a large, busy university with 20,000 students or a small cosy place where you will know everyone? Do you want to live at home or stay at a university within, say, 20 miles? Or do you want to put several hundred miles between your parents' and university?
Employability
Despite claims to the contrary, employers seldom regard universities or their graduates as equal; they use their own criteria. Many are fairly conservative and still prefer graduates from Oxbridge or the universities well known in their field (e.g. Imperial for physics, LSE for economics) - or simply the ones they have heard of.
Cost
There are great differences in the cost of living in different places and in different universities in the same place. For example, living in Bradford is cheaper than London, but living at home probably cheaper than living independently.
What else is available?
There are opportunities in abundance without even including the variations in the courses. There may be free access to language centres and IT courses; there might be high-level sport, excellent music, lively drama - or none of these things. The SU may be large and humming, with major bands touring - or not.
Teaching & research quality
The amount and quality of research going on in a university is a good measure of its academic standing.
Teaching quality varies greatly between departments and between institutions. What suits you might not suit others and it is worth taking a look at what is provided. You can get a good idea from the prospectuses of the teaching quality will have been assessed in a number of subject areas.
Students
There are huge variations in the student populations - the proportion of mature students, the male: female ratio, the proportion of overseas students. In some way these ratios determine the society that you would become a part of so you will need to decide what kind of society you think you could thrive in.
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