Odd University Choice

[Giloin]

DS is waiting for his A level results. He had identical offers from 3 UK universities: 2 of them in the top 10 and one a middling university, which rates highly for student satisfaction for the course he applied for. All to do the same course. One of them is also our home city. He chose our home city as his first choice. He said he liked the course best and it would be 'easier'.

Whilst taking his exams, he seemed unsure about whether to go to uni at all, or go travelling, get a job etc. We reassured him that he could make his own choice, but to concentrate on getting the best results he could, so as to keep his options open. He's going travelling for the summer (partly funded by us), and wanted to wait until he was back to decide. Absolutely fine.

Today he announces that he's going to change his first choice to the middling university. Only justification - he's going to have to move away sometime and it might as well be now.

What do we do know? Just say that's great and leave him to it, or try to influence him to make what we think is a wiser choice, e.g. go to a 'better' university. I wanted him to consider living away from home initially, but he didn't seem keen so based our own life plans on him wanting to live here for the next 3 years.

It’s his choice, and he will benefit from going away. And getting a job (why on earth are you funding him travelling). It really doesn’t matter where you go to university. My degree and choice of uni has been irrelevant in my (very good) career.

Loughborough have an excellent reputation for wider student experience. I work for a far less prestigious university who have a significant number of masters students come to study with us after Loughborough (it's a niche course that attracts sports related graduates.) It causes us real issues trying to match their expectations outside their academic experience!

Each to their own but there is a lot of value in going away to university. Independence, easier to meet and get to know new people (all my enduring university friends are people I lived with or around, not people on my course), getting to know a new town / city, and immersing yourself in that life. That said, I do get that it’s a more expensive option, although that doesn’t seem to be an issue here.

The OP is looking at the THE rankings (different to all other rankings Times/Sunday Times, Complete University Guide and Guardian because the focus is on complete different things - in particular research income and research influence which simply aren't factors that undergraduates need to take into account. It also scores on things like international outlook and "innovation" which is highly subjective.

All of the other league tables score on things like student experience, teaching quality, graduate prospects, staff student ratio, all of which are far more importance to undergraduates.

The THE top ten is:

Oxford
Cambridge
Imperial
UCL
Edinburgh
Kings
LSE
Manchester
Bristol
Glasgow

It puts Loughborough at 31st, so yes you would take that as a low/middling score.

So presumably the OP is talking about Manchester and Bristol (but possibly Glasgow or Edinburgh)

Complete has them as follows:

Loughborough 6th
Bristol 16th
Manchester 22nd
Edinburgh 15th
Glasgow 28th

Times/Sunday Times has them as follows:

Loughborough 10th
Glasgow 12th
Edinburgh 13th
Bristol 16th
Manchester 23rd

Guardian has them as follows:

Loughborough 10th
Glasgow 13th
Edinburgh 14th
Bristol 17th
Manchester 24th

OP you really don't need to worry about Loughborough being a decent university. It is very focussed on sport related courses and on engineering/science courses (particularly those with a sport element like some of the psychology courses they offer) but it is a well regarded university in general. Most of the league tables would consider it a superior option to the others although of course all universities focus on the table that places them the highest and often there's very little to distinguish universities that are only a few places apart of the tables.

Marketing is everything...

Great post @Ciri and good research!

I was wondering if the prestigious uni in the interesting and historic city was Edinburgh! Certs Lboro is not a historic city - but for most 18yos that’s not the greatest driver maybe 🤔