Exeter university accommodation

[lexie01]

My DD has a place at Exeter Uni to study Business Management. She has been offered accommodation at James Owen Hall, Sidwell St.
it isn’t on campus ( which she requested) and it’s located on one of the worst roads in Exeter. I have driven there today and it’s awful and I’m no shrinking violet. The university won’t offer her another room but she is on the verge of not going because of the halls location.
Has anyone had a child at this Hall? Looking for advice from any locals or existing uni students.
many thanks.

It sounds like a deferral is a good idea, not least because, speaking kindly, it sounds like she could use the time to mature a bit. She doesn’t sound ready for uni from what you say. Good luck to her.

If she doesn’t want to live with ‘foreign students’ this is slightly problematic as surely living with a good range of different types of students will broaden her mind a bit? I had international students in my first year house and loved it as got to go and stay with them in the holidays. If being a 20 minute walk from campus is making her want to jack in her plan to go this year then she really won’t cope with the random issues and problems that come up while at uni and this year might be an opportunity to mature a bit.

@lexie01I think you are getting a bit of a hard time on here. DS and I went to the Exeter open day this year and it is indeed a beautiful campus. Your DD has done incredibly well and I can see how and why you have both pictured in your heads that she would be living on campus.

The reality now doesn’t quite match up to lovely pictures in your head and it is ok to feel a little disappointed. It is different but that doesn’t mean that it is wrong.

The halls she has been allocated will be perfectly fine and she will make it work.

There has been a lot of discussion this year about Exeter and the number of students not getting places in halls or having to go into private halls/ private rentals in their first year. It is clear that Exeter has problems with on campus accommodation because of the building work. So there will be a significant number of first years not on campus.

Your DD does have choices. She could pull out and reapply next year with grades in hand. She has fantastic grades and this could open up many uni choices for her. But she could reapply and end up with nothing.

If her heart is set on Exeter, then she might as well go this year because the accommodation situation is not getting better in the near future. But if she desperately wants to campus experience then she could pull out and reapply next year and focus on other universities. Maybe Lancaster or York?

It’s okay to be disappointed. It’s not okay to not want to
live there because it’ll be full of foreign students. If that’s how she feels, she shouldn’t be going to university.

If she defers, she could easily end up in the same situation in Exeter next year. Or she could defer and get the accommodation she wants. It is really tricky because the building work won’t be finished until 2028.

Taking a year out may well be a great idea anyway and I am encouraging my DS to do the same. A year working in the real world in Sainsburys/Lidl/ Maccies is what I am encouraging him to do. My nephews did the same before uni and it was the best thing for them.

Agreed. I wrote my post without reading that particular comment as it is Sunday morning and I’m sitting in bed, not wearing my glasses!

Very poor attitude from mother and daughter, to be honest she’s best not coming to Exeter if that’s how she feels! My entire cohort was foreign students, I was the only Brit!

There will be foreign students at any uni your dd goes to. Your attitude is appalling.

Just to add my daughter was technically on campus her first year but the other side from town and it was quite the uphill trek - she says the walk back from town to campus was always okay at night but she often ended up doing the last 15 mins alone apart from various deer, foxes and badgers and that, not the town part, was the scary bit. And despite being in uni halls there were no hall focused activities, I don't think hall organised activities are that common so your DD won't miss out there...The key is to join societies. My DD will be there Freshers week signing Freshers up to hers which is where she met her closest friends. A lot of pressure is on being in the perfect halls but there's a lot more to uni than that.

i have only mentioned foreign students to emphasize the fact that the halls she has been allocated are seemingly a random mis match of postgrad & foreign students plus under grads from at Luke’s & Streatham. She does not have a problem with foreign students or is racist or any of the other tropes you want to throw at her.

that is how halls work. That doesn’t stop her becoming friends with her flatmates and joining societies.

honestly it’s best she doesn’t go. She needs to grow up.

You’re the one that mentioned foreign students OP - assuming campus residences won’t also have foreign students…

Has she joined any on-line groups for her course or residence to get a feel for the reality rather than the rather massive assumptions you and she are both making?

Awful roads in Exeter??? It’s one of the safest university towns in the country. The main risk is from drunken rugby boys in the nightclubs.

This will be the case in any hall of residence at most universities in the country. There will be social events organised through her department and also via clubs and societies, as well as in halls. Take a look at the student union web pages for information about Freshers week activities - there’s probably some sort of horse riding club at Exeter. Your DD won’t be the only one who comes from riding horses as a teenager.

And if she’s studying Business Management, she’ll probably be studying alongside a lot of those terrible “foreign” students - they’re subsidising her degree after all. And if she wants to work in business, she’ll need to get used to working with “foreigners” - indeed, if she’s canny, she’ll try to get to know some “foreigners” while she’s at university to start to develop the international networks she’ll need for a successful business career.

I came to Exeter from a rough town in the Midlands 30 years ago. Sidwell St is absolutely not comparable to a ‘rough’ street anywhere else in the country!

My daughter gets the school bus from/to there in the morning and evening (even when dark), I park there to go to the gym several days a week, even in the dark. Is absolutely heaving with students in term time, particularly at night.

It has a Polish shop, Turkish shop, Chinese shop, Mesopotamia market, independent restaurants. It is the best street in Exeter in many ways! I feel absolutely safe walking down there day or night. It’s always busy. The homeless tend to congregate in the churchyard at the other end of the Street from JOC.

As for James Owen Court it’s not really closer to St Luke’s; about equidistant I reckon.

And you would be crazy to get a bus from JOC to campus. It would take you longer to walk back to High St to the bus stop and wait for the bus. It’s literally about a 15 min walk, if that.

I was in flat with ‘foreign students’ when I came to Exeter 30 years ago. I met up with the American and the French students again last month.

I met Swedes, Germans, Malaysians, Singaporeans, Turks, Spaniards and someone from Brunei.

Just because they weren’t English didn’t mean we couldn’t be friends…

If it helps, my teens (13 & 15) go into Exeter together or separately all the time (it's our nearest city) on public transport. They go to the cinema in Sidwell St and get the bus from there or round the corner in the bus station. They're proper country mice and yet managed absolutely fine, including when it is dark and in the evenings.

There's an NHS Walk In centre the other end of St Sidwell St and there are lots of seemingly drunk/stoned/street sleepers in the alley next to it. I have walked through with a poorly child before and just been politely greeted and moved out of the way for - never ever felt threatened or scared.

It's also close to campus and not any nearer to St Luke's, possible half way? It really is a very short walk and less hilly and remote than the walk from some of the on campus accommodation I would think. All the shared student houses are in streets nearby so she's where she will be for the last 2 years too. Exeter is small and walkable and safe.

I think you are getting a hard time too - we have twins so went to three Exeter open days in 12 months and it was only on the last one where the building works had then been confirmed that it was made clear more kids will be off campus. I think though so many kids are off campus this year your daughter will have more freshers around her than she thinks

Oh dear. This thread really brings it home to me that we have a generation of entitled and precious dc who cannot face any slight setback and neither can their parents! What is going wrong with students? Why is accommodation location more important than the course or making friends and the excitement of leaving home? Maybe DD here should have gone to Birmingham university and stayed at home?

The HE thread has a thread about fresher accommodation at Exeter not being on site and being £2,000 a term more expensive! That’s a genuine complaint. (At Bristol many halls are in a completely separate area of Bristol but no one worries about that). Every student should arrive with a positive attitude but clearly entitled students want what they want and Exeter isn’t delivering. So it’s either give it a go or not go.

My DS is going to Exeter this September. He also didn’t get accomodation on Streatham but neither did 50% of the boys from his school. Exeter is doing a refurbishment of two large student halls which won’t be completed until early 2027. So she is not guaranteed on campus accomodation next year. 28% of all students in first year will be off campus.

We booked private accomodation for him in a student self catered block in a more expensive area which has 85% of its intake as 1st years. He was originally so upset but is now totally fine as he has met so many lads who are sporty and outgoing like him on Snapchat who are in the same block. Apparently no one takes the bus in Exeter all the kids walk and are super fit. From my son’s accommodation is a 15 minute walk.

Wow 28% is very high. I had no idea about this because my Dd went to an open day back in around May 2023 (as she then applied on Sept 23 and had a gap year 24-25) and hasn’t been back… there was no discussion of building works back then. Luckily she has got a campus allocation in east park, I think because she had deferred - she heard her allocation back in early July.
tbh if so many are off campus then it becomes no big thing really. In lots of ways it’s nice to be in town, especially if lots of others are too.

I do think there have been posts which are a bit unfair towards the OP and her daughter.

One of my sons friends is going to Exeter with him and was disappointed to be allocated a private flat with four Post Grads.

He called the University and asked to defer a year and wasn’t accused of ageism.

My husband did a PhD and said that he worked a 9-5 day, all year and didn’t get to socialise in the same way he did as an undergraduate.

He fully admits he wouldn’t have wanted to live with himself as a first year.

As a post graduate he was placed initially in University accommodation and in a flat with 5 international students doing maths who spoke the the same language and didn’t speak any English. They all cooked together and basically were polite but distant.

They were very lovely and as a Phd student he was absolutely fine but he knew if my oldest child had been in that situation he may not have coped so well.

Is this really the DD who has decided to forgo the uni places she has been looking forward to all year because she didn't get the halls she wanted? Or is it the mum? Like so many posters, I agree she should still go. The area will be fine and quite likely very close to where she will choose to live and socialise in years 2 and 3. If she starts and is unhappy, there will be others who drop out and places will become available on campus. If not, she can defer once she is there and restart in a year's time at no penalty if she does it in the first few weeks. Everyone is nervous about starting uni (mums and DCs alike) and think you are challenging your anxiety into this one aspect.

Just wondered how this played out in the end. My dd is thinking of firming Exeter. I hope your DD has had a great year there.

Hi, my DD decided to defer and take a gap year. We actually went back to Exeter last week - she is still planning on going this year. It is a lovely university. Interestingly I spoke to a 2nd year student and he had never heard of anyone from Streatham campus getting rooms at Charles Owen. So I’m still v glad she didn’t go last year.