University of Durham College selection

[Aurea]

Hi
Just interested to hear from other mumsnetters who have experience of Durham Colleges.

My son is about to apply for Law at Durham but is also a very keen musician. He would like a college with a reasonable number of Law students with musical facilities and societies. He plays jazz piano and Scottish fiddle among others.

Any suggestions?

Many thanks

DD has just applied for Durham. She chose her college by checking out each college individually on the Durham uni site. She's a keen musician and chose one which has choir, orchestra, lots of ensembles, societies. She'd be doing combined science and also managed to work out it would be near one of the subject options she'd like to take.

Hopefully someone on here will be able to help re: law students, but if not I'd say trawl through the website and check out each one individually.

Each college is allocated a certain number of students from each course. So there is an even spread.

Each college is allocated a certain number of students from each course. So there is an even spread.

So college 'choice' presumably won't necessarily be 'choice' at all?

I worked at Durham for a long time, in a role which involved loading regularly with all the Colleges.

One of the main factors is whether he wants to opt for one of the Bailey or one of the Hill colleges.

There’s also Hild Bede which is neither on the Bailey nor on the Hill and is therefore different culturally from either.

Of the Bailey Colleges, John’s and Chad’s are heavily ecclesiastical.

From what you’ve said, my gut would be to say Castle or Cuth’s on the Bailey, Trevs or Aiden’s on the Hill.

Liasing rather than loading!

Yes, "Choice" is an interesting concept now with random allocations Marching. They will try to give you your first choice, but some colleges are so oversubscribed your chances are slim. That said, they have to take someone! There are figures available on oversubscription if you want to play the numbers game. There are also rumours that if you hold a scholarship you may be more likely to get your choice of college. I don't know how that could be possible, but anecdotal evidence does exist....

My DD held a choral scholarship at Oxford and wanted to be part of a college with a strong choral music tradition at Durham (possible insurance choice) but this was totally ignored. Allocations seem utterly random!

Bubbles - yes DD had one from Cambridge but we didnt mention that to them at Durham. It was more the scholarships awarded by the Durham VC that I meant...but I still think its is random.