Please help- bristol accommodation options!

[questioner123]

Hi everyone,

Me again, I'm after some advice regarding Bristol accommodation choices.

DD finally decide after my last post to go with self-catered accommodation. She is both an introvert and extrovert- likes to be social, spend time with friends but isn't massively outgoing, loud, confident etc., doesn't do drugs and isn't a massive drinker, so she is a bit worried about choosing a hall say Hiatt Baker in Stoke Bishop which has a reputation for being druggy and full of people who want to party and get drunk.

Having said this, she does like to make friends, go out maybe once or twice a week, and do nice things- she prefers company rather than being on her own! This is all coming from her by the way, she wanted to see whether any of you have any experience with Bristol.

En-suite has always been a top priority, but she really likes the look of Goldney Hall, but has very few en-suites... so not sure what to do.

Can any of you help with some advice regarding city centre halls/Goldney hall/Stoke bishop halls please??

Many thanks :)

Re your list - I think they are some of the better halls to land in. You definitely get preference for rooms if you have a disability. I also believe that on the Bristol website there are details of the typical applicant rate for each hall which may be useful when making your second choice. My DD tried for Clifton halls but was allocated a hall in SB. With hindsight I think she would have applied for one in Clifton and maybe Wills or Churchill in SB to try to avoid being allocated to the hall she is in.

My dds are happy in their halls at SB and are not part of a drug and drink culture. I think everyone is entitled to their views but I did find the comment from @Watchingblueplanet very offensive.

My son was perfectly happy at Stoke Bishop too, and is not into drugs and clubbing, though he does drink. He wasn't ecstatic there and didnt' make his friends there, but, though he found the stink of weed offputting, it wasn't a terrible experience.

Brevelino, I think we can agree that DC have had very different experiences.

My advise was based on the fact that if you are in SB you can feel trapped. So say, if one of your flatmates decides to host pre's for what feels like 100 people without telling you, you dont have much option but to lick yourself in your room and try your best to study.

If you are in Clifton you can go to the library. Ditto if your milk is drunk. In Clifton you can just pop out and get more. Not so in SB. So the impact of any anti social behavior is minimised.

OP specifically asked me to give reasons for my advice and I did. It is personal and honest.

To be honest I often feel bruised by Bristol threads. There is an impression that unless your child is monied with a large group of boarding school friends, they are an outlier and inferior. The recent suggestion that DD, as a medic, should be there to clear up other students vomit, was completely unacceptable. I really hope that the posher Bristol DC do not see future doctors as their social inferiors, there to clean up for them, simply because they have less spending money than them or did not go to the right school.

As I said before, it is a matter of luch. Throw 12 18 year old strangers together and one of two will dominate. A matter of luck how those dominant characters behave. It could be quite orderly, and plemty move because their flat is too dull it can be Lord of the Flies.

No wardens, no real supervision, no sanctions, no escape.

I appreciate your DDs are happy, and that Bubbles DD had a fabulous time. My daughter did not. But this does not warrent the snide comments about outliers etc.DD is a good kid. She just took a while to find her people.

Curiously last summer we met some people who knew the girl who caused DD so many problems and her family. "Not surprised" was the verdict. University will attract some unhappy children who will then act out. No much you can do about that. There is more though, that could be done to protect others.

I agree with bevelino. My DD doesn’t smoke, drink too much regularly and doesn’t do dope. The majority are like this. They put up with the idiots but then discard them for second year. I think DC who find it difficult to go a couple of miles back to SB are a bit pampered! DD worked extensively in the library and still managed to live in SB! What a trooper!!! Her friends in catered halls even managed to shop and take it back on the bus! They even arranged food deliveries. Clearly they were organised but that’s what university teaches you. Skills.

Stoke Bishop halls don’t seem to have changed much since I was at Bristol (Manor) in the mid-80s. Our DC who was at Goldney had the same dim view. SB is not the place to be.

I also have a DD in SB but I didn't get offended by the Watching post. I don’t think they were saying all SB students are part of a drink and drug culture just that some students are more comfortable with a party scene than others and that we as parents may not realise what are DCs are doing. The attraction of Bristol is the great academics combined with a great party vibe. Thats what makes Bristol such a great place to be a student. It’s why my DD wanted to go there. However, nowadays the party vibe for teenagers sadly does often come with alcohol and drugs and it is churlish to pretend that it doesn’t. My DD says there is a group of “hard core party people” in her hall, largely from wealthy backgrounds with plenty of money to spend who do drink heavily, go out clubbing a lot and take drugs. Most students couldn’t afford this lifestyle. That doesn’t mean all public school pupils are doing this, (her friends are a mix of public, private and state schools) just that one group noticeably is. (I suspect you will also find a similar group at many of our big universities). She says she chooses to avoid them and I don’t see lots of posts suggesting she is partying every night. However, I hear what I am told so I may be wrong. Our DCs are away from home with new freedoms, so I suspect more of our DCs may experiment and be involved in these things than we as parents want to believe. To me that’s something they need to get out of their system and university is the place to do it.

Does anyone know what Hiatt Baker is like? 😊 thanks for your replies.

Or the courtrooms in the city centre. Both have been added to DD’s endless list 🙄

What's she studying? Does she know where her lectures will be? Hawthorns would have been perfectly placed for me to roll out of bed at 8:55 for lectures at 9.

She is studying Law. Wants sociable accommodation, but not constant partying/drugs etc. as she isn’t a massive fan of drinking. She is saying she has heard city centre is dull/boring, is this true? I never realised how hard this accommodation process this would be, it is stressing DD out a lot actually.

My DD’s friend is studying law and I think she had to be in some lectures at 8am so kept missing her catered breakfast she had paid for. Either that or the bus took too long to get in from SB so had to skip breakfast. I would check if this is still the case re 8am starts for law next year.

Otherwise my DD said Hiatt Baker self catered was really nice but not to do the catered hall. I may be wrong, but I thought the Courtrooms were another vastly oversubscribed hall. But looks lovely and modern inside and right in the heart of the city if you want to be close to everything.

My DD is biased and says your DD should go to Wills! I am sorry, we are getting far too invested in your DC’s choice of hall.

DD and I looked at Hiatt Baker self-catered on an open day visit - the flat we saw was lovely (but so it should be, given the rent, was DD's comment). We also looked at a shared facilities hall at Stoke Bishop (? University??), which definitely reminded me of various on-call flats and houses DH was in early in his medical career, only a lot mre cramped. The Tab seems to have soft spot for it, though.
thetab.com/uk/bristol/2018/10/12/in-defence-of-university-hall-34779

I was a Wills mum! I doubt if every law lecture starts at 8 am in first year. That would be truly unusual. My DD had a 9 am on a Tuesday (not Law) and that curtailed cheap clubbing on a Monday (had she wanted to do this). Ask the Law faculty? Does getting your own breakfast one day a week break the bank? Porridge to go, quick cereal bowl and a banana works for some. The bus takes 15 mins. Not a long commute. Plenty of lawyers in Wills and Churchill. If you go for a wildly oversubscribed Hall, be prepared for disappointment.

Hiatt Baker has been modernised. If used to be grotty.

The City Centre of Bristol is quite noisy and a not as nice as Clifton. The waterfront has pubs and clubs and some students want this so it suits them. Otherwise avoid. SB and Clifton are so much better.

Falling out of bed into lectures doesn’t prepare for work.

Nothing decent in Bristol is cheap! But the same applies in London, Edinburgh, Exeter etc. If it has en-suite and is modernised, it’s expensive. I see the article is judgemental

• about not wanting Wills students. The class divide! It’s also clearly saying what I said earlier - parties are held in big kitchens. The catered halls do not have them!!! Big advantage. If you can get your own breakfast occasionally!

I chaired a course at the end of last year (law) and one of my speakers was a lawyer who had beein in Wills relatively recently - love it, read law at Bristol. I was telling him my son had been at Wills last year.

At the end of the day people can make friends anywhere so I wouldn't worry too much about it. One of my sons applied to Wills as his sister had been there, he had visited it and he liked it (it does look nice www.bristol.ac.uk/accommodation/undergraduate/residences/wills/ )

My twins went for catered in year 1 as they thought that might be a bit less work and would be more sociable. I was surprised they both got their first choice of hall.

I presume as catered is more expensive than not catered you might get some people who are a bit better off in catered but my twins had friends with all kinds of different incomes and everyone is fairly sensitive to that.

You get students who are better off in self catered and who have generous catering budgets!

My DD1 was in self catered accommodation at another uni and it made her very unwell. The males in the flat were disgusting and never cleaned up anything so she felt she couldn't cook properly so she didn't eat properly.

In contrast DD2 was in catered halls in Bristol and really enjoyed having her meals prepared for her and the sociability of it all. Weekends were an issue at times because the kitchens only had microwaves but once she had made friends they seemed to manage on takeaways or cobbling stuff together. She ended 1st year much healthier than DD1.

I guess the thing is you don't know when you apply what hall you will be allocated or what your flatmates will be like. It's all a lottery.

I doubt if every law lecture starts at 8 am in first year
No it wasn’t every lecture. I think just once a week. I think she was irritated that she had paid for breakfast and then couldn’t eat it!

BubblesBuddy - I am afraid for some students getting your own breakfast once a week having already paid for a meal may well break the bank. Not everyone is fortunate enough to be able to send their DCs to university with a large allowance as you or I have been able to. The children of parents using food banks are still entitled to go to university but their parents won’t be funding “extra porridge, cereals and bananas”. I don’t mean to criticise but I am surprised that you are not aware of how much poverty there is in this country.

In fact if everyone in the UK gave up breakfast we would all be a lot healthier - with an intermittent fast from dinner to lunch next day! Cheap too.

This won't be very hepful, OP, I'm afraid, but I was at Hiatt-Baker (no self-catered flats there in those days). In 1974. It was a dump even then. Moved to a flat in Clifton for the rest of my time in Bristol. Still, great exercise walking across the Downs and back every day for lectures! No need to join a gym!

Xenia I agree that many of us do need to cut back on how much we eat but I think this trivialises the point I was making. Some students who have paid for a meal may not be able to afford to buy another breakfast. They may also be reliant on that breakfast as they may be skipping lunch already as they can’t afford to pay for it. I distinctly remember at university relying on breakfast and smuggling bread out as I couldn’t afford to pay for lunch. And that was in the days of full grants. I can’t imagine how poorer students cope these days.

I never realised how hard this accommodation process this would be, it is stressing DD out a lot actually

I think you're both over thinking it to be honest.
Decide en suite vs not
Decide catered vs not
Decide rough location

The rest will work itself out. You'll get a mix of people in each hall. She'll make friends in her hall, in other halls, on her course, in societies etc. Those friendships will change/end/new ones start as the year goes on.

I lived in Unite House right in the city centre. I shared a flat with 6 others who were all on a similar course to me (all vets/medics/pharmacists) which I'm sure wasn't by accident. I don't know if the uni halls do similar?

Students from poor families don't choose catered halls as a rule.

Not everyone can get going in the morning without breakfast. It’s an absolutely indispensable meal for quite a lot of people!