What are Leeds, York, Notts, Newcastle & Birmingham Universities and cities like? No open days = no clue!

[Notdonna]

DD yr12 and all open days cancelled. We haven’t done much UK travel and don’t know the cities at all that DD has on her list. So if anyone has an insight to Birmingham, Leeds, York, Newcastle, Nottingham - the cities and their unis it’d be very much appreciated. Huge thanks!

[Newgirls]

You can just go and wander around many of these as they are very open places. You won’t go in the libraries etc of course but you can get a real feel for a place, it’s location etc. Hotels are opening in July so go for it! Eg Leeds you can walk past many of the buildings as they front onto the main road.

[MarchingFrogs]

virtualopenday.leeds.ac.uk/?utm_source=GDN&utm_medium=PPC&utm_campaign=Undergraduate%20Virtual%20Open%20Day%20June%202020%20Display&utm_content=MPU%20RN&gclid=Cj0KCQjw0Mb3BRCaARIsAPSNGpV__MdFA6B08QJW5RRIcxB2Cn77c-s4vkDxp-nhz0-cFHTfzF_6We0aAgSOEALw_wcB

Leeds' upcoming virtual open events, for anyone interested who hasn't seen the link already.

[HollyBollyBooBoo]

Would you be able to narrow down the choices on paper and then go and visit say the top 3 cities - even just to wander around it. It is such a personal thing.

For example I hate Birmingham, it never feels safe to me and somehow just feels grubby (I'm sure I'm statistically wrong but that's how I feel). York on the other hand is beautiful but could be a bit too quaint for some Uni students.

[captainpantbeard]

Leeds Beckett Headingley Campus is mainly sport, computing, education, tourism

[Piggywaspushed]

I know what you mean about York but anyone who has ever been on the Micklegate Run would beg to differ about York being quaint! Of pretty cities with a boozing culture, I think it is only possibly rivalled by Lincoln!

[My0My]

Birmingham university isn’t in the centre of Birmingham. Students don’t have to live there. Lots of cities have a grubbier side. It’s what makes them urban. However Warwick and York will feel different from the other three. I would go on subject reputation and then campus or not. Leeds, Nottingham and Birmingham are not in the city centres. Just nearby enough not to be campus.

[Newgirls]

Birmingham campus is very swish and is its own world away from the city.

York is a bit 60s architecture but the fab city makes up for that

Nottingham has an amazing campus so green and swish and some smart areas in the city, and some not so

[Piggywaspushed]

Nottingham and Birmingham are campus universities...

Surely , a campus university isn't about location entirely. It's a uni with everything on one site : teaching, accommodation, entertainment, green space. They must appeal to lots of applicants because I have noticed lots of unis now sue the word campus just for the site the teaching buildings cluster around.

Birmingham is a huge and beautiful campus.. Nottingham is a lovely campus with a lake (and further form the city centre than York's campus is) Birmingham and Nottingham aren't your 60 plate glass campuses, though. It was a lot more faff to get into Nottingham city centre when I was there than it is now, though because of huge investment in public transport. York is literally 10 minutes on a bike form the centre, 20 minute pub crawl..

Leeds is a redbrick.

The other classic campuses (campi?) are UEA, Stirling, Lancaster , Aberystwyth,and Warwick.

[emmetgirl]

My daughter went to Leeds- great city and great university- a campus site in a city. She loved it there and still lives in Leeds!

[mumsneedwine]

Nottingham has 3 campuses. Depending on what you study depends where you are. Main one is green, beautiful and full of beasts (geese mainly). Jubilee is up the road and modern with another smaller lake. And Sutton Bonnigton is 20 minutes away for the vets, animal science things and foody stuff (I think).

[loulouljh]

I went to Birmingham although many moons ago and loved it A big campus and then a separate campus for accommodation just down the road.

[UnhappyMondays]

I went to Birmingham and it was amazing! It was in the noughties so a few years ago but the campus is gorgeous, there’s loads to do but so much cheaper than London and I’d definitely recommend.

My younger sister also went there a few years after me and also absolutely loved it.

I was also accepted to Nottingham which looked great, I have friends who went who really enjoyed their time there, but I’m pleased I chose Birmingham.

[ShaunaTheSheep]

@My0My Leeds Uni IS in the city centre. It’s only half a mile from the station, a ten minute walk. One of the reasons DS chose it because everything is in easy walking distance.

[My0My]

Well yes I know it’s not far. We visited. But as you can see, the definition of campus varies. I think I said York and Warwick will feel different from the other three. I stand by that. It depends what you define as a city in terms of area!

[ForeverBubblegum]

Newcastle is awesome, big enough for there to be stuff to do, but small enough to know your way round fairly quickly. Both universities are close to the city centre (for most courses)

York city is beautiful, but the uni is quite far out, so students can end up in a bit of a uni bubble.

[Ginfordinner]

I'm with Piggy in my understanding of a campus university. Even though York isn't far from the city it still felt quite isolated because we approached it from the air museum, where we had parked, so you don't get a sense of how close it is to the centre of York.

Newcastle has most of its buildings in one designated area, but it is very definitely a city university.

[Piggywaspushed]

It's the same with UEA. No sense of proxemics at the Open Day. They should probably say more at open days about the cities and their proximity : I had no sense when visiting UEA or OBU of where I actually was. I missed Hull off my list before. Lovely campus, city...well, it's a lovely campus!

And Kent.

There are probably loads more!

Sorry, Hull...

[BackforGood]

How strange @HollyBollyBooBoo. When were you last in Birmingham, and whcih part of the City were you in ? As that is a very odd thing to say about a City

[Casino218]

I live in Leeds. I work at York uni. Lovely campus at York but great bus service into York centre. A big mix of students in Leeds, something for everyone. Great live music scene.

[Dgall]

I went to Newcastle and loved it so much I stayed for 5 years after. It was my insurance so I was a bit apprehensive but it’s the perfect student city. Enough going on to keep everyone busy (and not just the nightlife, but that is great too) close to the coast, the busyness of the city and the beautiful Northumberland countryside on the doorstep too. A small ish city so can walk everywhere, saving loads of money as a student, and the city is fairly cheap anyway. It’s impossible not to feel happy walking through the city centre, the atmosphere is infectious, and the locals are friendly

[Phphion]

Leeds economics is really interesting because they are one of the best departments for applied economics and very much leaders in the movement to correct the idea that when economists' models conflict with reality, they will back their model every time! It would be a great place to study if you have an interest in things like development economics, health economics, etc. but less so if your interest is maths, maths, maths.

York economics is a generally well-regarded department - it is also a place that people like. Occasionally, there is analysis of the most popular clusters of applications which shows that York is one of the most popular, and sometimes the most popular, 'plus 1' for economics applicants who do all Big 4 (Cambridge (or sometimes Oxford), LSE, UCL, Warwick) plus one applications.

Nottingham is a mystery to me as an economics department and a city. It always seems to do well in the economics rankings, though, so whatever they are mysteriously doing they appear to be doing well.

Newcastle economics is very, very business focused to the point that it is rather debatable whether it is an economics department or just some people in a business school who do some economics. If your interest is in business and financial economics, then it would be a good place to go as there will be a lot of opportunities to focus on these things and link to a wider business curriculum but if not, I think you could tire of the business lens being applied to everything. I always think Newcastle must be a nice place to study because the city and the university's position within it, the areas the students live in, etc. all seem very conveniently located and, coming from a city that mainly relies on buses, the Metro is brilliant.

Birmingham economics is very much a good course at a good university. A kind of can't go wrong option becuase it will always be a respectable subject at a respectable university, even though Birmingham is not especially renowned for economics. If you were to randomly select a fairly academic subject and then randomly select an RG university, you would come up with a lot of places like Birmingham economics. I like cities, so I really like Birmingham because it feels like a proper city. The campus is in easy reach of the city centre but still feels like its own separate area and it is enormous, like a Tardis campus, it is impossible to imagine just how vast it is from the outside.

[Piggywaspushed]

That's really helpful Phhpion. My DS is doing economics A Level but not maths maths maths and that Leeds course sounds his bag. He is also doing sociology and history (and Spanish) so definitely health economics type things would be his bag.

I shall store this info for the future,

Your comment on Nottingham made me laugh. I always find East Midlanders quite blunt and common sensical so I like the idea that they are actually secretly enigmatic!

[Piggywaspushed]

Apols for name misspell : I tried really hard, too!!

[bluebell94]

Newcastle is a lovely city and great for students. Great nightlife and not expensive in terms of living. Beautiful place, good train/road links and you've got the metro which for a couple of quid will have you anywhere in wider newcastle and straight to the beach on sunny days. Very friendly place. Big city but easy to get around and find your way pretty quickly

[Piggywaspushed]

My DH (Leeds) measures every uni on what they are like at football (he was captain of the England Universities' football team, thus managing a lordly 3rd class degree in maths...) . He would only entertain Leeds from this list and place York somewhere in the seventh circle of hell!

Unlikely to be helpful information...