Anxious about Dd potentially going to London University

[AffronttoBS]

Dd is applying for ucas 2023 entry, two out of her 5 choices are London (imperial and ucl). If she gets offers, on the one hand they are fantastic universities, and London should be full of opportunities and it would be great to study and live there. On the other hand, I’m getting more and more nervous about the state of things in London, especially regarding the decline of law and order and how risky it would be for her as an environment to learn to be independent.

aibu? Are there other parents feeling this way? Or if you are a parent of a yr 1 , yr 2 London student, how do you feel about your dc studying in London?

I definitely feel safer in London than in Leeds or Manchester. Or even in some smaller towns, if it all kicks off at a pub for instance, the police and ambulance feel a long way away. But that’s the thing, it’s how you feel rather than the reality often. It’s the costs that would put me off, but lots of people do it. And if it teaches you how to live frugally then that’s not a bad thing.

My thoughts too

I went to university in Reading and Oxford
I then lived for 20 years in Brixton

I regularly felt very unsafe in Reading and Oxford. Dark little corners. Silent streets Gangs of teenagers on bikes and blokes getting pissed. Unmanned train stations and bleak bus stops. People with chips on shoulders.

London felt safe as houses. Always busy. Always things open. People always around. Not an incident in the whole time I was there.

I have never felt unsafe in London. At night there are always people around, so I feel a lot safer than I do at home.

When I walk home from the station late at night after a day visiting friends in London, I'm really nervous in my quiet 'unthreatening' tiny town. Because there's literally no-one else on the streets to witness anything that could happen to me.

😁

What, all those people who actually live and work in London all the time have no idea of how bad things have become?

Like PPs - the expense aspect would absolutely put me off but not the safety side.

My DD also has her heart set on a London uni next year...frankly I'm much happier with that idea than some of the other places we've looked at!

Do you live in a particularly small town/village atm? If so I can see why you might be a bit concerned about her adjusting generally.

So Bloomsbury and South Ken - yes verily, its The Wire writ large.

Excellent public transport, well lit streets and people around day and night. The only danger over a great many other places is that they might never want to leave.

DS is in his first year in London and absolutely loving it, after a childhood in a rural area in the SouthWest.

I would have no hesitation recommending it as the experience has been life changing for him and he's so full of life and what he's seen and done. For us any city was going to be "the mean streets" so to speak, so the fact it was London made little difference.

The only thing I would say (having found out the hard way) is that your DD should not hold two London unis as her firm and insurance without checking the accommodation offers extremely well first. DS held two, didn't get his first choice (with guaranteed accommodation) and the almost had to defer due to lack of accommodation. He was finally offered a place in halls on the Tuesday and moved in on the Friday, he was set to defer first thing Wednesday morning 😬

Apparently this should have been mentioned by his (very aspirational) 6th form, but wasn't.

YANBU to feel anxious about your DD moving to a large, unfamiliar city but you would be unreasonable if your anxiety were to prevent her from studying at a university of her choice.

I've lived in London for the past 20+ years and am bringing my children up in an area I'm sure lots of people think isn't the nicest. It isn't! But it's fine. DD1 is in Y13 so she's not at uni here but she's regularly out and about with friends who are at London unis. She is sensible and aware, isn't afraid to ask someone to borrow their phone if hers is dead and she needs to make contact, knows how to read a map, that bus stops are well lit and shops that are open can always be popped into if feeling unsafe. For the past couple of nights she's been home well after midnight and has travelled back alone, on public transport.

My main concern for her when thinking about university is that she won't be in London and is far more likely to be caught out by public transport that doesn't run through the night or that she'll live somewhere with limited transport full stop. Here she has the choice of three different train lines and the DLR within a twenty minute walk of our front door. If engineering works or something mean one line isn't running, she has a number of alternative lines she could use or she could catch one of the plentiful buses that run from the nearby main road to a couple of the main central London train stations. I think she'll find public transport almost anywhere else quite restricted and frustrating.

She should "learn to be independent " long before she enters ANY university. Start teaching her now!

So Bloomsbury and South Ken - yes verily, its The Wire writ large.

🤣🤣🤣

OP, 10 million people live, work and study in London, the vast majority as normal, law abiding people with the same standards as you.

The headlines refer to a tiny minority of people, and a good proportion of some crime is between those involved.

My job has involved me walking home late at night throughout my career. I have brought up my family in London, all without issue.

However, what would instil terror is the accommodation costs.

I don't understand what you mean OP. London is fine. Probably safer in central London than anywhere else because there's just so many people everywhere.

I would say for the student experience it's not what I'd choose though. You can't beat somewhere like Sheffield, Durham, Nottingham, Cambridge, Oxford etc for getting that Uni vibe experience.

Yes London has so many amazing things and culture to offer - but the smaller cities just come alive with students. It's nice going to a bar, club, pub and having half the people in there be at the same Uni as you.

But if that's where she wants to go - I don't see the issue - we all have different priorities when choosing a Uni. Mine was the beer 😂

I did choose to live in London after Uni. Lived there 15yrs - zone 2 and then zone 3. I felt safer walking around at night there then anywhere else I've lived to be honest.

If it comes to it make transport proximity to accommodation the top priority when making halls choices. DD has bus stops in both directions almost directly outside the front entrance to her accommodation. This is purely a coincidence in our case but it does give a certain sense of security and I would much rather she got the bus back late, possibly alone than walk the 8 minutes from the nearest tube station.

Cost of living, granted is a worry.

But the idea of being worried just because the unis are in London, I don't really get. UCL is in Bloomsbury, it's hardly the pits, same with imperial. I went to one and loved it! Felt very safe. I had siblings OTOH who went to manc and Glasgow who had far more issues, and a close family friends daughter was badly assaulted in Cardiff walking back from a student night out to her halls recently. I don't think you need to be quite so dramatic, you need to prepare them for big city living absolutely but the likelihood of them being seriously harmed because they live in central London is remarkably unlikely.

Thank you for posting OP. My dd is going to UCL in January and first year and I was really worried about safety to be honest and but after reading all the replies I’m happy.

I skimmed and forgot that you mentioned Imperial and UCL, OP. Seriously, you couldn't find niceer and safer bits of London if you tried!

Perhaps the average Mumsnetter lives in la eafy enclave.

No. So many MNers live in very ordinary non leafy places. My comments are based on living in SW2 for 30 years.

London is great, please don't worry. Of course there are dodgy areas, as there are in all cities, but she doesn't have to go to those. Much of London is delightful.

Why do you think London is dangerous?

I studied there four four years, lived there alone for 10 years (Tooting, Ealing, Streatham etc), go in most weeks and I have never had any issues.

Like any city, it is wise to keep to areas you know after dark, and to avoid getting drunk and making yourself vulnerable, but that's true anywhere.

Make sure your daughter knows the basics and then send her on her way. I hope she has a great time.

I work at one of the London universities and have lived and worked in other university towns. I don’t feel worried walking round London and neither do our students. You could pick any other large city in Britain and have the same concerns. You just have to be sensible about personal safety and be alert, but you should do that wherever you are. When some awful crime happens in a quiet upmarket area you always see shocked locals wailing “I never thought it would happen here” because they wrongly think crime is something that happens in big cities.
Student safety is taken extremely seriously by universities. Some provide cheap late night transport home for students. The best thing to do is ensure that students have a good awareness of personal safety.

Have you been to Southampton lately? That is a city absolutely gripped by a fast growing violence problem, not to mention entrenched drug and street homelessness issues.

It’s easy to forget just how parochial much of this country is until one comes across threads like these.

How does the fact that one person was robbed some years ago say anything about the state of London now? People were being robbed "some years ago" in virtually every city in the UK. I could equally claim that London is totally safe because I've never been robbed in 40 years of travelling around it at all times of the day and night, but I know you can't generalise from one person's experience.