UCL vs Exeter

[CeciCC]

My DD has offers from both UCL and Exeter. Course are not the same, UCL is Human Science, Exeter is joint flexible honours Bioscience and Sociology (Exeter doesn't teach the Human science that she was interested. HS in Exeter is more enviroment focus). She can't decide between both, yesterday she was very much in favour of UCL and looking at halls... this morning, she is more for Exeter.
We know for 2nd and 3rd year, UCL accommodation will be expensive and may be not very nice.. but we live just outside London, so she decided she would live at home, at least for the 2nd year. it would be from our house 40 minutes door to door.
I think she can't decide in which "uni life" experience she would rather have...
Any experiences in both universities are very welcome!!
TIA

Well DD at the end firmed UCL. Her reasons were that she was afraid that Exeter would be too small and she would not run out of things to do in London. She is now getting excited looking at halls.

Good for her! I went to UCL many moons ago - and was brought up in a North London borough only 15 mins away on the train - but I didn’t go home often. If I left W1 - I went to visit friends who were at other unis for the weekend.

We live in the Home Counties now - can’t wait for youngest to move on so we can sell up and move back into W1.

Loved every minute of it.

While it might take a lot of "work" to get to know people from different countries, surely that can easily be a positive in that you are exposed to different backgrounds and not stuck in a constant private school/predominantly Home Counties educated bubble? Having attended school in Surrey and gone to Imperial I very much appreciated the international makeup of the uni as it helped me appreciate different cultures. Exeter would have been a continuation of the same old.

just seen your update. DD is at UCL and her insurance was Exeter. We live in Berkshire & DD has been commuting 2nd & 3rd year.

Exeter has loads of international students - a v high proportion from China and ncreasing numbers from India and Korea. Understandably they may not travel to the open day, but there are a lot of them. It is far more diverse than this thread would suggest.

UCL has 54% international students and the privately educated crowd at Exeter tends to hang out together. I've heard that it's basically a second Surrey (about 15% of my year went to Exeter with about 15% to Durham too...a private girls' school).

UCL is very international, it’s true.
some of the privately educated kids in Exeter hang out together. - many don’t. IExeter isn’t a second Surrey. It recruits v heavily from Wales apart from anything else. It’s also recruiting a lot more state-educated kids from closer to home as well.