Best thing and worst thing about your uni?

[Unichat]

my son is in lower sixth - looking at unis - and he asked me and his dad what were the best and worst things about our university days. I went to Oxford: Best - fantastic lecturers/tutorials; Worst - the judgement from private school students (who outnumbered us state school plebs) about my dress sense/hair/accent (this was in early 90s so sure it has improved). Husband went to Leeds - best was the nightlife; worst was the food (he was catered). What are your best and worst features?

Recent Bristol grad here (graduated 2021). Best thing - such a good course and so many friends. Worst was that my drinks were spiked and I had druggie flatmates. Drugs a real problem at Bristol - my experience was that due to huge accommodation costs, state school students are increasingly being priced out. Loads of private school students in accommodation I was allocated (Wills) and they had cash to splash on drugs.

Sussex

Best - lots of great people, and when I was there some fantastic professors.

Worst - outside Brighton on an unexciting piece of land that was “a campus” but basically a big field. God awful 1960s architecture that created wind tunnels on blustery days across the Sussex Downs. Having to schlep in and out on the train if you needed anything from town.

Currently: known for twerpy students so woke they have lost their minds and terrorized and bullied Kathleen Stock out of her post as a Philosophy Professor for having the temerity to say women exist as a material reality.

Leeds Uni terrible - no support or guidance or finance for year abroad. Still some online lectures. On plus side - great nightlife and our student fallen in love ❤️

I went to Durham 20 years ago now.

Best thing was the college system which made it quite accessible.

Worst thing. Town very small and I hated all the gown shit.

Lancaster Uni. Best - college sports. Worst - Lancaster is soooooo boring.

York - Best - such a beautiful city to live in. Loads of student job opportunities. A proper college system back in my day (I think this has diminished a bit) with college bars, bops, live in college deans, porters, food serveries on every college and great pastoral and academic care. A real uni 'identity' and down to earth.

Worst - I was bullied by males on my floor in the first year but that could have happened anywhere. I had a shit tutors for most of second year - but I chose their options! Also this could have happened anywhere.

Son is just finishing his 3 years at Lancaster.

Best: Safe, friendly out of town campus close enough to city via a short bus route. Nice site, lots of green space, lots of shrubs etc between buildings. Modern, good facilities, etc. Colleges good for sporty/social students.

Worst: Covid! Appalling treatment during covid when staff deserted it for the full year, even this last year, lectures for 2 of his modules were all online as lecturers weren't even in the country and doing them from their home countries. Campus security over zealous not letting students walk around campus just for exercise in the flats of 8 when we had the "rule of six" - the didn't understand the "household" rule. Campus shops/eateries closed and some never re-opened. The way the Uni treated their students during covid has left a cloud over an otherwise good experience.

Reading in the 1990s

Best: Brilliant course and department, great hall, great friends
Worst: Can't think of anything, although looking back I wished mobile phones had been around back then as using the pay phones was a nightmare!

I was at Cambridge. Best - I loved the collegiate thing and enjoyed representing my college at sport and having a tight knit group of friends. Worst - I did feel quite stupid a lot of the time. DH was at Durham. Best - he also liked the college thing and had a tight knit group of friends. He liked living in a small city but having access to good nightlife (Newcastle). Worst - the same as yours OP about the state school / private school divide (I didn't have this at Cambridge- my friends were 50/50).

best thing meeting the love of my life

worst thing - losing him

I went to Hull in the 80s. Best: lovely friends (to this day), fab accommodation and food in first year, brilliant music scene. Worst: slug ridden private accommodation in second and third years.

DH: Reading. He says it was all great. Really?

DD recent Oxford graduate. Best: college life, friends, uni sport, course, tutors. Worst: emptying college room at end of term for four years.

DS currently at Cambridge: Best: college, uni sport (tennis), college sport (tennis), course, supervisor. Worse: college food is hit and miss.

UEA (mid 90s)
best: gigs, music scene, city small enough to get anywhere easily, my course was pretty obscure in the 90s it was great to find others also interested in it (I think 9 people took my degree in that year).
worst: everybody knew your business (I was a visible part of the SU, I didn’t realise how gossipy campus was until then), breezeblock walls, concrete everywhere.

Cambridge (late 90s)
best: formal hall (fabulous food and wine, very inexpensive), amazing buildings, a good sense of community, my mum’s delight in being waved past visitor queues for college chapels as she was with a member of the university.
worst: tiny room, some very superior students.

Oxford. Best: the constant tutorials (weekly per paper, requiring many hours of prep), defending ideas and explaining your thoughts to world experts. Worst: the constant tutorials (weekly per paper, requiring many hours of prep), defending ideas and explaining your thoughts to world experts.

UEA in early/mid 80s. Best - music and perfect little city.
Worst -
My own fault really - should have grabbed it and shaken it, and didn't.
I would now. Confidence came later in life!

Hi @Unichat I have been thinking about this today, so here goes.

Bristol in the 80s.

Best things - (then) I grew up rural, so I loved the big city, gigs!! shops, cinemas. Mind you these would be at any city.
I also loved the city itself - the Downs, the Suspension Bridge, the tatty Georgian terraces in Clifton, my morning bike ride past the SS Great Britain in my final year.
I met some lovely people and had a great student experience, acting in plays, writing for the student newspaper, promoting gigs.
We booked The Smiths for no money to play at the union, they had to cancel, and we rebooked for the same price (like, £800) and in the meantime their first album came out and they were very famous (and very good).

Worst things - (then) Lots of very posh people, some of whom were not very nice (not necessarily bc they were posh but who knows?)
City and university sprawl - I know some on MN don't agree, but the railway station is miles away, the halls are way out of town and even when I lived in Clifton, my departments were a 15-20-min walk away.
My year abroad (MFL combined hons German and phil degree) - I found it tough and was lonely
Coming back from my year abroad and realising that all the philosophy students I knew in yr 1 and 2 had graduated, and the only phi people I knew were the others doing it with MFL (about 5 ppl)
[I realise those last 2 have more to do with my degree choice]

Best thing - (now, looking back) The salutary experience of being in the company of a load of people who were much smarter than I was - had lived in the country whose language we were studying, had read so much more than me. Wish I had benefited more from this. But it is a challenge that we all need to experience and school had not offered it to me.

Worst things - (again, now, looking back) All but one of my tutors and lecturers, across two non-STEM departments, were men.
In three years, I saw one non-white face on campus, a woman from Iran who lived in my first-year hall. No one else. Not on my course, not in my hall, not in the union building. Hoping very much that that has changed.

Sorry for essay!

Leicester early 90s
Best: not very political (mag was called The Ripple!), excellent teaching, the paternoster lift, JCR bar prices, coach home was cheap (I turned down top Unis as I couldn’t afford to get to and from home), library, market stalls in town for cheap but good fruit and veg and fabric, 8.30am lectures where I earned money recording lectures with dictaphone (with permission) and typing up and selling notes. Very few other students could get up, I would have starved without those lectures!

worst: College Hall - built on a prison design, bathroom doors with Wild West style mini swinging doors, hanging food out the window in a plastic bag to keep cool as no fridge. Now demolished. Sound and crowds from Football stadium which at the time was more central to town.

What a lovely and reflective post @clary. Thank you for posting. My nephew did a year abroad also (Business with Spanish) and, although he quite enjoyed it, never really found his feet back at his uni in year 4 as all his friends had left. As to Bristol - it is clearly a fabulous university but just too expensive accommodation wise for DS and most of his school friends to even contemplate it. It’s such a shame - but the northern unis in cheaper areas will benefit in the coming years. We know hardly anyone applying to London unis or West Country - but lots looking at Cardiff, Swansea, Sheffield, Newcastle instead

My DS has been to look at Leicester @PettsWoodParadise - he loved the city and the student village was incredible. It will be one of his five choices for sure

Ah thanks @Unichat hope it is useful to your DS in a way or to others. I think the year abroad is very talked up and I am sure can be a great opportunity, but everyone you know leaving is an issue rarely mentioned.

Funny you and @PettsWoodParadise mention Uni of Leicester which I think is highly underrated - my DD went there on clearing and graduated last year. Her brief best and worst:

Worst - Covid attacked her uni experience and she was also unwell. A uni-related worst - the halls were a fair way out of town and hers was not super nice and the flatmates were not her people (maybe a clearing issue tbf)

Best - her tutors and esp her PT were amazing when she was struggling, really advocated for her . She chose modules (Eng Lit) studying books she loved. All her assessment was via coursework not exams, which suited her (again, an aspect often ignored). She was encouraged to suggest a theme for her essays (wrote one comparing Frankenstein and Pride and Prejudice!).
The university student body is wonderfully diverse, barely a white face seen on University Road; I found this very refreshing.

@PettsWoodParadise i was at Leicester in the mid 90s and loved the paternoster! I was so disappointed that it had gone when we visited with dd!

I was out in the Oadby halls, but my mum went in the 60s and she was in College Hall when it was brand new!

In my second year I lived right next door to the football ground. It was noisy on Saturdays!

Best thing about Leicester, both town and uni, was that it was down to earth and normal. I only knew one girl who’d been to private school. I also had great teaching.

I guess the downside in first year was the long cycle between Oadby halls and campus.

Best thing: the stunning building that resembles a French chateau
Worst thing: the left wing self-righteousness

Oxford 1980s - best - my tutor always poured really good wine down me at my tutorials. Worst - I couldn't remember anything he said....

More seriously the good things were the college system, the quality of the tutors, good 3 course dinner and a cooked breakfast every day for very little money, cheap college bar, the buildings, the river, the Bodleian, especially the Duke Humphrey library.

Bad things - having to share my college with David Cameron, having to justify any unusual ideas to a world expert who wasn't going to give you an easy time of it, having to eat breakfast & dinner in the same room as David Cameron, trying to avoid David Cameron and his noisy loutish friends in the college bar, the Bodleian catalogues (which were huge ledgers with sticky labels in with the titles and reference numbers of books - so if the label fell out you'd not be able to find the book as you wouldn't have its reference number), finals being 10 three hour long essay papers all done in a week.

Keele

Best- beautiful campus, lots of grass n trees
Worst- weather as in top of hill so felt like it was always rainy n windy (it wasn't cos I have memories of sitting out on blankets in the sun)

London Uni (80s)

Best : Coming from a rural childhood to a big city was so exciting. Everything on my doorstep. Could get cheap(ish) theatre tickets, go to concerts etc all with a great bunch of people.

Worst : 2nd year flat was truly awful. I don't even have proper photos as we were too embarrassed about it. We enjoyed ourselves (see above) but it was freezing, very old furnishings and not self contained (we had to go via communal staircase for bathroom and kitchen).

Manchester late 80s
best: the hacienda. The freedom. Some good friends.
worst: grotty student housing. The food.