Bath?

[southernlife55]

Anyone know anything about Bath university? What's it like to live there?

My son has never been anywhere near there but he's now holding an offer after doing better than he thought he would.

You ain't kidding @BeyondMyWits! I was shocked to see university hall costs at the ones I've looked at. I live in quite expensive area (3 bed terraced house sell over £1m), but renting one would work out not that much more for three or less if four rented turning the front room into a bedroom (as plenty of room for a kitchen/diner/livingroom at the back plus garden)! Some at one were £290/week (though I believe that is catered).
It makes Cambridge, with its guaranteed three/four years accommodation with £3,500 bursary (sliding scale) if household income less than £62,000 look quite reasonable. Getting in of course another story.

😭😭😭

Still no communication from Bath so we will abandon it and he is now booked to go to York instead next week. I’m slightly relieved TBH especially as a PP mentioned the Austen event and it’s a 4hr journey each way before you start with the Darcys and the Sensibilities.

We’ll try again for Bath next June.

DD is off to Bath Spa Uni soon.
£200 per week accommodation in halls, that I do know!!

Feel very sorry for anyone who decided to go to the Bath open day by train today. There were a succession of issues - fire by the track, a suicide, then damage to overhead wires. Ds was due to get on a train at Bath at 1pm, finally got on at 3pm, then delays all the way, then the Elizabeth Line was also affected so finally got home at 7.30pm. Obviously all could not be helped & the death of course is very sad.

I hope there isn’t anyone badly stuck en route.

Oh my word @Decorhate - and in this heat as well! Condolences to the family involved. But I am so glad we went to York today as it was 5 degrees cooler but still baking hot. Loved York btw and modern en-suite accommodation is “only” £150 p/w.

We didn't make it to Bath, in fact the traffic meant we missed her first booked session at Bristol. She definitely would prefer a campus uni as Bristol there wasn't a central place to meet a student ambassador or anything, just a huge amount of kids and parents wandering around and accommodation was closed but seemed a fair distance away. She enjoyed her sample lecture though.
She thinks she will just have to contend with offer holder day at Bath (if she gets in). Cambridge next week then Exeter. At least it will be cooler (and flatter).

Hate to be the bearer of bad news.... Exeter isn't flat...

Cambridge definitely is though! Very.

We decided not to go to the Open Day. The subject he wanted to look at was fully booked and I couldn’t see the point in going all that way to just wander round.

We’ve decided to go up in half term (I’m a TA) and have a look round Bath and do a campus tour on the Saturday.
DS might have his review of marking results back by then as well.

@Piggywaspushed say what?!? Another tick for Cambridge then. Just the small matter of getting in though.
@mrsconradfisher my daughter's subject talk was also booked so we just went to Bristol but that's a good idea to just do a campus tour. Jeez my car is putting on some mileage!

For flat... may I also recommend York. Vale of York and all that! Flat as a pancake.

@Piggywaspushed too far! But seriously the hills aren't so bad for an 18 year old, save on gym membership maybe!

Went to the open day and much to her surprise, DD liked Bath Uni and the course especially (I loved the city!)
However, from what I’ve read, unless you put it down as your firm, you won’t have any chance of getting decent accommodation- in fact reading another thread it sounds downright stressful.
There is another aspirational Uni which I think she would put as top choice. Sounds like this whole UCAS thing is a lottery.

I would avoid putting Bath as your insurance choice, lovely though it is.
We are currently in the situation where DD is due to start next week and did not get allocated university accommodation as Bath was her insurance offer. It is an absolute nightmare. There simply is no available private accommodation. All the private halls are sold out. We have tried and tried but can't find a room in a students house share. She's on waiting lists with all the agents. I've managed to book an AirBnB for the first week but that's not a sustainable option as it's so expensive.
If anyone knows anyone in Bath willing to take in a lodger - we are desperate.

Any concerns there are with youth violence drugs etc is among younger teens and never seems to involve students.

And there was me thinking that Bristol is becoming more and more like a campus these days; it has a very different footprint to what it was in the 80's.

I went to the presentation about accommodation (where they made no mention of the fact that they shunted kids out to Bath and Newport last year). The accommodation in Clifton is a 15-20 minute walk away (10 minutes from the Union) and they now run free shuttle buses up to the Stoke Bishop Halls. I'm not sure whether other unis do this, but you are able to specify female only/LGTB/quiet/no alcohol preferences when applying for accommodation when you accept a place (if the Uni isn't 1st choice you'll get what is left if you are lucky). I have to say that I rather liked being able to get away from 'campus'.

Anyway, back to Bath.

I'm not sure what has happened this year as there have been several new units completed in the past 18 months. As I said upthread, the private halls had some Bristol students in them last year as there were a lot of spare rooms. I can only assume that admissions are up (either at Bath Uni or Bath Spa). Most of the overseas students seem to live along Pulteney Road/North Parade in the £££ rooms and Pulteney Court.

There are another two big blocks being built along Lower Bristol Road that should add another 450 rooms to the letting stock.

Bath are very transparent about only offering university accommodation for first years if they firm, yes.

Private accommodation for second years is easy to find- afaik nobody DD knows had any issues (unlike places like Durham and Bristol iirc) BUT obviously, first years start looking for their second year during the winter, so yes, student private rentals still free in September is going to be very very rare.

Bath isn't unusual for this- remember a lot of Bristol students ended up living in Bath last year as well, it's a relatively small city to be accommodating 2 universities plus overspill from Bristol. I don't think though the situation was as bad last year, not sure why this year it seems to have gone awry. Last year was the big year for people deferring due to Covid uncertainties apparently though, so maybe fewer places went to students who had it as insurance to start with. DD only knows one boy who had no accommodation at all, but he managed to get a private uni style rental unihomes or something like that, anyway.

@HoratioVelveteen hope you find something. People WILL drop out and fairly quickly. One girl in dd's course didn't stay until the end of Fresher's even.

York uni is fairly flat, but rent, £200 pw!

@HoratioVelveteen Keep a close eye out next week as resit results are out on 21st and there may be some movement with people dropping out. Tbh Bath are fairly brutal with regards to resits and so there will be some who just can't continue. There is at least one facebook group for student housing in Bath but I can't remember the name of it. DC got their second year house fairly easily but we did sign up for it around Christmas time.

There is also the fact that some of the uni students do half year placements so need to find a house for half the year. I believe that applies to architects and some business students. So there may be more movement as it can be hard to co-ordinate. At the moment one of the girls in DC's house will go on placement in February and has nobody to take over her room as yet.

Good luck, it must be a nightmare.

I’m so sorry to hear about those students who are struggling to find accommodation in Bath. I just don’t understand why unis won’t plan sufficient accommodation for all first year students. I really don’t understand why they are allowed to expand student numbers without providing sufficient rooms either directly or via private providers. My DC really liked Bath and it would have been his insurance but he had heard similar nightmare stories about accommodation for insurance candidates so chose another uni instead. Btw, he had a number of friends who went into clearing having had firm places and accommodation arranged at Bath. They transferred to alternative courses at Bath via clearing and they were allowed to keep their accommodation. If Bath routinely do this, that would have left even less accommodation for insurance students.