Nottingham University - what is going on with the League tables?

[BobtheFrog]

Like a few others in this forum, my young adult has just finished their Year 13 mocks and didn't get the grades they had hoped for. Firm and Insurance choices remain unchanged but we have been considering some more modest alternatives

• digging around was surprised with Nottingham data, it had the biggest drop in applications in 2024 of any uni (-3600) is sitting around 60 with the Guardian and even #30ish with CUG and Times. Not long ago I would have expected mid 20s

Anyone know what's going on?

Now you say that, I don't know if it was just the E Mids but there was a lot of talk of girls being spiked a couple of years ago, say just post COVID, literally by injection in nightclubs. It was quite big news.

My DD's best friend was spiked by injection in Rock City where Crisis is. You couldn't see her knickers though.

She collapsed on the stairs and dd had to get a bouncer to help. Bouncer carried her to a cab and dd took her to QMC calling the girls parents on the way. At QMC they said they couldn't record it as a spiking as they couldn't be sure it was a spiking because they couldn't see a mark.

Parents just wanted to get home I suppose and they were all just so glad that nothing else had happened to the friend. But looking back on it it's absolutely outrageous.

Yes there was a huge issue in Notts nightclubs with girls being injected, I had forgotten about that.

@thing47 I do hear what you say about not getting every bit of info on line but students can email departments with questions. MN parents seem to have the huge luxury of travelling to umpteen open days. We simply didn’t have this and DC had to shortlist. That’s actually not a bad skill in life. We also could visit cities on holiday they already knew London. They didn’t want campus so city mattered. Mine were not that bothered with course content. DD1 liked enough options everywhere so it didn’t matter that much. DD2 had one course she wanted. What mattered was reputation really. It does amaze me how much time some people can find to for this process. I can see now that my DDs are decisive people which helps them enormously at work. They sift and filter info very quickly and take the rough with the smooth. Like being at university. You cannot make everything perfect. I think your DD went to Nottingham? I assume she enjoyed it there? Would she go now or not?

It does amaze me how much time some people can find to for this process.

Amazingly a lot of us don't work Saturdays, so yes, we did have plenty of time to make day trips to different universities.

Your DD's are not more superior or more decisive because you or they decided that they didn't want to visit many universities. We are all different.

MN parents seem to have the huge luxury of travelling to umpteen open day

My dd went on her own to open days. Or with friends. On the train.

From Nottingham to Newcastle, Leeds, Sheffield and Southampton.

It’s a strange thing to be superior about! My dad is the most decisive person I know, he makes instant decisions and I’m not sure it’s a good trait a lot of the time! Some things in life require careful consideration…

I think we visited 6 unis/cities over summer of year 12 and autumn of year 13. It was great, I love visiting new places/cities I don’t know well. It was also nice to have time with just dd. It would be sad if you couldn’t spare 6 days over a six month period but I guess some people are much busier than me!

Yes you're right @TizerorFizz DD2 was in Nottingham, though at NTU rather than Nottingham University (and then at LSHTM for postgrad so she clearly favours institutions known by their initials😀). To answer your question, she liked the city very much, and despite all the dire warnings beforehand of how violent it was, that wasn't her experience, though she was pretty 'streetwise' already having made many trips to London as a teenager.

We did 3-4 visits with each of DS and DD2 (DD1 didn't do her secondary or tertiary education in the UK, so her experiences not really relevant to MN education threads). I thought that was about the norm tbh, but I guess everyone is different and has different notions about that.

For us ds is neurodiverse so the feel of a place was very important. he discounted one quite prestigious institution because he just didn't like the vibe and another because he hated the idea of spending 3 years in that town.

What was the place he discounted?

@TizerorFizz, DC have such different priorities when choosing where to study. Course content was the most important aspect for my DC (gleaned from uni websites), followed by facilities (checkef out at open days) and employability. A shortlist of five universities to visit with school or myself or DH was not too onerous.

LIPA

No idea why my post was deleted!

@thing47 I thought that was about the norm too. So would DD go to Nottingham now? It’s not really an issue which university: it’s more of a city problem I would think from most posts. We had very busy girls and had open days mid week.

This is so interesting. My neurodiverse ds was exactly the same and favoured the (city) uni which felt "peaceful". He is quite adamant in his choice.

Also just adding that I lived in Nottingham in the 90s/2000s - which is why I clicked on the thread - and am sad that it now feels unsafe. It was a great city to live in back then, though it had its problems.

It’s not the police area with the highest number of murders though. Far from it. It’s all about perception and two student murders. It’s not more unsafe than anywhere else that’s a big city.

Cleveland, Derbyshire, South Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and Gloucestershire all have more murders than Notts but students are not turning away from Sheffield or Lincoln universities. Lots of cities have rough areas but students can steer clear of them. It’s also not clear what “safety” is. For some dc it could be homeless people or noisy drunk people but others would not find this threatening. It’s impossible to drill down into untreated MH murderous people. We have no idea but common sense tells us this isn’t just an issue in Nottingham.

I haven't specifically asked but have no reason to think she wouldn't. She has never commented negatively on the safety aspect of the city and was staying with a university friend in Nottingham just before christmas.

Maybe it's suddenly got a lot worse but she only left 3 years ago.

The high murder rate in Lincolnshire is rate rather than a total number and pushed up for one year by a specific incident iirc. it wasn't in Lincoln. In otehr words if there are, say, 6 murders in a small population it can look like Murder central.

% of population. So more murders per 100,000 people. London is at the top. It's by police force.

Yes, that's what rate is. That's what I meant! One incident can push the rate up artificially for a year so the trend needs examining.

It's also the case that the universities are so bunched in the rankings that the difference of just 1 or 2 % can mean you shoot down 40 places. Not sure the rankings are all that helpful.

I look at the QS global rankings rather than the UK only ones