How do you choose a university in this country?

[UniversityQuestions]

can anyone advise how you select a suitable uni in this country. My daughter’s schools seem to suggest names as potential matches for her that when I look up are wildly different in ranking, specialism, location but all seem the same in terms of low contact hours and minimal engagement with students. In my country it’s really clear how unis are ranked but here it varies wildly be aubjevt and you seem to also have to consider the overall name of the uni no matter what the subject ranking.

my daughter has good GCSEs - 10x 9s and 8s, we haven’t got her predicted grades for a level but she seems to have As or A stars at most tests. She wants to study History. Her school have suggested she book open days at Bristol, Newcastle, Manchester, Exeter and St Andrews which when I look them up seem to have no common denominators.

I think you need to factor in a few other things that the school can’t answer for you to come to a decision.

• funding - are you topping up or paying for her to go? What’s your budget? Renting prices might make the choice for her
• lifestyle - does she want to go out and live in a busy city or more rurally
• what does she want to do after uni career wise?
• do you care about the prestige of the university?

Your DD should be researching courses, location, module choices etc. Does she want campus uni? Big city? It's her choice.

https://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/search
We went on this website and asked a ton of questions. They were very helpful . We also went by the top 20 unis for the previous year .Good luck .

Location:

generally an issue if either your child needs to live at home for whatever reason OR they have a preference for campus vs city university.

rankings are by subject yes.

Those are all good universities, 3 are in the top 10 for History, even the lowest ranking is only a few percentage points lower than the rest. They span a range of city-campus styles so your DD can see which she prefers. I think school has made valid suggestions.

My daughter is as confused as I am. She really wants to go to uni in the States but we can’t afford that. If she had her dream it would be Brown in Rhode Island. It’s hard to see what an equivalent would be here.

We can probably afford to help her live her uni years wherever she chooses in the UK. She knows she doesn’t want London as she has lived in London all her school years and wants to be further from home I think.

she’s very sociable, likes going out, needs a lot of bustle about her. She likes debating and painting as her extra curricula hobbies. Not sporty so sports facilities are irrelevant.

she’s very sociable, likes going out, needs a lot of bustle about her.

She might find St Andrews a bit small then.

go to the open days look at the unis.

most families do fairly detailed sums to work out what they can and cannot afford. If London is already ruled out then that’s the most expensive ruled out.

on open days you can look at accommodation and also get the vibe of the department.

There are various aspects to consider: course (you can look up the modules online), university (ranking but also the "feel" of it that she gets from an open day) and location (campus or city? Big city or small? Etc).

I am surprised the school has suggested 5 specific universities - usually they'd leave it up to the student IME.

As she's predicted top grades would she consider Oxford or Cambridge? It's not the end of the world if she doesn't get a place, she still has her 4 other choices.

What about Oxford and Cambridge? If sound like her grades are good enough. May as well aim for the top!

It’s kind of a personal choice as to how you choose a university. For some people, prestige and ranking will count for a lot and they start by looking at the best ranked for their course, and overall and go from there, which is what my daughter did. Your DD has been suggested to look at Russel group unis which tend to be better ranked and that’s a sensible choice. You can also find rankings based on student satisfaction which is worth taking into account. However your DD may have other priorities eg she may want a quiet campus environment, cheap accommodation or somewhere good for high level sports. When we did it last year we picked a couple to look round and that helped us work out what she liked and didn’t like and then we chose a few more to look at. Open days give a good feel of the place so I’d book some in the summer and then more in the autumn and do a lot of online research. She will find that she starts to narrow it down. Of course if she is looking at Oxbridge, Durham etc that will be the first port of call. Good luck! It is hard to know what is the right decision but ultimately your DD will hopefully have a better idea once she visits a few x

Right, so it sounds like a big city uni would be the best fit for her. If she's a Londoner then somewhere like Manchester (which has its campus in the city) would be ideal. Newcastle is also known as a good uni with a city campus and great nightlife. Bristol ditto. She might also be interested in Glasgow or Edinburgh. Birmingham is a great uni too, but it's campus is outside the city. Might be worth looking at though and an easy journey from London on the mainline train from Euston.

Otherwise, in terms of prestige - look at the list of Russell Group unis: https://www.russellgroup.ac.uk/our-universities as this is about as close to the kinds of unis that Brown would be included in as you're going to get in the UK. Oxford and Cambridge are the creme de la creme and with your DD's grades at GCSE I'd say she's definitely a candidate. They have their own entry system and criteria, so look into that, if you think she'd be interested.

She needs to look at the modules & options for each course. Worth checking out the research strengths of each uni as that will feed into the course and options. Look at course structure - that can vary widely. Check out how easy it will be to work alongside the course - course structure & timetable can impact on that. Look at accommodation options. Accommodation can be a nightmare in Bristol for example - partly because it’s a great student city.

Sign up for open days. That gives a real sense of the place. Might be worth checking out Oxford/Cambridge given her GCSE grades.

It’s really the student’s responsibility decide where she wants to go. The school has steered her to a particular ‘tier’ - but she can look as widely as she wants.

Here’s what we did.

Ds was going for a science degree and had top grades, like your dd. I will admit I did some supporting research. I found 4 different ranking lists (ignoring the Guardian ones as they emphasise student satisfaction ratings too much, which having seen how they are collected I think are worthless). From those lists I put down the top ten unis in each. I then went on the uni websites to find usual grade offers for each of them. Obviously there was a lot of overlap between them. I also know someone who recruits for their organisation in ds’s field, so asked their view.

DS already knew he would be open to applying for Oxford or Cambridge; you aren’t allowed to apply for both and he picked Cambridge which in general has a strong reputation for science and was the top of all the lists I’d found for his course. He’d also decided against London which eliminated some options.

I handed over the spreadsheet at that point and told him to say the word if he wanted to visit any. We visited five of them, one of which he went to with a friend. He went to Cambridge in the end but this process meant he was happy with his insurance choice too.

The school did mention Oxford but they put her off saying it’s more of a 9-5 days of study and in her mind it will be entirely all work and no play. I have suggested she go and see it in term time to see whether students look like they are having fun as well as working.

I agree St Andrews might’ve a bit quiet for her. I have similar worries about Warwick, Exeter, Durham and York which are in that Russell Group tier. It’s a shame as they sound good unis. So I guess we concentrate on the Russell Group unis in fun cities: Bristol, Manchester, Leeds, Newcastle and maybe a Scottish one like Edinburgh or Glasgow. We can’t do more than 3-4 open days really.

For this reason would find Exeter a bit small then too - Bristol better option

We started with open days in year 12 and DD quite quickly realised she wanted a good ranking uni, in a big city. For her subject (maths) this meant 3 good uni’s fell off the list. (Warwick, Bath, St Andrews)
She loved Bristol and Manchester.
So it just became clear over time which 5 options she put down.

My advice is to ‘trust the process’ 😁.
Start with a couple of open days and let her do a bit of online research. Things will start to fall into place during the course of the year.

We looked at ranking tables for the subject. Ds's didn't want Oxbridge or London (we live nearby) or Scotland/NI. I discouraged places at the far ends of England like Durham and Exeter. That actually didn't leave too many other options. Both put Sheffield as insurance as slightly lower grade requirements but still a good solid institution.

It was slightly different for dd as she was applying for medicine so it was a question of where she was most likely to get an interview with her grades.

City or campus, subject course - content, structure, specialisms, optional modules, ranking, reputation, location relative to home, resources - academic and sport/societies, availability of any support and finally, but most crucially, whether they are likely to meet entry grades for an offer or Clearing place. There are search engines on UCAS and platforms like Unifrog to help target relevant options, then visit on open days.

I think it sounds like she’s done some good narrowing down already then. My DD didn’t like the idea of a huge busy city so she discounted those and also realised she wanted to be able to come home fairly easily so the shortlist got shorter quite quickly. So for your dd, Bristol sounds like a good option and the others too. I think for Oxbridge, your child needs to be the kind of person who is so passionate about their subject that they are doing a lot of extra reading research and work experience outside normal school as that’s what they are looking for in the personal statement. And yes it’s a higher workload and stress than other unis condensed into much shorter terms.

Oh blimey please do visit Oxford. It certainly is extremely hard work but there’s still a lot of fun to be had. Not the be all and end all but she should at least have a look.

First list where is best for her course. Next get rid of the ones she'd won't get the grades for. No ext look at course details and whitle it down some more. How many do you have? If a reasonable number go see them. If still too many does she have preference in terms of city based/ campus etc? When she gets a manageable number view and see if there are clear favourites. Try to be open minded and not write off just based on location etc.

Bristol is great, my DC is just finishing there. Loads going on with a good academic reputation.

It really is worth drilling down to available modules on each course - they vary wildly.

Don’t ignore accommodation issues either - do the Halls allow you to keep your stuff in the room in the holidays? Wholesale packing and unpacking and transporting 3 times in the first year is a monumental pain. Availability of accommodation and cost for the remainder of the course is also worth thinking about. Better in some cities than others.

Distance from home and travel options is also a relevant factor- some kids are happy to go as far away as possible, others want to be able to pop home for the odd weekend.

Campus - everything in one place, convenient and relatively safe? Or City - need to use public transport, things not all next to one another? My kids both went to campus university as they preferred the “village” feel.

I think it is worth your daughter exploring a little more why she was drawn to Brown University; prestigious but small (fewer than 10,000 undergrads), on a defined campus with some older buildings, in a city no bigger than York here in the UK (200,000) and well known for individual tailoring of study options. That might indicate St Andrews, though in a smaller town, is not a bad match (US awareness of uni, pretty setting, high academic standards, course flexibility) and also suggests that large cities are not necessarily the obvious choice.

The other angle is to look at 'Year Abroad' options for History degrees and whether there are reciprocal arrangements with US or Canadian universities that might appeal; that is a lower cost way of getting some study experience in North America.

Remember 'Two Together' railcards (or 16-17 rail cards if prepared to do some visits solo) can keep costs down and, even for further flung locations, long day trips are doable from London and St Andrews can be reached by flights via Edinburgh; all of which can keep costs down and expand the number of possible visits (which can also take place outside Open Days).