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.

Not much has been said about choosing a mix of places for the application. It sounds like firm offer will be sought from a Russell Group or high ranking uni and that will end up as her Firm Offer choice. For her Insurance Offer she should choose somewhere that gives a lower offer.

Have you actually looked at funding /scholarships in the USA?

OK so she wants to study History, has she any ideas about what history she wants to study? I would suggest looking at course and options within them.

Some universities allow you to study a wider range of topics, others will specialise more.

Once you have that narrowed down look at the uni rankings in the Times and the Guardian.

The studentroom.com mentioned above can be useful you can talk to current students.

Things to consider:

How often will she want to come home? If it is likely to be often then look for a uni with good transport options, you want at least a station with regular trains. Also you need to take in to account the cost. If you are in London then St Andrews is going to be a bit of a hike.

Manchester is basically 'student city' there are, I think three HE establishments so you can easily socialise with students from other courses / universities. The buildings are a bit of a mish mash and interspersed with shops and other 'real life'. \there is good public transport.

Somewhere like Keele (I'm not suggesting it) is a complete campus uni. All the buildings and accommodation is in the 'Keele bubble' with laundry, small supermarket, a bank (or at least cash machines) student union, bars and multiple food outlets.

Does she need to work? Some places have more opportunities for part time jobs.

What is available to her outside her chosen subject? Lots of uni courses like you to take a course or two out of your specialism. Often there are languages available, but there might be drama or art.

What extra curriculars does she want to do? Have a look at the facilities if she is a keen swimmer or plays hocky to a high standard. On the other hand if she wants to do something outside the uni eg rock climbing then you might want to look at the area around the uni she is looking at. If she is sporty then have a look at Loughborough. There facilities are good enough for Olymic teams to use them.

The low contact hours are because your 'read for' a degree, and in the words of my old tutor, if you are not reading then you should be.

common denominator is that those unis are all RG, so that’s what they have in common. I’m surprised the school is trying to put her off Oxbridge, is it state or private?

For my DD it was about modules and flexibility- does she want modern or ancient history? I would also look at accommodation availability as this is a problem and many unis and the new renters rights bill is going to affect this.

It is important to visit campus because although it might not stop her applying somewhere if it’s really good, it does help with selection.

They aren't all RG - St Andrew's isn't.

What they all are is 'prestige' - many with a high public school student body (Newcastle sticks out as lower ranked RG , but has high numbers of people from southern fee paying schools).

To me the obvious missing RG unis with excellent history reps on the list are Warwick, York, Birmingham and Sheffield. Two of those fit the 'city' vibe.

I agree that if she is drawn to Brown discounting places like York and Durham seems odd.

St Andrews does have a significant US population of students - certainly wouldn’t be difficult to make US friends in that environment.
There’s plenty of bustle there - just student-generated rather than created by the town. It depends whether she wants clubs etc. (which the town doesn’t really have) or is looking for things going on around her - which there will be.

If she is doing this well then she should absolutely consider Oxbridge as well x

My dd knew she wanted a campus in a city (not London) that took max 4 hours to travel to.

She then looked at the subject rankings and read the course description. She wanted a course that was wide in scope and didn’t require specialising until late as possible. She had studied the subject at A-level but wanted to know more about a wider range of subjects that wasn’t covered.

Her final list had some compromise unis eg a great sounding course with a specialism that she found interesting but 6 hours away. Her first choice ticked all of her boxes and she went there.

YouTube had accomodation videos of unis which also helped when she had to choose where to live in halls.

Don't dismiss London just because you're already here. London is a great place to be a student. The universities are world class. All my DC went to uni here. One year in halls, the rest at home. Saves so much money!

And for history there are so many great unis already in London. On your doorstep.

I looked at the QS world rankings for the top in the UK. LSE, UCL, KCL.

There's so much to do in London. Endless opportunities.

Where are you from OP? People may be able to explain the different nuances better if they know what your own experience was. Guessing the US from your daughter’s knowledge of Brown? As you’ll have seen, university study here is much more subject specific right from the start, for most courses anyway, so there are the two rankings systems of “university overall” and “specific subject rankings”. And then all the rankings are slightly different anyway depending on the criteria they use.

We did the same as some others have said on here. Looked at the last few years of rankings by subject, identified the ones that tend to come up in the top eg 20 for most of them. Then looked at the “overall university” rankings to see if there was any major difference - more for awareness than anything else.

Then made lists of the typical required grades for the course, looked at which ones were campus, which were more city based, and tried to pick a spread of those to go and visit - my son had no idea if he’d prefer campus or city so we needed to go and look at a few to help him figure it out. That also helped understand the nuances of the courses and after a few visits, it’s much easier to browse the course websites and understand what they’re talking about!

Don’t get too hung up on the very specific rankings - they change over time and it’s more about consistency than “this one is 5th but this one is only 7th”. Unless there’s one that’s dramatically plummeting or something.

Also suggest to her she doesn’t rule out Oxford or Cambridge without finding out more. Students there will work hard but are often able to play hard too.

This site is quite helpful for seeing the overall trends over time for university and subject - it’s the “complete university guide” rankings which are one of the several people tend to look at. No idea if they’re better or worse than others but there’s often not much in it really. This one has a good website!

https://www.thecompleteuniversityguide.co.uk/universities/university-of-bristol
If you scroll down you can see the past 5 years rankings for uni and can also filter for subject.

I also agree with this. I would consider St Andrew’s, a very large number of USA students and Edinburgh.
The UK has rankings for Universities and for subjects. It can be more course specific than the USA.

This plus Trinity Dublin and UC Dublin. Edinburgh, Durham and York - all good for History.

They've given you Newcastle as a "safety"

There's so much to do in London. Endless opportunities.

I would never be one to argue with that, but sometimes people just want to spread their wings a little? And London will always be there.

I would add Leeds to the list of universities/ cities to look at.

@UniversityQuestions is the 'only 3 or 4 open days' thing due to personal time constraints, or cost? If the school won't authorise days off for open days, that's unfortunate, because universities often run mid-week days.

Even if your DD does decide to apply to either Oxford or Cambridge, with their earlier application deadline, she can always wait to add her other ICAS choices until she's visited a few more universities. Starting with as many as she can reasonably fit in before next term would be useful, though.

Universities also usually run student-led campus tours outside of the main open days, and the potential applicant can always enquire as to whether anyone from the department would be available to speak to them (not a given, but DS1 got a whole hour, and a brief departmental tour, with the 'public engagement in science' academic at one of the universities he visited). And especially where there are public venues on site, e.g. Birmingham, Leeds and UEA have galleries and / or museums, you can just visit when you like and have a look around the campus; dome have a pdf or audio self-guided tour.

Definitely look at Bristol based on your posts, has the busy hustle and bustle, quite upmarket in student type (like Brown) easy public transport back to London (£5 on the coach which are really frequent) but it’s not a cheap city to live in, I live there!

Exeter is lovely but a bit quieter, however the university is less spread out. Newcastle and Manchester are also good for kids who like to party, Newcastle is significantly cheaper accommodation wise than any of the other suggestions.

History is available everywhere so she needs to consider what aspects of history she’s interested in and look at what focus and modules each university offers, there will be variation, then consider type of university eg campus or city based non campus or hybrid. I suspect they suggested St Andrews because she liked the idea of the American system, it’s quite unique here, but it’s a small town and if you didn’t fit you’d be a bit stuck and being in Scotland it’s an extra year.

Probably better at a local one and commuting if you can. You really want to avoid high student loans. In the real world no-one is looking at where you got your degree or exact title. Just that its in the field and you have ability to learn.
However a course with a year in industry is advantageous these days (not sure what this would be in history though)

Starting point if she's very academic. Then check for History courses, then where is convenient to live or travel to and where she fancies. I haven't checked the list just googled it.

The Russell Group comprises 24 research-intensive, world-class UK universities known for academic excellence and high research output. They are often considered the UK's equivalent to the Ivy League.

Full List of Russell Group Universities:
University of Birmingham
University of Bristol
University of Cambridge
Cardiff University
Durham University
University of Edinburgh
University of Exeter
University of Glasgow
Imperial College London
King's College London
University of Leeds
University of Liverpool
London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)
University of Manchester
Newcastle University
University of Nottingham
University of Oxford
Queen Mary University of London
Queen's University Belfast
University of Sheffield
University of Southampton
University College London (UCL)
University of Warwick
University of York

This is how we decided on a short list for uni:

• course structure - what teaching learning styles suit her best?
• for history I'd also look at content and what it offers in terms of her own area of interest.
• location (far enough to be independent & close enough to get home within 2 hours by train & car)
• cost of accommodation ect.

Then we went to visit. Checking out travel times, location- close to train station, easy car parking,... whatever is important. Overall feel, talking to lots of students and lecturers. Assessing how interested they are in DD even after a long day of selling the course. .... Facilities and future investments- we went to one RG Uni that had a huge building site in the background. All new facilities for the uni to be up and operational in 2-3 years time- be vigilant because they tried to tell us that DC would benefit straight away as some would be finished by October. DC didn't fancy learning on a building site.

@UniversityQuestions I notice you mention "in this country"
do you live in the UK or are you overseas?

If the latter you might want to consider the travel logstics.
Birmingham, Bristol, Manchester and Newcastle have airports, so you might want to bear that in mind.

Partying at "party central" universities is optional. DD went to Newcastle and hates clubbing, but she enjoyed a varied social life.

I can't comment on the subject at Newcastle, but I particularly liked the city. You also have easy access to the coast on the metro. Many students from year 2 onwards live in Jesmond which is not your typical run down student area at all. It is walkable from town and has easy access to the university on the metro. The airport is also accessible by metro, and there are fast trains to London.

If her ideal university is Brown, Rhode Island, get her to write down the key reasons as to why this is.

Then use Claude/ChatGPT/Gemini to ask something like:

"My ideal university for an undergraduate history degree would be Brown, Rhodes Island in the US, because of the following reasons:

1. ....
2. .....

etc.

Recommend me 5 universities in the UK, for undergraduate history degrees, which would satisfy these criteria"

I'd ask the same question to all 3 models to see what overlap there is.

And once you get the initial responses, you can of course continue the conversation with nore nuanced questions.

Have you both sat down and dedicated a few hours to the

https://www.ucas.com/

website, @UniversityQuestions? That really needs to be your starting point.

I agree she should look at Oxford and Cambridge. She would only be able to apply to one of the two - but reading History at either might be immense fun, if she decided she would like the particular tutorial / supervision system they operate. They’re lovely places to be, with boundless opportunities to expand your horizons in every way.

As to visiting either place, you won’t know who is a uni student just from a casual visit. I live in Oxford and it is stuffed to the gills with students from countless higher education institutions, all engaged in trying to get the most out of every day.

Start with UCAS. Read every website, newspaper article, league table and individual uni websites you can. She should seek out recent graduates from any place she’s interested in. And absolutely never dismiss potentially fabulous opportunities because of one offhand throwaway comment that may be completely irrelevant to her own preferences. Let her visit and make up her own mind.

I did a humanities degrees albeit not History at Oxford, and can safely say I never did a 9-5 day of study there!
It was a bit different for the scientists - the Chemistry, Biology and Biochemistry students in particular seemed to have quite intensive lab hours, and the Medical students were almost never to be seen, they were so busy! But the workload for my degree never felt unmanageable and I still had a lot of fun there.

but all seem the same in terms of low contact hours and minimal engagement with students.

@UniversityQuestions Yes, that is generally true of humanities subjects. Students are expected to read around their subject and do a lot of self directed learning. It isn't school, and the students aren't spoonfed their learning.

There are usually more contact hours for STEM subjects, the arts and languages.

For history a lot of it is WHAT history they offer