Picking a university

I haven't posted for a while since I've been busy doing exams but also because I've had open days and interviews to go to. But since my blog is about taking a gap year and deciding where to go to university, I shall give you my perspective and tell you of my experiences so far.

The first open day and interview (and in fact the only interview) I went to was at Essex University. I wasn't particularly impressed by what I saw of Essex. The first thing that put me off was the train I took there because it looked like something out of the 1980s with the faded seats and the yellow sides and as I left the train station my perceptions of Colchester/Essex University didn't really improve because in general the buildings in Colchester and the university were rather nasty modern buildings (office block type buildings, etc.). I looked at the accommodation and I just couldn't see it suiting me and during the open day I got the distinct impression that people were more focussed on the social side. However, what also put me off was the interview because they asked me really simple questions such as "Why do you support Britain's membership of the EU?" and they didn't really challenge my answers and for the first 5 minutes they were asking me of I wanted to do law combined with another subject. Apparently Essex University started doing the interviews for law this year as a result of the budget cuts but if they're asking those kind of questions then it makes me wonder what the average intelligence of people on the course is and what kind of people they're trying to root out. Nevertheless, I will say that the good things about the university are that the accommodation is very cheap, you can do courses to make yourself more employable and there are a lot of shops and banks on the campus, also the good thing about the law course is that they have a law clinic in which you help citizens around Colchester who need legal advice and they do compulsory work experience in the field of mediation.

The next university I looked at was Sussex. I was much more impressed by Sussex than Essex because they went into a lot of depth about what their law degree entailed, why they incorporated particular aspects into the law degree and they gave you a seminar in law so that you would be prepared for what was expected of you when you start a law degree. I also preferred their accommodation because a lot of it looked much nicer although admittedly the accommodation at the lower end of the scale is worse  but the accommodation at the top of the scale was much better. I would say that the other advantage of Sussex is that there is more to do in Brighton (ie. the nearest city to the university) than in Colchester and you can do language courses in almost every language.

Today I looked at Exeter and I didn't find it as impressive as people often describe it as being. In a lot of ways I found Sussex more impressive because Exeter in a lot of ways seemed quite disorganised, for example during "self-catered accommodation tour", we were only shown one of the particular rooms and the person giving the tour said "You're not going to get much done in the first year" (I worry slightly that the latter might be a sign that people at Exeter might be too relaxed for their own good). I was also put off by their talk on law because unlike Sussex they didn't go into great depth about what the degree involved and they seemed a bit too focussed on the social side of the degree at that point aswell because they did a whole slide about what university was good for and how it was good for memories. On the other hand they showed us what a moot was like and they told us that  Exeter was one of the top universities for mooting and Exeter also has a law clinic which allows you to apply the knowledge of law which you have learnt. And if you like sport, it's worth noting that Exeter has facilities for 170 different sports!

So at the moment I'm waiting to see if Queen Mary will make me an offer, and if they don't I'll have to decide whether I will put Exeter or Sussex down as my firm offer. If it does end up being a choice between those 2 for me it will be question of which university has the highest rate of 2:1s and 1sts for law, which university campus is cheaper to live on, which law degree is more practical, which university has the better reputation and which main city I prefer because as a girl who's grown up in the countryside, I really want to go to university in a big city where there's lots to do!

I was also rejected by Durham, most likely reason being that my LNAT score was actually worse than the first time when I did it but I'm not too bothered because I wasn't that keen on going up north and being so far away from my family, it's very cold there, it's a long way to take all your belongings and I just wasn't that keen on the university in general.