Exeter Cornwall Campus?

Yeah, they cost like £62 for 3 years and each time you take a train, you save like 30% of the fare, so it'd pay you back in two trips!

That's the same with my parents! Think they're planning on 'coming to visit' aka going on holiday quite often :P

I can tell you about the campus as im a student here myself, only im with Falmouth.

Good:
Nice areas, beach.
Halls are very good quality.
Community feel, everyone is very close and you always see people.
Lots of student support.
Library is 24 hours in Tremough, fantastic if you've got an essay you've stalled til last minute!

Bad:
Lack of nightlife, not typical 'uni experience'
- 2-3 clubs down here, remedies got shut down, and most are on way out.
Uni campus is in middle of nowhere, with not much facilites on site such as shopping and student bar is pretty deserted.
Halls are expensive, and if you live offsite, its a bitch to get to in the morning.
Long journey home for most.
Sea is actually cold in winter!

The campus really isn't in the 'middle of nowhere': certainly not in the same way as Warwick, and I'd say even York is quite far out of the city in comparison. You can walk from campus to my house in Penryn in about seven minutes: it's no further really than halls were, and just as close to ASDA. There are a lot of student houses in Penryn now, for second and third-years, including some lovely period stone cottages. There are pubs, fish-and-chip shops/takeaways (Chilli is an awesome Indian takeaway!), corner shops, a laundrette, a post office and cash points in Penryn: a nice, quiet community and a good place to live when you need to get your head down and work in peace for a bit!

From Penryn/the campus, it's a ten-minute, 60p bus journey into Falmouth - or, as it's only three miles, it's a pleasant walk when the weather is good. Falmouth is a really nice little town with a general range of shops, and some absolutely incredible restaurants (great if your parents come to visit!), and is where all the rest of the 'living out' accommodation is. Trains are pretty reliable in Cornwall: you can go to Truro, Plymouth, Penzance, Newquay, St. Ives, or up to Liskeard and along the Looe Valley Line (you get stunning views from the train, and there are lovely country walks from some of the stations). You can even go up to Exeter to use the main campus library or go shopping.

True, there isn't much in the way of clubbing, but there's Club I in Falmouth if you're interested, there are a few places in Truro (only good if you have a driver, though, as the last train back to Penryn is at 10pm) and the student union holds a couple of club nights per term. The bars and pubs are really nice! Seriously, there's plenty for a Fresher to do (I truly don't know of anyone who feels they missed out on the usual student experience), and by the time you're in your second year, you have too much work for a lot of heavy nights out each term and will probably have started to prefer going to the beach, out to the pub, or having a house-party with your friends, anyway. You can always go clubbing at home, in the holidays.

The campus isn't always great, but it's getting better. I agree, the accommodation is too expensive (there is only one sort, and therefore only one price), the shop is pretty crappy compared to most campuses (it's still very useful for emergency milk, bread or booze, though!) and the canteen only serves hot food until 2 p.m. on weekdays (so when they say it's 'self-catered accommodation' they really mean it) but we're getting our first free cash point next year, and major campus developments are in progress at the moment to extend the library among other things. It'll be finished next year.

The countryside here makes up for everything, though. Cornwall is just gorgeous. In the summer you can take ferries across from Falmouth to the other side of the bay and go exploring secret little beaches. The view from Pendennis castle across the harbour to St. Anthony's Head and the lighthouse, especially as the sun is setting, is amazing. Trelissick and Glendurgan are National Trust properties with beautiful gardens. Even Penryn has some lovely woodland walks and fields all around it. There are sea-swimming clubs, surfing schools and loads of watersports societies. There's a rock-climbing society that tries to get out on trips as much as possible, the campus has allotments for the students, and the bee-keeping society gives you the chance to help set up and maintain bee hives on campus. I know that the Eco-soc goes out on bat-walks and nature trails, and a lot of the conservation biologists/zoologists go to the Isles of Scilly in their second year, as a summer firld-trip. My friend drifted back last year looking very sunburnt and happy!

I come from Kent, and yes, sure, it takes seven hours to get home, but it's not a bad journey. The longest part is from Truro to London, but the trains are comfy and you can always find a quiet coach if the screaming toddler or the leaking iPod earbuds get too much! It only costs me £18 each way with a railcard, as long as I book well in advance, and I've even managed to get tickets home for £12 before.

Sounds all well and good, but are there any decent bookshops in the nearby areas?

Take it from an English student: yes. There are quite a few rare/antiquarian/second-hand bookshops in Truro, plus a big Waterstones. There are a couple of secondhand bookshps in Falmouth, and there's a really nice little independent bookshop (The Falmouth Bookseller) which can order almost anything you want. : )

Had an offer for Physical Geography here as an ABB. Really want to come to the Cornwall Campus and love every bit of it and the local area.

Results day today has put me on track to meeting this offer. Just 4 exams in the Summer.

When I previously looked at the Year 1 programme which both Human and Physical Geographers do, it looked pretty biased to the Human side of things. However this has now changed and is much more equal. I think the Histories of Geographies was one of the modules at Year 1 which has now moved to Optional at Year 2 I think. Looks much better.

Hopefully September will see myself in Cornwall! Good luck to every one else hoping to go to Cornwall too.

Excellent! Thank you for giving this poor, book-loving student hope

Welcome! That was my worry about coming here too, but honestly, it's all about the tiny secondhand bookshops that you come across unexpectedly, which is so much nicer! I've only been to Waterstone's once, to buy some French study guides, and I'm nearly at the end of my second year here - but between extensive secondhand bookshop-hunting and the Falmouth Bookseller, I've probably almost doubled the books I came to uni with...

If you're going on a day out, try Liskeard: it's about £5 for a student return on the train, and it's a pretty little town with a good fish and chip shop and an amazing bookshop! It also has a very good, NHS-friendly optician, which is actually how I found it (Specsavers messed up my prescription one too many times, and I gave up on them). Anyway, I digress: the bookshop, which is just past the Co-op on the highstreet, has both a new and a secondhand section, with some lovely antiquarian books. I'm still trying to talk myself out of going back for a late-eighteenth century, beautifully illustrated copy of Paradise Lost when my next student loan comes in. : )

Hi

I am close to firming Exeter to do Applied Geology. I just wondered if there are any other CSMers out there that could tell me what the first year contact time is? For lectures, lab work, field trips, seminars etc, per week?

Any help would be really helpful.

Thanks

Hi,

There were certain comments earlier about the need of a car, however on the cornwall campus website it states there is no student parking on campus,

Is there a solution to this problem?

Hoping to study mining engineering

This has certainly cemented my hopes! Thank you. Is it true that the campus offers free lessons in modern languages? I want to develop and maintain my French at university.

Ah, Milton! My favourite English poet. Have you read some of his prose works as well?

Well, it's half-true. You do have to pay - it isn't too much though, about £30 for a term. They're a bit oddly-run (it takes ages each year for them to start up and take payment and get a room booked), but I've heard some pretty good things about them once they get going. I'm trying to learn French, but I haven't taken any courses on campus. I can't remember whether that was because French didn't run this year, or because it clashed with one of my seminars - either way, I'm just learning with my boyfriend (who is much better than me!).

Brilliant! Yes, I've read the Areopagitica and Of Education (and I've skimmed a couple of his divorce tracts). I wrote on his and Sidney's concepts of public/private poetry and their ideas of censorship earlier this year. It was easily my favourite piece of uni work so far!

Hi,

There were certain comments earlier about the need of a car, however on the cornwall campus website it states there is no student parking on campus,

Is there a solution to this problem?

Hoping to study mining engineering