Leicester

University of Leicester, yes or no? Just want some opinions on it.

I love talking about Leicester University. OK:

First off, there doesn't seem that many universities quite like Leicester in the UK. It's not really quite a redbrick because they often tend to be in more industrial, more Northern, cities than Leicester (they are were usually founded earlier than Leicester University as well, which was founded in the early 1920s as part of the University of London before becoming entirely its own university) and whilst rebricks may often have more than one campus, Leicester has one campus that is distinctively compact with a variety of distinctive, contrasting, architecture (and there isn't any brick that's even slightly red anyway).

Although it has a 'campus university' feel, it's not one in the sense of the 1960s generation of having its accommodation on the site though. Most of the halls of residences are in Oadby, which is a short bus drive away in the suburbs of Leicester. Oadby is lovely and leafy with big gardens (and a botanical garden) and many of the halls of residences are set in and around grand old houses, all within a couple of streets of each other, which gives a great community, almost collegiate, feel.

Back to the campus- if you love striking architecture you're in for a treat. There's James Stirling's famous 1960s Engineering building (look in any book on famous 20th century british architecture and chances are it will be in there). Next to that is the 1960s Attenborough building- which has an almost stereotypically 'tower block' look and a paternoster that runs up and down it. Next to that is the 1960s Brutalist Charles Wilson building, quite an imposing bully of a building to look at and yet, essentially, full of sound and fury signifying little more than conference rooms, cafes and sports facilities- to be honest, I like the building. There's the hi-tech library and the lovely postmodern mathematics building and 1950s Percy Gee building where the Students Union is. Then there are some more typical 60s science buildings, the (really huge 60s/70s looking) medical buildings, some nice modern buildings and the original Fielding Johnson building.

To further add to the impression of campus university within the heart of a city, Leicester University has quite a lot of parkland behind it.
You always feel that green space isn't that far away in Leicester.

Then you've got Leicester University's claims to fame like DNA fingerprinting and its association with the national space centre in Leicester and, of course, having Bob Mortimer as part of its alumni.

The Guardian and The Times both rank Leicester University as 15th in the UK out of over 110 universities this year yet the grades that it asks for as a whole are lower than some lower ranking universities. Perhaps this is partly because it's not quite as well known a name, as a city, as some of those slightly older redbricks yet, being in the East Midlands, it's not like it's too far a treck for many like Aberdeen. Certain subjects such as Mathematics rank highly (about 6th in the country) and for the professional subjects like Law and Medicine it ranks above some universities that rank in the top 5 as a university overall.

At Leicester University you've got the benefits of a traditional university feel mixed with a modern feel and this attracts a lot of different types of people, from public schools to grammar schools to comprehensives, who all get on without getting in to cliques. Student satisfaction at Leicester is very high as you can see from the league tables and it's been voted University of The Year a few times in recent years.

Some people may prefer to go to an ancient university (although many of those are in Scotland requiring at least a 4 year course), or a more redbrick university, or a fully campus university, which is fair enough, but Leicester (and perhaps Loughborough has a similar feel too to some extent- they were once talking about merging but decided against it) is definitely worth anybody having a look round.