I have offers from Warwick and Southampton to study business analytics / management sciences / consulting there, but I'm not 100% sure which one to go for. (I've already discounted the course at Strathclyde, for which I had an offer that I eventually declined.)


I reckon the course content of the two is more or less similar, but Warwick enjoys a much better reputation in general. Since I am a non-UK student, this carries quite some weight I guess, even though I find this line of thought to be quite frivolous. However, Warwick might seem like the natural choice in my case because I hold excellent academic credentials and have full-time work experience with an industry giant.

But as luck would have it, my partner will probably be doing a PhD at Kingston, so Southampton would be more practical as it is within reach and we'd be able to live together somewhere between the two points and then commute to our respective university every day. (We still need to figure out the logistics and costs for that, but it doesn't seem geographically impossible at first glance.)

The course content of Southampton's programme appears to be quite good too (and there might be opportunities for a PhD in my area of interest), but I'm not too sure Soton attracts the best students – the admission procedure was noticeably more lax, for starters. On the plus side, I could notice that quite a number of Warwick's Operations Research staff hold degrees from Southampton, so it mustn't be all that bad.

At the risk of sounding overly dramatic: if I had to choose the course at Soton over the one at Warwick, would I be committing the gravest academic sin I'll come to regret forever? I don't think I'd really mind going to Soton instead, but I have this nagging feeling that I might be missing out a better opportunity at Warwick.

Any advice?