Changing Durham College

I have no qualms about claiming night time epilepsy.

Would the excuse of 'I have a tendency to accidently rape people in my sleep' be a step too far?

Single rooms go to anyone with an actual medical condition first (you will need actual proof) and then for everyone else its pretty much just luck. If single rooms are so important why didn't you apply for a college with guaranteed single rooms?

old, central, famous for its community spirit, drama society and has a college newspaper Not dissimilar to John's, but less religious. Plus they are both in Pool B, so hopefully it will make it easier for me to change - the worst they can do is say no!

Single rooms go to anyone with an actual medical condition first (you will need actual proof) and then for everyone else its pretty much just luck. If single rooms are so important why didn't you apply for a college with guaranteed single rooms?

Yeah I obviously thought that would be the case, plus I would never actually claim a medical condition, I'd just be really disgruntled for a while if I ended up with a shared room.
And the statistics for St Chads are misleading which was what I didn't realise when I applied there, the percentage of shared rooms is small but apparently they almost all go to first years which means my chances of sharing are considerably higher..
In fact, does anyone who is actually AT Durham University know if this is true? Because if I've got something wrong then I could be worrying for completely nothing!

The room sharing stats have been updated so it's much clearer how many people will actually have to share.

http://www.dur.ac.uk/study/accommodation/choosing/

It says 67% of rooms are shared, so if there are 2 people in every shared room, that would be 134/167 people sharing I think? (If there were 100 Freshers, obviously scaled up or down to the actual number of Freshers. I think Chad's does have roughly 100 people in each year group though).

So if you don't have a medical condition, it looks pretty likely that you'll be sharing.

My reading of that page is that 67% of the first year rooms are shared. It also indicates that there are 67 first year rooms. To get to 67 rooms, the intake would need to be around 110, with 88 first years sharing 44 shared rooms and 22 in single rooms. That gives a total of 66 rooms, two thirds of which were shared, which is pretty much bang on the numbers in the table. The intake seems a bit high for Chad's but not implausible. Pretty much everyone is concerned about the possibility of sharing but in practice pretty much everyone that has to do it finds that it's not a problem after all. Most Colleges put a lot of effort into trying to allocate people to share who are compatible based on information about interests etc that they ask for in August. Besides, it means that you get to know people that bit more easily at the start, since you get to meet all the people you would meet anyway plus all the people they get to know as well. Plus there's always someone to go to meals with.

Thank you for your advice! If you don't mind me asking, what was your situation with changing colleges and which one did you end up at?
p.s. please can you link me the admissions contact details? I can only find Durham Student Ambassadors, which I'm not convinced is the right one.

I have no qualms about claiming night time epilepsy.

There aren't any really religious colleges. And frankly, Hatfield has a bit of a reputation..

There aren't any really religious colleges. And frankly, Hatfield has a bit of a reputation..

Uh oh :/ I applied to castle but got allocated Hatfield and am now desperately trying to gather information about it. Please expand or pm me pretty please

why do you want to get into Hatfield?

I originally applied to St. Johns as it was old / central / small (so figured it would have a good community spirit) (would be just like Oxbridge) without having had the chance to visit but all I hear is how it is super religious.

THIS. Have you not seen the Durham memes?

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=3117801380551&set=o.321769851201990&type=1&theater

RAH!

Or my personal favourite

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10150783273679937&set=o.321769851201990&type=1&theater

Most people are perfectly fine, but there is a lot of snobbery at formals. There is also a lot of drinking at the said formals which I'm not a fan of.
I'm sure it will be fine if you live there. Most undergrads are friendly, no matter which college they go to