American student looking to study graphic design-help!

I hope this is the right forum for this D:

Anyways, I'm from the U.S., and after this spring I'll have completed 3 years of university. It's been my goal for a long time to study in Europe, preferably Ireland, Wales, Scotland, or England. I've been doing a lot of research and have looked at basically every university in these countries and have narrowed it down some...

SO. Are you a graphic design student? Or fine arts? What would YOU recommend for a fellow student--do you like your uni's program or would you go elsewhere? Any advice/descriptions of what your design department is like would be wonderful!

Here are my top choices:
Glyndwr University
University of Dundee
University of Sunderland
University of Ulster

I'm also considering Cardiff Metropolitan but it's at the expensive end of my budget, and IT Carlow (which I realise is in the Republic of Ireland so you guys don't really talk about that on here... but if anyone has any opinions on that, great!).

Glyndwr and Sunderland I really like for the price. My budget is between 6 and 8 thousand U.S. dollars for the semester sooo... it's tight. Sunderland also seems to have a really good system for incoming study abroad students, and Dundee seems pretty well set up for internationals as well. I originally applied for Ulster a few months ago through an international program called Arcadia that my study abroad office here set me up with, but dropped out of that since they quoted me $22k for the semester o_O So I know a lot about Ulster and like it fairly well.

I know I won't get absolutely everything I'm looking for, but in an ideal world, I'd like...
- Nice graphic design and fine arts program/courses
- Traditional "campus-style" school (not spread out over different city blocks and places cause I'd rather not have to do tooo much traveling between classes and my room)
- Small town location... would love something with nice surrounding countryside. Preferably on/near the ocean but that IS way too much to ask for xD At this point I'm going to have to be okay with medium size cities but London is definitely off my list cause I can't handle that size.
- Traditional looking campus? Would be nice... I'm not a fan of "modern" looking buildings but this is being way too picky so if the school happens to have this then great, if not, I can't worry about it lol.
- Medium size school. A smaller/medium town would be nice, but I go to a school with 6,000 students now and we don't have a town or anything nearby for at least 15 minutes drive so it's incredibly isolated and I'd like to go to a school with upwards of 10k students.

Thanks!

Reply 1

RB6144

Hi, not sure what I can say about the others but I can certainly say a bit about Glyndwr University. A lot of people might not like it so much as it is a fairly new and small university, having said that it does tick all the boxes for you.

It has a good graphics and creative industries department
It's campus-orientated; there's a few blocks throughout the town but they are mainly all on one site.
It's in a town, Wrexham. It's not a city like many Uni's but still has everything you need without been so incredibly busy. Population; around 42,000
The university itself is almost all traditional buildings and some are even listed/graded buildings. And the student numbers; well at the moment there's about 8000 students, quite a few international like yourself. This number is always increasing though, as I say its a fairly new university.

if you do end up going to Glyndwr, let me know :smile:

Reply 2

PaigeOfPaper

Thanks! Nice to hear about the uni from someone who actually goes there... it's definitely better than just looking at pictures/uni websites.

How do you like the graphic design department? Is it what you expected and do you feel like you're getting enough out of it?

What's the overall atmosphere of the school? I know it's fairly new... still, even so, do you feel like it's a pretty energetic place? The uni I go to now is nice, but it's so small that I see the same people all the time and it's just kind of dead at times because we have no town and because there really is no student pride whatsoever... everyone just enjoys complaining about whatever they can get their hands on even though it's a really nice place xD

Reply 3

nitlott_

have you looked at falmouth?

Reply 4

beccafairy

Original post by nitlott_

have you looked at falmouth?

agreed, falmouth sounds perfect for you. also arts university bournemouth? i know that these are small unis in seaside towns, and also have a very good reputation for the arts, though i'm not sure about how they look as i haven't visited either of them.