What would YOU do?

Would you rather choose a course with higher teaching quality and student satisfaction at a good, but not amazing university, OR choose a course with much lower student satisfaction and teaching quality at a well-established, good university?

Student satisfaction is a seriously flawed measure, because
- not everyone fills it out, and so where there is low turnout you tend to find that only the ones that want to moan actually bother, and so the sample is skewed
- students are prone to manipulation by lecturers - "if you say that you're unsatisfied, the uni will go down in the league tables, so your degree will be worth less" (I've had a lecturer announce this in a lecture I was at, so it does happen).
- students rarely have anything to compare their experience to, so they may not realise how lucky / how hard done by they are
- following on from the above point, these things can be affected by pre-uni expectations. If Uni A and Uni B are identical in every way, except that students from Uni A come with really high expectations and students from Uni B have really low expectations, you're likely to find that Uni B gets much higher student satisfaction ratings, because students' expectations have been exceeded, even though in reality nothing is different from Uni A.
- it tells you nothing at all about how well this course will suit YOU.

So, I wouldn't make any decisions at all on the basis of student satisfaction.

That's very helpful! Thanks!!

No problem

Which unis are you actually comparing, and for which subject?

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Aberdeen and Edinburgh for Anthropology. But I'm not sure if I'll be able to get what i need to fulfill my condition for Edinburgh...

Aberdeen is still a very good university - if you were dithering between the Uni of the Highlands & Islands I would tell you to man up and choose Edinburgh. Don't get me wrong, Edinburgh is more prestigious (God I hate that word) but going to Aberdeen isn't exactly going to consign you to the dole queue either.

Have you visited them both?

What are the differences between the two courses, and which do you prefer?

Don't forget that you can always put Edinburgh as your firm and Aberdeen as your insurance.

Hahaha this is true. The pros of of Edinburgh are pretty much how well established the school is and the high past-graduate employability rate. Aberdeen's course seems to be much better, however they don't have quite the same punch to their reputation, which leaves the employability rate significantly lower. I'm not sure how much people will know about either uni in the states tho, so it might not matter at all. I definitely prefer Edinburgh just because it's a bigger school and in an amazing location.