is the university of west england (UWE) a good university?

really and truly i'd like as many people as possible giving they opinion on whether this (new) university as it was made a university in 1992 only 23 years ago is worth going to for an aerospace engineering degree. i am also having a difficult time comparing it to the university of Hertfordshire. help me please...

Reply 1

Skyf4ll

Have you visited for an open day? It's worth doing, if not.

UWE is a good one for your particular course (it's also more highly-ranked than Hertfordshire, if you're concerned about that). It's a popular choice for Aerospace Engineering students. UWE itself was (is?) considered one of the best of the ex-polytechnics, and it held up well in the various league tables. It far outranked quite a few pre-'92 universities. It did lose ranks this year, but it's not something the university are unconcerned about. You can bet they will be addressing whatever the reasons may have been.

Satisfaction rates are very important. I check out the VC's blog from time to time, and he posted the courses which had most recently achieved 100% satisfaction rates in the National Student Survey. Amongst these was "Aerospace Engineering (Design)". There were 15 in total, and a further 29 with 90% or higher.

I'm a first-year student at UWE myself, studying Marketing Communications. I can't say much about Aerospace Engineering but the university on the whole is great. I applied for the five closest universities to me that taught Marketing, which meant also Worcester and Birmingham City for instance. Of the open days I attended, UWE was the only one that 'felt' like a university. (It's one of the UK's largest, after all.) The facilities here are amazing, and a large amount of spend goes into them.

(And honestly, I've never seen the *age* of a university matter to anyone outside of The Student Room. If you listened to people on here, you'd be an automatic failure for not going to a "redbrick" at the very least. Go where you'll be happiest, and where you feel you will have the opportunities you want.)

#iamuwe, lol.

:smile:

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Reply 2

theOneAndOnly9

Original post by Skyf4ll

Have you visited for an open day? It's worth doing, if not.

UWE is a good one for your particular course (it's also more highly-ranked than Hertfordshire, if you're concerned about that). It's a popular choice for Aerospace Engineering students. UWE itself was (is?) considered one of the best of the ex-polytechnics, and it held up well in the various league tables. It far outranked quite a few pre-'92 universities. It did lose ranks this year, but it's not something the university are unconcerned about. You can bet they will be addressing whatever the reasons may have been.

Satisfaction rates are very important. I check out the VC's blog from time to time, and he posted the courses which had most recently achieved 100% satisfaction rates in the National Student Survey. Amongst these was "Aerospace Engineering (Design)". There were 15 in total, and a further 29 with 90% or higher.

(And honestly, I've never seen the *age* of a university matter to anyone outside of The Student Room. If you listened to people on here, you'd be an automatic failure for not going to a "redbrick" at the very least. Go where you'll be happiest, and where you feel you will have the opportunities you want.)

#iamuwe, lol.

:smile:

you know what i don't even know which of your paragraphs to quote, everything you said help me a lot. its just that there are so many university leagues out there they all seem to be saying different things about universities even worst is when you try to make sense of how many times the universities your considering applying to pop up in these tables, some of them don't even include these universities in their table.

for example: the university of Hertfordshire and UWE both being the same age as new universities, when you go on the times new university league table hertfordshire shows up highly ranked but UWE doesn't show up at all but on the complete university guide league table UWE is highly ranked above Hertfordshire as a whole.

Reply 3

Trip506

Yeah I guess it's good, it depends on how you are. I was only there for a year and then I left to live abroad. Seeing what else is out there really makes UWE look very bad though. I felt very ripped off for the huge price I paid just for one year. I made some good friends, went to some cool flat parties, but the campus is really not so good. Back then (2 years ago) the most impressive and best looking part of Frenchay was probably the student accomodation, this is a very bad sign in my opinion. I do regret going to UWE, although I did have some good classes and learnt some useful things in them. Living off campus can be a bit miserable as the bus service was absolute shambles and the campus is so far away from anything. I lived with 3 others, one I believe also dropped out and the other always complained about her course, the other was happy I believe. Go there and see what you think of it, if you're not super impressed then don't go.

(edited 8 years ago)

Reply 4

sophiejnk

Original post by Skyf4ll

[QUOTE="Skyf4ll;60080165"]Have you visited for an open day? It's worth doing, if not.

UWE is a good one for your particular course (it's also more highly-ranked than Hertfordshire, if you're concerned about that). It's a popular choice for Aerospace Engineering students. UWE itself was (is?) considered one of the best of the ex-polytechnics, and it held up well in the various league tables. It far outranked quite a few pre-'92 universities. It did lose ranks this year, but it's not something the university are unconcerned about. You can bet they will be addressing whatever the reasons may have been.

Satisfaction rates are very important. I check out the VC's blog from time to time, and he posted the courses which had most recently achieved 100% satisfaction rates in the National Student Survey. Amongst these was "Aerospace Engineering (Design)". There were 15 in total, and a further 29 with 90% or higher.

I'm a first-year student at UWE myself, studying Marketing Communications. I can't say much about Aerospace Engineering but the university on the whole is great. I applied for the five closest universities to me that taught Marketing, which meant also Worcester and Birmingham City for instance. Of the open days I attended, UWE was the only one that 'felt' like a university. (It's one of the UK's largest, after all.) The facilities here are amazing, and a large amount of spend goes into them.

(And honestly, I've never seen the *age* of a university matter to anyone outside of The Student Room. If you listened to people on here, you'd be an automatic failure for not going to a "redbrick" at the very least. Go where you'll be happiest, and where you feel you will have the opportunities you want.)

#iamuwe, lol.

:smile:

hii i want to do international business at that university but i don't know if the lectures and tutorials are any good, what do you think ?

Reply 5

Skyf4ll

Original post by sophiejnk

hii i want to do international business at that university but i don't know if the lectures and tutorials are any good, what do you think ?

Hey there! I've had a look at the 1st-year modules for International Business, and these are:

— Meeting the Management Challenge (MMC)
— Understanding Business and Financial Information (UBFI)
— Understanding Organisations and People (UOP)
— Engaging in Critical Business Enquiry (ECBE)
— International Business Context (IBC)
— Understanding the Principles of Marketing (UPM)

Five of these are also my 1st-year modules, so hopefully you'll find this useful!

So for my own first term here, I've been working on the MMC, UBFI and UPM modules. You'll do these too on International Business either in your first or second semester, alongside UOP, ECBE and IBC.

From my own experience, I can tell you that MMC, UBFI and UPM are all delivered excellently here. One of my flatmates is studying Human Resource Management and so has her UOP module during her 1st-year, and I'm told it's also a good module. You'll do three per semester, and six per year.

MMC is a double-module, which means that it takes up twice as much of your week, and has twice as much work, but is worth twice as many credits in the end. There is no one massive assignment which counts for a majority of your grade, but several smaller assignments. We've had a couple of essays, a group business simulation with a presentation at the end (tomorrow—wish me luck!!), a personal action plan, a group website (way easier than it sounds), a reflective blog, and a number of quick, multiple-choice tests (which you can do online, at your leisure, from the comfort of your room!).

I have to admit it's quite a complicated topic with loads to cover, but the tutorials for this module are very good and it's quite difficult to get behind in your work. It's basically the perfect module for starting out on your course, as individual assignments don't count for a huge amount and you've got the freedom to score a couple of low grades to start without hugely affecting the overall module.

UBFI can appear to be a scary topic to approach, given all the numbers and how complicated it looks at first, but you'd really be surprised just how easily it is to take in when the module's so expertly-taught. I'm told it has an exceptional rate for students achieving 1st-class grades, and despite how difficult it looked I'm also expecting to achieve this myself! I remember some of it from GCSE Business Studies, so if you've done this at GCSE or A-level then you'll basically have no problems at all—and even if you haven't, it's taught with absolutely no prior knowledge assumed.

UPM has a fantastic group-work assignment, and this is coming from someone who was dreading group-work before coming to UWE. There are just two assignments here, one of which is the group-based one whilst the second one is based on the outcome of the first meaning it's really not too difficult to achieve a good grade in both.

I've enjoyed all these modules. I don't know much about UOP or ECBE, but they're basically all general business and management topics during the 1st-year. That's why our courses (International Business / Marketing Communications) share five of the six modules. If you have a look here, you can find out more about the modules for the 2nd- and 3rd-year.

One major selling point for UWE is peer-assisted learning, or PAL for short. It's one of several universities to have introduced this scheme. This is a timetabled session of one hour per week for many first-year students, which will be led by a 2nd-year student on the same course as yourself. It's student-led and so your PAL Leader would likely set up a Facebook group where you can all discuss ideas for the next session as to what you'd like to cover next. It's an awesome opportunity for some revision, or group discussions on your assignments, and that kind of thing. They're also just a great way to get to know others.

I think PAL is so good that I'm planning on applying to be a PAL Leader myself next year.

Now that's just the course, but there's so much more to UWE. As your course is delivered by the Faculty of Business and Law, you'll have access to the Academic Success Centre (ASC). This is a fantastic resource. You're able to book onto optional seminars and workshops on topics such as referencing, academic reading, presenting and so on, and arrange one-to-one sessions with a member of the ASC if you'd like some advice or have questions about your work. They're a great team, and PAL also finds its way into this—some sessions are delivered by PAL Leaders, and they're brilliant!

What can I say about the facilities? The library is amazing. UWE have an enormous collection of books, and even close to assignment deadlines it isn't generally difficult to find a decent book on a certain topic. The library staff are extremely helpful, and of course it's open 24/7 so you can pull an all-nighter any time you like! There are private study rooms within the library that you can book for group-work, or otherwise absolutely loads of computers. I have to admit that it's not always easy to find a bunch of computers close-together for your group-work, between late morning and late afternoon, but I've never had any trouble with finding a place to work by myself. Even if you do have group-work, there are plenty of other places to go if you've got a laptop or can borrow one from the library!

If you need careers support, or even fancy setting up your own business, there's a fantastic service here for that. They can give you all kinds of advice if you simply book a one-to-one appointment with them, and there's plenty of support for finding your placement for after the 2nd-year.

You've also got the University Health Centre and Wellbeing Service. I've used both, and they're great services. I don't mind saying that I had an appointment with the Wellbeing Service on Friday, as I've been having some difficulties here socially and mentally. The advice I received was brilliant, and it was partly they that suggested I have a think about becoming a PAL Leader. I feel more happy and optimistic than ever, thanks to this university and their excellent services!

Well there we go… for now! I'm sorry for the enormous response (I bet you weren't expecting one this long!) but I think it's a reflection at least on my feelings about UWE. I can honestly say it was my last-choice university out of my five applications, as I wanted to be closer to home. I didn't attend an open day, but I attended the applicant day (this is the one you'll be invited to after you've been given an offer) and was impressed with the facilities, the enthusiasm of the staff, the quality of the day's events, and simply the scale of the place! I love it here, and with your course sharing much of the 1st-year content of my own I can say that I highly recommend UWE.

I really hope that this has helped, but if you've got any more questions about UWE then please feel free to post here or send me a PM! I'm always happy to sing UWE's praises, lol. If you like the sound of it then definitely consider visiting for an open day! :smile: