Year 12s: what will be the first way you research your future options? >>

University of Manchester or Northumbria

I have offers from all of my university choices although my favourite two are Northumbria and Manchester. Before you ask, yes it is University of, not Met!
I'm torn between the two and I kinda need some experiences from other people who attended these universities. At Northumbria I will be studying Tourism and Events management but I will likely change to something more business associated, and at Manchester i will be studying Management, Leadership and Leisure.

COURSE
The course at Northumbria that I have chosen is good but I definitely feel like the course at Manchester has more modules that interest me. Although, when I attended the open day at Northumbria they said i can change to a similar course, such as marketing if i didn't like the one I was doing which gives me a bit of leeway. Northumbria also do a sandwich year which interests me a lot. The course at Northumbria has a higher grade requirement than Manchester which I thought was weird.

ACCOMMODATION
the accommodation at Northumbria is amazing, I love it all and they're pretty close to the university campus. Although it is a little bit more expensive. The accommodation at Manchester is pretty crappy and the main ones are quite a walk away from the campus, although they're pretty cheap.

UNIVERSITY
In my eyes, I feel like going to a Russell's group university will look better to employers and Northumbria is a poly which makes me think less of it. When I went to an open day at Northumbria it had an amazing feel about it, everything just made me feel confident that that was the university i wanted to attend. I haven't been to the open day at Manchester yet, I'm going to look around in two weeks time which I'm hoping will convince me that Manchester is the one for me.

SOCIAL
I'm very social and I love going out so the city itself is quite important to me. The shops, the food, the nightlife and the student union. As well as going out, I feel like I'll make friends easier at Northumbria, as in the people that I associate with aren't ridiculously smart. I'm not saying that I'm too stupid to go to Manchester, but my general feeling is that there's going to be a lot of smart people who won't like doing what I do at Manchester.