German student needs some advice on universities

Hey!
I am a student from Germany and I am planning on applying for the academic year starting in 2010 in the UK. I want to apply for a Psychology Bachelor Degree and already started getting in touch with some universities. My qualifications are about AAB-ABB and a few universities told me that they would suite their entry requirements.

My problem is that I am obviously not staying in the UK, plus I am going to volunteer in South Africa this year, so I will not have the opportunity to look at the universities. I ordered all the brochures but I it is obvious that they are all representing themselves as the best university in the country, therefore I wanted to ask you about your experiences with some of them.
I got quite a few universites on my list that told me that my qualifications are acceptable:
St. Andrews, Surrey, Glasgow, Bangor, Loughborough, City University London, Birmingham, Reading, Sussex, Nottingham, Essex, Royal Holloway
Can you give me some opinions on these universities?
Like about the teaching quality, student life, environment and so on.

I am still waiting for York, Lancaster and Southhampton to reply, but I am quite sure that my qualifications are too bad.

Thanks a lot!

Thanks a lot Meliae, your opinions helped a lot!
I also figured that St. Andrews must be a quiet place and it is soooo in the middle of nowhere - on the other hand I am thinking whether I should not give it a shot since it has such a good reputation.

How come you got such a bad impression on the University of Sussex tho? What are you not liking? I obviously never went there but actually liked the idea of being near the coast plus the University has a nice offer of Psychology programs and social activities and stuff.
At the moment I am quite impressed by the University of Glasgow, but with either Glasgow (and any other scottish universities) and Bangor (which I also liked), I am not sure whether I can cope with that dialect spoken there. But I'll probably get into it.

Can you give me some closer information about Sussex, Birmingham and after your visit Nottingham? I don't know, like a pro and contra list?

Anyway, I am already very grateful for your help!
Hope you have a nice day!

Thanks a lot!
Maybe I missed it, but what universities are you appyling to now?

What are your A-levels?
Can I ask a question... how does it work after I applied? I thought I just tell UCAS 5 universities I want to go to in my application and then I am waiting for an offer from one of them or not. What happens if, let's say, 3 of them offer me a place to study? And when I am reading forum entries I sometimes see people talking about "insurance choices" or so - what does that mean?

I asked Oxford whether they would accept me with my qualifications since they accept people taking the Abitur and receiving an average pf 1.0-1.5 (I got 1.6), but they said my qualifications are too bad.

Oxford, York, Bristol, Bangor and Nottingham. I didn't go to Bristol's open day as it was too far to go in one day, though I might visit in the holidays. I'm going to the other 3 in the next two weeks.

Off topic slightly, but re your choices... obviously you'll visit them all in time but I hated York when I looked round, despite being quite keen on it from afar. And as far as I'm concerned Bangor isn't really a reputable enough university that someone aiming for Oxford should even be applying for. My advice is to set your sights high - it worked for me, and chemistry (are you doing chemistry?) is a lot less competitive than politics, my course. For instance, I have a friend who applied to Oxford, Bristol, Durham, Nottingham and Bath and got offers from all of them.

York is the first uni I looked around, but it was Easter at the time and the place was deserted. I love the city though it's a bit close to home. I'm going to the open day on the 8th July anyway so I'll see.

I'm not applying for chemistry and I'm not quite sure where you got that from given that this is in the psychology forum. (Unsurprisingly, I'm applying for psychology). How did you come across this thread?

I see your point about Bangor. However, Bangor has a 5*A rating for psychology research (along with 6 other unis, including Oxford and Cambridge) and an absolutely massive department which it seems to put a lot into. I went to the area on holiday last summer and fell in love with it despite expecting to hate it. I love all the streams and woods and such. I wouldn't mind working there some day. (I want to go into psychology/neuroscience research). Again, I'll be visiting it soon and I'll see but I'm happy with my choices. Also, I feel more comfortable having an 'insurance' choice as I've known people with outstanding academics and everything else who've received 4/5 rejections.

I'm happy with my choices and chose them very carefully after considering a wide range of options. However, thanks for your concern and I'm curious to know what you'd recommend instead? Many of the universities with excellent overall reputations don't have particularly good psychology departments, Durham for instance. Bath has a good rep for psychology and a compulsary placement year which I wouldn't mind (either way), but the website says the focus is very much on health and social psychology, two of the areas I'm least interested in.

Of course, I am not at all doubting you have researched your choices carefully. It took forever for me to narrow down mine, I remember. My attitude towards universities was I think that I wanted to go to the best university I could, and I was and remain sure that I would have a good time wherever I went and whatever the course content, so long as I could understand it! I'm actually doing some psychology at Cambridge next year probably, although I know next to nothing about it and it is social psychology so rather different to your remit, I should think. Good luck, anyhow. I'm sure you'll do well.

Oh - and I think I assumed you were doing chemistry from reading a rather well-informed post you made somewhere else on the site... I don't know, really!

Lol, I got quite a lot information out of your talk now

I am also spending way too much time on this forum, but I have no idea how to even start choosing a university because we get no support at all in school for that. No German teacher has a clue on how things are working in the UK and my parents haven't either, so I am quite on my own with it - which is why I am asking you such a bunch of questions btw Meliae ;-).

Quite a few people in this forum are always talking about "studying at the best university possible", but what exactly can be defined as such a university? In Germany only Oxford and Cambridge are known as "the best universities in the UK" - ask somebody about, huh, I don't know - UCL - and only a few will know it.
So what exactly are good universities in the UK and does it really matter so much for later work? I figured that it would matter, which is one reason why I want to go to study in the UK, but isn't it more important to be good at what you're doing? For Psychology, I also looked at ratings (TIMES university rating) and asked the first 35 universities whether my qualifications are suitable for their programme and the universities I mentioned above are the ones that told me that they were okay. And quite a few are in the top 20 in the rating so are they good universities now?

I know I take forever to make decisions so I did most of my research into unis at the beginning of y12 and narrowed it down to the choices mentioned above a long time ago (choosing between Nottingham, UCL and Sussex for the 5th). I did consider swapping Bangor for Sussex or possibly UCL and may do that if I dislike it at the open day. I love Sussex's course but not so much the uni. I tend to get a lot of criticism for my choices so I'm pretty used to defending them (mainly for subject though which I'm constantly told is a 'waster subject' rather than universities except Bangor to some extent).

For unis, I was/am looking at surrounding area (rejected St Andrews on this basis), course content (adore Bristol's 3rd year module options), reputation for psychology (not so much general rep), opportunity to study languages, research quality and opportunity to get involved in research, opportunity to study modules from other departments and added extras. When I'm choosing my firm and insurance next year, I'll be looking more at accomodation and costs too. I'm hoping for Oxford to be my firm, unsure on the insurance.

As for that other post, I tend to absorb almost everything I read and spend far too much time on here so I know quite a lot about admissions even for subjects I have no interest in. I think the post you're talking about was basically just the criteria pasted from the Oxford Chem department website though with a little comment.

What course are you doing? PPS? I do like social psychology and it was my favourite topic in AS I think, but I wouldn't want to do research in it.

no-one knows how many will be awarded or how easy/difficult they will be to get but Cambridge's standard offer will now be A*AA.
.

This is one tiny slight flaw in your post

Actually, Cambridge will have a very good idea of how many A*s to expect, since it already asks for module grades at AS. Internally, therefore, it already has its own ideas about what kind of UMS it requires and will have a good idea of how many people are getting 90%+ at AS. They also ask for your module results from the summer after you join the university, so will know what kind of % are getting what is basically an undeclared A* already. Probably the reason Oxford aren't adding an A* to their standard offer is that they don't require modular grades when applying, so obviously mark by mark they worry less than Cambridge.

Ah but to get an A*, you have to get 90%+ at A2. AS is irrelevent as long as you have 80%+ overall. More importantly, the exams have all changed (except I think maths) so we have all new specifications and the A2s are supposed to involve AEA style questions to make A*s harder to get and represent a greater achievement than getting 90%+ before or at AS. Until the specimen papers are released, we don't know what exactly this entails. Even then, if they're anything like the AS specimen papers I've seen, they'll be in no way representative of the real exams.

The awarding bodies have specifically stated that the A* grade should not be used in offers at least in the first year and Oxford has said that they won't be using them until they've seen what happens this time. They will however be using them in the future most likely.

Perhaps you do need to get out more