Current UCL students' chat thread!

Is it easier to achive high marks in language course units than in other ones? (eg. economics)

True or false.

Depends how well you know the language? I got my best score from Russian one year and the worst from German the next.

I am going to take French ab initio next year, I am going to self study it this year, hope it will boost my grade

I can't see why language modules would be any harder or easier to get a goo mark in. If you can answer the questions, you'll get a good mark just like anything.

they make you take a test before you do language modules anyway, it's not based solely on your formal qualifications. So unless you deliberately fake knowing nothing or you're really bad at language learning, you won't get away with self studying then pretending to be ab initio. So youll be in a language class that fits your ability, and thus theres no reason to expect an easy good grade.

And if you're planning to fraudulently take the ab initio course, you'll be found out very quickly, it's pretty obvious.

Do you know any other languages apart from English? Ie knowing German would help you in Norwegian, Spanish in Portugese etc.

Turned up in my account on Friday although the technical date it was sent was today. My friend says hers isn't coming until Friday though.

Thanks, I contacted the bursary people at UCL and they said my payment was put through by UCL but 'pended' by Student Finance England and they have to contact them to sort it out. I didn't even realise the bursary scheme was linked to sfe! Hope I get it soon, would like to book my flight home for Christmas Everyone knows how slow student finance can be though...

I didn't receive my bursary on Monday either and got the same reply from UCL student funding including the bit about student finance England putting the payment on hold even though I'm not even with student finance England, I'm with student finance Northern Ireland. That makes me think that it's a generic response being sent out to quite a few people!

Anyone know the process for dropping out? Or what happens with fees/accommodation costs? It's just something I'm considering atm, going to think about it more during reading week.

Anyone know the process for dropping out? Or what happens with fees/accommodation costs? It's just something I'm considering atm, going to think about it more during reading week.

I've kind of done it. You just tell your undergraduate tutor and then fill in a form (just one A4 size). I think if you leave before 6 weeks in you don't need to pay fees, after that but before Christmas half, and after that full. I could be wrong though.

I've no idea about accommodation but it should be on their website somewhere.

Sad you're leaving If you want to chat about it, inbox me I have experiences with dropping out of uni.

I dropped out of my previous university (Lancaster) so I can help you out a little. Fees aren't paid until February (I assume you're with student finance, yes?), for the reason that people drop out. So you don't need to worry about that at all. At Lancaster I had to pay for the weeks I was there (for accommodation) , and I also lost my deposit. I'm not sure if that's the same at UCL though.

Thank you I'm just very confused at the moment. Why did you drop out, if you don't mind me asking? Do you think you made the right choice? I couldn't even force myself to go in today and I feel terrible for wanting to give such a good uni up but I'm not sure I can do this for another 4 years...Are you doing Russian?

I dropped out for quite a few reasons. I went to Lancaster because I wanted to go to university that year so much, even though it wasn't my first choice at all and I knew I could do so much better. When I arrived, I realised that firstly straight economics was not really what I wanted to do. But mainly, I seriously felt I could do better than Lancaster, given my past academic achievements. What was also linked to the reason I definitely wanted to leave was that I didn't meat anyone that I really clicked with. Maybe if I had found a group of friends, it might have meant I would have stayed, but definitely for the wrong reasons. It was definitely the best choice I ever made, partly because I grew up so much during my gap year but I proved to myself that I can do so much better, and I should nevr just "settle" because it was easy at the time. And that's been translated into so many things I do now.

To be honest, it doesn't sound like you want to leave UCL because of the university. During my first year, I was extremely depressed, and I actually didn't go to any lectures or tutorials for 2 weeks straight. I struggled to get out of bed, and it scared me to venture out into my hall corridors. Amongst other of course. It took me a long time to find the resources available at UCL about who could help me. There is a counselling service available, and best of all it's free. They do say they take on people first who need it the most, and I was top of the list. However, my mate at uni also used the service in her first term in first year when she was home sick. She just found it easier to talk to someone about it, because she didn't know who else to talk to about. They didn't respond to her straight away, but she emailed them again, saying she was really interested and they met up with her straight away. Maybe this is something you could look into?

Do you think it's UCL in particular you can't do for another 4 years, or your course?

I study economics and business with east European studies. It's at ssees but I am half Russian.