Do you know anyone who got into Kings college London x

After Oxbridge, Imperial, UCL, LSE, St Andrews, Durham and maybe Warwick, KCL does a good job, it's not the crème de la crème, but it's surely a great uni.

And what makes you place St Andrews, Durham and Warwick above KCL?

I would say that they're neck to neck, but the other three provide a better study environment, facilities and prospects than KCL.

The thing with KCL is that much of its reputation/employability is inflated by the NHS-KCL partnership that guarantees a place for every KCL Med graduate, while the rest of the university doesn't enjoy much prestige from the job market.

Of course, it's just my opinion, but this a quite common understanding. KCL is a great uni (in the middle of London, which is a major plus), but it's a bit overrated, so I really don't see it being better than St Andrews, Durham and Warwick.

I would say that they're neck to neck, but the other three provide a better study environment, facilities and prospects than KCL. The teaching is pretty much the same in general, each uni has its strengths, but nothing that will make one of them to stand out from the others.

The thing with KCL is that much of its reputation/employability is inflated by the NHS-KCL partnership that guarantees a place for every KCL Med graduate, while the rest of the university doesn't enjoy much prestige from the job market.

Of course, it's just my opinion, but this a quite common understanding. KCL is a great uni (in the middle of London, which is a major plus), but it's a bit overrated, so I really don't see it being better than St Andrews, Durham and Warwick.

I can understand the specious argument of them having better "study environment" due to the "student satisfaction" based survey of the Guardian and their single main-campus model. So I would not bother with that that much because I think it is a specious argument.

But in terms of "facilities" and "prospects", please can you provide me with your sources that made you come to that conclusion?

To my knowledge, KCL is far richer than all these 3 universities, its graduates have a higher employment rate, its graduates have higher average starting salaries, employers and academics rate the uni higher than all the other 3 and all the league tables that are based on prestige put KCL higher.

Also to my knowledge, all 4 universities have a medical school, not only KCL. All be it, Durham shares its medical school.

And KCL's medical school is only about 15% of the student body. Are you saying this 15% is so strong, it is carrying the rest of the 85% to such heights?

If it is, then it must surely be the best medical school in the country. Even in Europe. Maybe even in the world. Which we can sensibly agree none of these 3 postulations is true?

So how can you say only the medical school is good and the rest are not respected? Are you saying employers employing KCL students and paying them more on average only employ the medical students? Are you saying the other 3 universities' medical schools are not good? What facilities do the other 3 offer that is better than KCL?

The only place I know where KCL is not rated higher than the other 4 based on reputation and where it is "a quite common understanding" that the other 3 are better, as you stated, are UK-based league tables and TSR. Are these your sources?

Did you or do you know anyone who got into kings without getting the grades, if so, what subject and what grades did they get, please share as I'm lacking any motivation and have no positivity, thanks x

What are those facilities & environment offered by Durham, St. Andrews etc?



I know many students from various departments especially computer science, and mathematics. All of them are working with reputable employers and earning well.



Why is it overrated?

I can understand the specious argument of them having better "study environment" due to the "student satisfaction" based survey of the Guardian and their single main-campus model. So I would not bother with that that much because I think it is a specious argument.

But in terms of "facilities" and "prospects", please can you provide me with your sources that made you come to that conclusion?

To my knowledge, KCL is far richer than all these 3 universities, its graduates have a higher employment rate, its graduates have higher average starting salaries, employers and academics rate the uni higher than all the other 3 and all the league tables that are based on prestige put KCL higher.

Also to my knowledge, all 4 universities have a medical school, not only KCL. All be it, Durham shares its medical school.

And KCL's medical school is only about 15% of the student body. Are you saying this 15% is so strong, it is carrying the rest of the 85% to such heights?

If it is, then it must surely be the best medical school in the country. Even in Europe. Maybe even in the world. Which we can sensibly agree none of these 3 postulations is true?

So how can you say only the medical school is good and the rest are not respected? Are you saying employers employing KCL students and paying them more on average only employ the medical students? Are you saying the other 3 universities' medical schools are not good? What facilities do the other 3 offer that is better than KCL?

The only place I know where KCL is not rated higher than the other 4 based on reputation and where it is "a quite common understanding" that the other 3 are better, as you stated, are UK-based league tables and TSR. Are these your sources?

About the facilities, Durham and St Andrews, being campus universities, naturally have a better spacial organization and availability than a city university, and offer much more infrastructure (bigger and more modern libraries with better resources, sports facilities, better accommodation, etc). Every year thousands of people reject KCL to go to 'countryside universities' due to this factor. But that's changes from person to person, of course.

Of course that there are students in KCL beyond the Med scope that are doing fine, but that's not the general fact. King's is almost a "specialist" school, the departments that have good prospects are Med, Classics, Law, War Studies and Pharmacy (if you consider the over-saturated market), which is really not much for a multi-faculty university with more than 25,000 students. There are other good courses, like Classics and History, but they don't stand out that much compared to other universities.

I think KCL is overrated sometimes because it is an university with a failed project and that lives on the reputation that it had a long time ago. I don't see much effort from the administration to change that and make KCL the center of excellence that it could be. Today the gap between KCL and the other 3 main London schools is huge, and it tends to continue growing.

I didn't see your reply, so please check the earlier one.

You talk like I'm downgrading KCL to a second-rate status university. It looks like you think that Durham, St. Andrews and Warwick are second-rate unis, is that right? My argument was not intended to devalue KCL, actually, I was simply valuing the other 3.

If you want prospects, just look at the THE, AWRU rankings and the league tables, which you mind find absurd (and I do for some aspects, but it provides an accurate employability statistic). QS is extremely biased torwards UK universities, and I'm sure you will agree with that.

And, yes, KCL Medical School mostly carries the rest of the university. It is not the best medical school in the world, in Europe or even in London, but it is pretty good. KCL hospital is even older than the university itself, and made most of the university fame during the last century. So yes, I do think that.

My offer for law is A*AA, I think I at least have A*ABB, would KCL let me in with that?

Both arguments are pretty good, but please, my opinions aren't based on TSR forums. If TSR was my bible, I would be saying that KCL is the worst place in the UK, which is not the case. I was an exchange student at KCL and I chose it because of the whole image KCL has projected abroad, but I was a bit disappointed when I got there. Sure, it was much better than my home university and the experience was great overall, but it was really average in terms of excellence. I didn't like the facitilies (Strand) as you could observe and I felt the teaching to be just ok.

I visited Warwick and Durham recently, and both impressed me a lot, so I'm biased about this whole discussion, tbh.

And about the project, I'll quote what one of you mentioned earlier: "KCL invest in their students, 'not' in buildings". Observing the mass layoffs in the last years, and the celebration of new architectural projects and building acquisitions, I have to disagree. As you both must be aware of, KCL lowered their entry standards and decreased its investments in teaching (in general) in the last decade. I don't think a really rich university would do that. In London you see both UCL and Imperial investing in research partnerships with top notch US schools and increasingly attracting more world leading scholars. So, my opinion is that KCL policy now is based on getting more money by providing more "circus" to its students, while the real important thing (teaching and excellence) has been decreasing considerably.

However, I didn't say that KCL isn't a top notch school. I think that other unis are catching up, and KCL is holding its place much due to its past reputation.

I got into Kings College for Pharmacy with ABB but had a conditional offer of AAB. There are even a few (only a few) people in my year who had offers of AAB but got in with BBB and yeah, proud to say ive just passed my year one exams, onto year two! lol

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