Which University takes your breathe away for the pretty buildings?

Cambridge and Birmingham were beautiful. Exeter was too, but because of the landscape.

Nottingham or Birmingham? I'd say Nottingham overall, on a nice day the campus just looks surreal. Not so nice in winter. Birmingham's big redbrick buildings are very pretty, but not so much the campus as a whole, it is quite small compared to Nottingham.

I never went to see Nottingham, unfortunately. Birmingham was great, even though I went on a cloudy day.

exeter university's penryn campus in cornwall is lovely, although it is more due to the grounds than the buildings, the buildings are no older than 10 years at the most. it has lovely gardens and you can see the sea from there too

- Let me introduce Queens University Belfast to the mix. BEAUTY!



slightly biased since I'll be attending here in Sept

I know everyone tends to like their own Universities and so do I.
I believe our building is really beautiful. And we do light shows from time to time
Moscow State University.

Are you a student at MSU? Can you tell me, how does Russian university admissions work. Does it have a clear "tier" system like the UK, China or the US where some unis are considered better than others and have more prestige? Or does it have no tiers like Canada or Germany where all the unis are generally considered the same and entry requirements aren't strict for some unis and lax for others?

Yes, I am a student at MSU and I am happy to explain our admissions process.
We do have a "tier system". Not officially a system, but some Universities are considered better than others. This difference may be huge sometimes.
I would say any university in Moscow or Saint Petersburg is better that some main universities in provincial capitals.
We have elite Universities like Moscow State Institute of International Relations which is extremely difficult to get in. Mainly because it is an educational body for the children of our government officials and business elite. Their entry requirements are not always very clear and you do a long psychological test while applying.
We have MSU, SPSU (Saint Petersburg State University) and HSE (Higher School of Economics) which are the best three in the country and are widely known. Their entry requirements are just very high. It is relatively okay if your parents are willing to pay a huge sum of money, but if you want to get a free education in those unis, the exam results should be very high. MSU and SPSU have their own exam in addition to what all of our students do while finishing school (like A-levels probably). If you fail it, nothing can help you to get in, no matter how high are your "A-levels".
In other universities, entry requirements vary hugely on whether a student is a self/family funding or needs money from the state budget. If you go for a state budget, they may want no less that B and C, but if you pay for yourself, basically any grade will do.
Hope it helps

It helps a lot thanks for explaining! So basically if you have money you can basically get in with much lower grades.

In that case, in university will poorer students look down on wealthy students because they assume that the wealthy students got into the university on their parents wealth and thus probably aren't as smart as them?

The other thing. Is MSU the best at everything, like does it have the highest grade requirements for all the subjects? Or is it only for some subjects it specializes in like International Relations?

Yes, it is true for most universities: those who have money do not need high grades. It does not apply for the top three that much, as they have a limited number of places and usually even those who pay for themselves have at least decent grades.
We have two opposite trends in place. One the one hand, wealthy students look down on poor students. For example, in MSU poorer people usually come from provincial cities and wealthy are Moscow born. So wealthy students may consider themselves as higher class native Moscow people and therefore look down on poorer students. On the other hand poor students consider themselves to be smarter and even more talented because they grew up in some remote place, having no real opportunities, for example, to go abroad to study language, but they got into the best uni anyway. And those spoiled Moscow people who had money to educate themselves in every possible way, wasted their opportunities.
We do have those who are wealthy and smart too.

MSU is best at everything. It is very huge and attracts best academics in all fields. And it has the best facilities as well. Even the elite Moscow State Institute of International Relations, that I described above, was previously a faculty of MSU. But I would say MSU is widely theoretical. For example, those who want to study fundamental medicine, go to MSU. But if you want to become a doctor curing people MSU is probably not the best place. MSU is science.