University Selection for MSc in Robotics

Sheffield seems to have a much more established Systems department than anywhere else, but Bristol has their dedicated robotics lab. Are we talking undergraduate masters or postgraduate?

For undergrad I'd say go for Sheffield due to it having a dedicated department, for postgrad I don't think it would matter too much although Shef does Speech processing while Bristol does Image processing, I think the fees for internationals are slightly lower at Bristol as well.

Thanks for the answer! Yeah, we are talking postgraduate. Actually I didn't even know that Bristol is such a good university while applying. I was vacillating between Sheffield and Leeds but now Bristol's also added to them.

Out of curiosity, what's your reason for putting Leeds as one of your higher choices?

I don't know. I loved all the courses in these three universities and I saw some rankings that Leeds is better and then some websites say Bristol is the best among them and some says sheffield is better. I am very confused actually. I have seen lots of comparison reviews between Sheffield and Leeds and thought they might have almost the same quality. I have also seen some rankings in engineering that Southampton is in top 100 while Sheffield is not. There are really a lot of different information on the internet and I don't know what to believe. What do you think about these universities, which one has got the most reputation in the UK?

I'd say overall for engineering Bristol definitely has the best reputation, then Sheffield, then Leeds. Leeds has quite a strong focus on mechanical engineering though so I'm not sure how good they could run a robotics course. Looking at the modules their course has more focus on individual projects and so you lose out on some teaching.

Between Bristol and Sheffield it becomes a bit more complicated however as while Bristol is better in general it gets a bit trickier for such a niche course. From what I can tell the content is fairly similar although you get a bit more choice of the exact modules you do at Bristol whereas at Sheffield you choose a set of modules. I think you'd probably get better support at Sheffield as you'll be part of the smaller ACSE department, whereas at Bristol it looks like you're shared between the EEE departments of Bristol and UWE.