Mathematics: Birmingham, Exeter or Southampton for Insurance??!

^^ Russell Group has barely any effect on undergrads: all it indicates is the size of the uni and therefore the size of its research output.

As an Exeter alumna I will always recommend it and I personally think it has much nicer surroundings than Soton or Birmingham. But since you are asking about Maths I will direct you to Sephrenia - drop her a private message as she is currently a mathematics undergraduate at Exeter.

But then Southampton has a much nicer campus than Exeter from what I remember.

Hi,
I've applied to universities this year and ended up with 4 offers & 1 rejection (LSE). I'm sure to firm UCL (Eco & Stats) but I don't know which one to put as insurance. They all need AAB btw.
I've visited all of them but I still can't make the decision. I enjoyed Birmingham open day the most, but the title of the course puts me off a bit, it's Mathematics with Business Management, while at Exeter or Southampton, I can do Maths with Economics which is more respected by employers I suppose. Southampton seems to have the best reputation for maths (is it true?) but I was honestly disappointed when I came to see the department, it imo was the worst building in the whole campus, and two undergraduate students who showed us around couldn't speak English properly. And about Exeter, everything was ok but there was still something which make me not feel like being there for the next three years, but isn't it the university with best reputation overall among these three? And it has a very high student satisfaction so surely it can't be bad?

I know it's my decision but please tell me your opinions, especially about teaching quality. Thank you all!

If your first-choice city location is London and you would rather be in a large, cosmopolitan city then perhaps avoid Exeter. It's a lovely place, but nothing like a large city. Birmingham sounds like the most sensible second-choice. Mega large city and you like the university. All of your university choices are good and neither will give you some sort of competitive edge because of brand name. The only thing I would do is wait for replies by students of your discipline in case they can offer inside information about the quality of the course etc.

By the way, I'm an Exeter graduate and no little about economics or jobs related to the field, so couldn't tell you which degree to study.

Cheers. Do you really think all of them are equally in term of reputation and job prospects?

Thank everyone for your opinions. I still love to see more replies, please!

It's almost impossible to say which university has the better reputation, because "reputation" is a very subjective, context-sensitive and ill-defined concept. People on TSR believe that former polytechnics are not proper universities and that graduates from former polytechnics have zero job prospects (I'm not exaggerating, this is something claimed a lot in GUD). However, if you look at the graduate job prospects figures you'll see that in a lot of technical/vocational disciplines (like teaching and nursing) the former polytechnics have much higher graduate job prospects than the traditional universities. The notion of a university having some sort of overall reputation in the eyes of all employers just goes out of the window.

One of the above posters advised that you should go to Southampton because it was better than Birmingham, and because it was in the Russell Group. The idea of the Russell Group being a marker of excellence is daft. Look at the universities that don't belong to the Russell Group - Exeter, Loughborough, St Andrews, Durham, York, Leicester, Bath etc. I wouldn't consider any of these universities somehow weaker than Southampton or Birmingham because they belong to the 1994 Group (would you?). Once again, we have a silly notion of "reputation" floating around, based on nothing but ignorance.

Each university you have listed can make claim to a range of arbitrary "facts" that makes it look better than the others, but when you scratch the surface these facts are often a bit thin on the ground. Exeter boasts about being a top 10 university. It is ranked just behind Warwick and just above Durham. 5 years ago Exeter was positioned 20-30 places lower in league tables. Birmingham is the very first redbrick university in the country. But does the colour of its bricks compensate for the fact that the university is ranked 10-20 places below Exeter? Southampton has a long tradition of research excellence, and typically ranked with the best in the UK for its research quality, but why would you care how well physicist and historians conduct research when you want to learn about maths and economics? Surely the teaching quality of your department is far more important than the research activities of other departments?

I don't mean to confuse you. Take this rant of mine as something of a warning - always be skeptical about what you hear from others who take their information from press releases and university league tables, because its often a pile of poo. Pay attention to the city/town to wish to spend 3+ years in, the facilities available (gym/sports, library, halls, bars etc), the opinions of other students at that university or on the course you wish to study, the student satisfaction scores and the teaching quality scores for your department, the friendliness of the staff you have met, and the location of the university in the city, etc. Big universities like Southampton and Birmingham always have good graduate prospects scores, partly because they are universities that are targeted by employers, and partly because large cities have large industries/organisations and always need graduates. It's you that will make a difference in the job application process, not whether you are at a university ranked 9th or 19th.