Lancaster Uni confused with UCLan :@

Lots of people make this mistake, some don't even know where Lancaster is - though of course, the people I speak to may not necessarily be representative of the recruitment consultants that large employers contract. Maybe if you wanted to distinguish it, you could say 'Lancaster University'? UCLAN is almost always referred to by the acronym so the two can hardly be confused in that sense


.... as for the posters above suggesting that some people are still unsure of what 'University of Manchester' means, I say nonsense. I've never known anybody, from any part of the country that I've been to, to confuse Manchester with Man Met or Salford - there's no common link (apart from the inclusion of Manchester in the title) and it's been clear for a good while now that UMIST and Victoria merged to create Manchester so I fail to see where exactly the confusion lies. Think about it, do people confuse Goldsmith's with QMUL? SOAS with LSE? Imperial with KCL? Of course they don't.

I find UCL getting confused with UCLan! If people ask me where I've applied and I say UCL I get "Oh in Preston?" Maybe it's just my friends!

I've had friends also confuse UCLA in the states with UCLan... Just SLIGHTLY different places, lol :P

Welcome to the real world, where people don't give the slightest bit of a damn about "reputation" and newspaper league tables. It is quite possible that if you go to an employer outside of the north east of England or one who doesn't get much applicants from Lancaster University then they might have the same reaction.

And I wouldn't be so quick to just go to Manchester or Birmingham either on that basis. No doubt there's a large amount of people that are still unaware of the merger between UMIST and Victoria and so when you say "Manchester University" they may well think Man Met.

Back when I was doing my UCAS form, one of the universities I applied to was the University of Edinburgh. My mum, a university graduate from the University of Aberdeen, had always thought that Napier was the only university in Edinburgh.

As nulli tertius says, there is a difference in awareness between the general public and graduate employers. Most of the general public, and this includes many university graduates themselves who are now into the world of work, do not have the slightest bit of interest in what the perceived best universities are, what what ones newspaper league tables rank highly. They generally only know what they hear about from advertising campaigns (and the former polytechnics probably have much stronger advertising campaigns) and from what they are geographically close to. I suggest you not let this annoy you.

Haha, Uclan isn't a real uni

How's that?

It's a perfectly valid university...

I find UCL getting confused with UCLan! If people ask me where I've applied and I say UCL I get "Oh in Preston?" Maybe it's just my friends!

It's not just you, I've had people say this to me so often haha :P

How's that?

It's a perfectly valid university...

A university is only as good as the recognition it has and its academic excellence. I could designate my bedroom a "university" and hand out bachelor degrees from the "University of Stefan" and it wouldn't mean anything. It's just a piece of paper at the end of the day, who you get it from makes all the difference.

The fact that Lancaster has two universities and is a city the size of a small town says a lot. We have too many of these diploma mills churning out worthless degrees.

It's worse when someone applying manages to turn up to the wrong uni for interview, I'm at Lancaster and someone asked me for directions to his teaching interview (Lancaster doesn't run teaching courses), I had to tell the poor boy and his Mum they were at the wrong Uni and give them directions to UCLan...

That aside I've never experienced any confusion between the 2.

It's worse when someone applying manages to turn up to the wrong uni for interview, I'm at Lancaster and someone asked me for directions to his teaching interview (Lancaster doesn't run teaching courses), I had to tell the poor boy and his Mum they were at the wrong Uni and give them directions to UCLan...

That aside I've never experienced any confusion between the 2.

WOW!? no way! thats mental. you sure he didnt mean st martins in lancaster? :s

WOW!? no way! thats mental. you sure he didnt mean st martins in lancaster? :s

Sorry wrote UCLan meant UCum, (aka St Martins) Lancaster campus!!

But still, they got 2 Unis mixed up, you think they'd know where they applied?

oh okay. but yeh, youd expect them to realise that this is Lancaster University. and to have got some directions. ah well. hope they got there eventually xD

Sure they did with my expect directions, something along the lines of, out the Uni turn right and head into town, when you're nearly there it'll be on the right. I'm sure that really helped them!

the worst thing is, i live in lancashire, about 30 mins away from preston, and about 45 mins away from lancaster. yet people still think i mean uclan and not lancaster