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Nottingham vs Durham vs Exeter vs Birmingham for International Relations

Poll

Best university for International Relation

Exeter Birmingham Durham Nottingham

Misha 938

I am completely lost over which Uni to choose... Pls Help!!

Reply 1

nba008

I can't really comment on IR but I can comment a lil' bit on what I know about the unis.

Exeter - A university with a rising reputation and determined to break into the top 10 consistently by 2015 (it's main goal) hence the major 275m investment on facilities, bumping up of grades, internationalisation strategy, recruitment of staff and dedication to improve their research quality. They have shown improvement in the rankings domestically and internationally and i believe these statistics reflect the recent effort of the university. Lovely campus!!

Birmingham - A lot of my friends are studying here and having a great time!! I would consider this university as very prestigious. Although it doesn't fare too well in the domestic rankings, my friends tell me that the teaching quality and student experience is fantastic. It's international reputation is excellent.

Durham - Probably the most prestigious of the 4 here. I'm not sure about the student life though.

Nottingham - A great uni with a great reputation. Has a nice city (despite the gun problem) for students to enjoy and have a great time. A lot of speculation concerning it's recent drop in the rankings is due to gun crime a few years ago. But I wouldn't take it so seriously, as the uni is still one of the top unis in the UK. Campus is lovely too.

Out of the 4, I honestly think you can't go wrong by choosing any of those unis as they're all great choices :smile:

it depends on what you want. The more prestigious probably Durham>Nottingham/Birmingham>Exeter.

Reply 2

schroeder's dog

durham appears to have good social life because of college system

Reply 3

HannerBanner

Original post by Misha 938

I am completely lost over which Uni to choose... Pls Help!!

Hi there

Those were four of my choices, I also applied to LSE.
I am now studying IR at Birmingham and I love it. I'll tell you why I rejected the offers and why I'm now at Birmingham:

Nottingham - liked the campus, hated the accommodation, liked the course but it's a 4 year IR course with a masters so didn't go for it in the end

Durham - liked the city, liked my college, liked the uni, hated the IR dept. It's VERY middle eastern focussed as it was established by a middle eastern donor so the focus of the academics is less so on other areas in the world, which I am more interested in, so therefore I declined that offer.

Exeter - nice uni, nice city, nice part of the world BUT very small city and not much going on. IR is good there but I preferred Birmingham.

Birmingham - brilliant department, really good academic staff (being taught by world experts in your first year is great) :biggrin: