Durham or Warwick? I urgently need your opinion, guys!

Hello guys!!!

I really have NO idea whether to choose Warwick over Durham or Durham over Warwick. The course I have chosen in both unis is PPE.

I would appreciate it if you let me know what you believe!

Thanks in advance, and good luck with your choices (or studies).

Hello guys!!!

I really have NO idea whether to choose Warwick over Durham or Durham over Warwick. The course I have chosen in both unis is PPE.

I would appreciate it if you let me know what you believe!

Thanks in advance, and good luck with your choices (or studies).

Hello guys!!!

I really have NO idea whether to choose Warwick over Durham or Durham over Warwick. The course I have chosen in both unis is PPE.

I would appreciate it if you let me know what you believe!

Thanks in advance, and good luck with your choices (or studies).

Well, what kind of factors would help or hinder your decision?

I'm from Durham so I know the area.

Durham is a fantastic university, and a huge name to boot.

That said you shouldn't really choose a university based on how others see it, you should base it on how you see it.

The thing that really made a big difference for me was the environment you'll be living in - I really didn't get on with the campus feel of Warwick, while Durham's countryside feel, and everything being in walking distance was lovely.

Although there was also the minor disincentive that my dad suggested if I went to Warwick he could drive up and take me to the pub every weekend.

In any case, if you haven't, I'd really suggest visiting the two universities to get a feel for the place, because that's probably the biggest difference between them.

As someone who used to live near Coventry, I am amazed that anyone would choose to go to Warwick University, unless they were basing their decision solely on the course/uni, with no interest in the area the uni was located.

The uni should really have originally been called Coventry University, although the poly has now adopted that name. Coventry is a real ****hole, which most students avoid like the plague. Most therefore try and live in Leamington Spa in their second year which means a 20+ minute bus ride to the uni.

So an easy choice in my opinion - Durham.

Hello guys!!!

I really have NO idea whether to choose Warwick over Durham or Durham over Warwick. The course I have chosen in both unis is PPE.

I would appreciate it if you let me know what you believe!

Thanks in advance, and good luck with your choices (or studies).

You're obviously going to get a biased answer if you're posting in the Durham section.

I think Warwick is second best to Oxford in terms of PPE.

Having been a student at both universities, the student life at Durham, in my opinion, is 100x that of Warwick.

At Durham you're in a nice small city with everything you need, lots of shops, lots of good restaurants, with the chance of going to Newcastle if you want and the beach in summer! Warwick campus is a small concrete place about half the size of Durham but with a couple of shops and crap restaurants. You need to go to Leamington to get anything good - but Leam is worse than Durham, and lots worse than Newcastle...which is closer to Durham than Leam is to Warwick Campus, if you get my drift...

Also the collegiate nature of Durham means that I think it is much easier to get involved in societies, sports, music etc. as it is available at many levels.

Biased maybe...as I personally despise Warwick and never really appreciated how great Durham was until I left.

I wouldn't base your decision on how good the course is though, although that's probably the only way in which Warwick Uni is better than Durham for PPE. Employers really dont care or look at rankings...and Durham is the same standing as Warwick overall, if not better.

I'd suggest that you go for Durham. It's a beautiful and prestigious university. Although you have posted in the Durham University forum, so I'd expect quite a lot of answers to the same effect

PPE is partly responsible for making sure that politicians know a little bit about a lot which helps when they may be assigned to any department. But it doesn't mean that any PPEist is more likely to be a great philosopher or great economist than someone taking a the single honours in those subjects. Although they may be more likely to be a successful (note: not necessarily 'great') politician ...

Overall, if you're not doing it Oxford it probably doesn't massively matter where you're doing it anyway. Durham's only really greatly ranking for Philosophy out of those constituent subjects.

Warwick's probably regarded as slightly better for PPE 'on paper'.
Warwick has that social sciency reputation whereas Durham is more well known for old classicist type subjects and science subjects and just for generally being a place where 'jolly good chaps and chapesses' from public school and well ranking grammar schools go.
So either way it may be more important to get in to a particular social circle (if you can) rather than, say, at a redbrick where people tend to try to gel together regardless of their perceived social class and subject orientation.

Thanks for the advice on Durham; however, I did not quite understand your comment on the social circle and redbrick.

Thanks again.

Thanks for the reply. I just thought that since Warwick is a campus-based uni, whether you're having fun or not suggests on the activities inside the campus, and not the place the uni is located in. I've heard that Students' Union organizes much stuff and students generally tend to have a lot of fun. However, this may all be rumours or one's personal opinion. Have you heard anything about the ways students have fun there?

You're obviously going to get a biased answer if you're posting in the Durham section.

I think Warwick is second best to Oxford in terms of PPE.

I agree with you, it's given that I have not had the chance to visit Durham, I'm more or less calculating that they will be the same to me - in their different ways. Do you happen to know which one of them two is considered the "better"? I know that's perhaps a bit unimportant since they're both fantastic, but at this point I deem it the only means of differentiation. Thanks!