Opinions on Southampton Uni?

If you go to Southampton Uni, could you help me with these questions?

1) What degree do you do? Do you enjoy it?

2) Do you like the Uni in general?

3) How many contact hours do you have with your degree?

4) Do you have much free time? How do you spend your free time?

Reply 1

alleycat393

Original post by Benjidude

You can find students here

University of Southampton

Southampton

Visit website

Reply 2

Benjidude

Original post by alleycat393

You can find students here

Ahh ok, Thank you!!!

Reply 3

TajwarC

Original post by Benjidude

1) MChem with Math. I do enjoy it when I don't have to write lab reports

2) Yes I like the uni in general

3) 24 contact hours per week

4) A surprising amount of free time , a lot of which goes into writing lab reports and math problem sheets. But I do find time to play basketball twice a week and gym 5 days a week too.

Reply 4

artful_lounger

Universities Forum Helper

I formerly studied Maths there, briefly; I think we had like 16-20 contact hours (it was 3-4 lectures per module, and a couple tutorials/computer lab sessions). I also did a science foundation year there before that, however at the time this was based at Eastleigh College (which I was not a great fan of...).

The university itself I liked well enough. Free time is kind of relative - you have only so many timetabled hours, and you aren't even usually that rigorously tracked for attendance for those (some courses might, especially with labs etc), so how you structure your time is much more down to you. The following applies more generally to uni study, rather than Southampton specifically:

However you will spend more of your "free" time on what would essentially constitute "homework" than previously - in theory you should be spending roughly 30-40 hours a week on your studies, including lecture times. So, with ~20 hours a week contact hours (which is likely to be less for non-STEM subjects) you should be spending at least a similar amount of time on your individual studying and working. To an extent, you have to for as mentioned, problem sheets, labs, and for other subjects essays and preparing for seminars etc.

Additionally you may want or need to spend some more time even on non-assessed work to develop your understanding of the subject more (i.e. "wider reading") as university exams are a lot less prescriptive than school ones. You may find in wider reading a particular counter-example that you end up using two or three times in an exam to make a proof considerably easier than it might otherwise be; use some non-standard integral or integration technique (or "trick") to solve a problem; or discuss some more obscure "literature" relating to your subject (for essay subjects more). You'll get appropriate marks for this as well as simply the material/methods presented in lectures; in fact you might find it hard to get excellent grades without doing so and only sticking to lecture material....

There is still time to pursue other extracurriculars or just "chill" though :tongue: