Year 12s: what will be the first way you research your future options? >>

English at Exeter or Bristol?

I'm leaning towards Exeter - I prefer campus universities, and like the location and vibe.
I like the courses for both, and I've heard from people who doing English at Bristol at the moment that it's great. I'd be interested to hear about the universities in general if you don't know about English in particular.

If you know anything about Nottingham Uni too that would be useful :smile:

Reply 1

SarcAndSpark

It can be really hard to choose between different universities. Unfortunately, it’s rare to find someone who has done a particular course at two different unis, so while asking for opinions can be useful, it’s ultimately down to you to decide.

I used this method when deciding which uni I wanted to do my PGCE at.

Step 1: Make a spreadsheet.

List all the things that are important to you in a university. If ranking is important put that down. If the nightlife is important, put that down. If assessment style is important, include that. It helps if you are more specific, so instead of putting down location, maybe split this down into: cost of living, night life, time to travel home.

Then assign each factor a ranking out of 5 as to how important it is to you. This isn’t about ranking individual unis, yet- it’s just about how important the factor is to you. So assessment style might be a 3 while cost of living is a 4 and rankings are a 2- whatever feels right to you.

For each uni, then rate them out of 5 as to how good that particular factor is at that uni in your opinion. So, for somewhere where you really like the course content, you would give it a 5, but if that was a pretty expensive place to live then you might give it a 2 for cost of living.

Multiply the two numbers together for each factor and total for each university.

Once you have your totals, you will probably have a clear winner on paper.

Then it’s time for step 2.

Step 2: Emotionally commit to your choice.

Whichever uni has come out as winner, don’t rush and make changes to track straight away! Instead, for the next week or so, try to emotionally commit to your uni choice. Imagine yourself going there. Post in threads on the uni sub forum on TSR. Tell your friends and family “I think I might go to XXXXX”. See how this makes you feel.

Hopefully, by the end of the week, you will feel happy and excited about your choice (although that doesn’t mean you have to update track yet!). If you don’t, then this shows you that there’s something that you’re not keen on about this uni for some reason- if this is the case, then try committing to the other uni! Tell everyone you have changed your mind, imagine yourself at uni number 2 and see if this feels more natural to you, and you feel happy/relieved about making this choice instead.

(If neither feels good, it’s time to start thinking about other options!)

Even when you have made a decision, there’s no need to update track until you are really, really sure. Make sure to go to offer holder’s days if you can, these can be really useful in helping you decide.