University of Edinburgh

Life at Edinburgh University

Hello, I’m applying for physics at University of Edinburgh, as the course looks really good, but I looked at the student satisfaction in various league tables and that troubles me, so I’m wondering is Edinburgh an enjoyable place to study in general and how is the physics course?

Reply 1

CuriousKiwi21

Hi! I'm currently studying Physics at the University of Edinburgh and I'm loving it. Personally I really love the city, it has many great bars and clubs for the nightlife but there's also no lack of galleries, exhibitions and hikes if you're more into that. I find that it's big enough to stay interesting and have all the perks of a city, yet not so big as to be imposing or intimidating.

If your data is from the NSS you should bear in mind that the sample size is only 25 for the bachelors, and that data from the last two years was combined, since not enough was received for the previous year, make of that what you will.

In terms of the course itself, it depends on if you plan on going straight into second year or starting in the first year, personally, I've been enjoying it. The purpose of first year is to bring everyone up to a similar level, since not everyone will be starting with the same skillset and qualifications. You will have two mandatory modules in the first semester, Maths for physics 1 and Physics 1A as well as one optional module which can be in any area, providing you meet the prerequesite qualifications and there is no timetable clash. All in all I have about 17 contact hours a week, and you're expected to match each contact hour with at least 1 hour of independent study. You get 3 physics lectures a week (each 1 hour), one 3 hour physics tutorial, 2 maths lectures (each 1 hour) and two 2 hour maths tutorials a week, the rest depends on your optional module. There's a mandatory online quiz every week for physics 1A, as well as a few asignments, and there is a bi weekly online quiz for Maths for physics as well as various hand-ins and checkpoint questions for each topic.

Feel free to ask if you have any other questions :smile:

(edited 5 years ago)

University of Edinburgh

Reply 2

CuriousKiwi21

Well, there's two campuses, the George Square campus which is where you'll be located for most of first year, except for maths tutorials, which are usually at the kings campus. Second year, most lectures and tutorials will be based at kings. The buildings are very close to each other, although Kings campus is a 15 minuteish bus ride (the free shuttle bus arrives every 20 minutes) or about an hours walk (ouch don't recommend)

George Square is pretty great. It's very central and close to most accomodations, after lectures there's really a lot of nice cafes and restaurants as well as fast food joints, for a general idea of price, it's around £5 for a hotdog/sandwhich and a bit more for a breakfast. It's minutes away from the medows, which is the large central park. I really like the George square campus, I think it's great, unfortunately, beyond first year it's generaly reserved for the humanities (I think the computer science department and medical school are based there aswell though).

Walking to Kings campus gets very old very quick. At very best, the closest you can be to kings is a 30 minute walk, and at worse well over an hour. There is, however, a shuttle bus that runs from George Square to Kings every 20 minutes which is free, or you could take another bus which takes you close, although you'll have to pay £1.70 each way. The kings campus has libraries, cafes and a gym so you can certainly keep ocupied. While you can tell they've tried to make it feel cosy by making it very green and planting loads of trees, it ends up feeling somewhat sterile because many of the buildings are very brutalist (concrete architecture). The Physics building (which is the JCMB, which stands for James Clerk Maxwell Building) is sort of a running joke because it looks pretty terrible from the outside, and from the inside it's something of a labyrinth.

Reply 3

CuriousKiwi21

Social life is absolutely what you make of it. If you want, you can go out every night and day, likewise you could stay home everyday. No matter where you go, a great social life isn't going to fall into your hands, you're going to have to seek out the type of social life that you want!

With that disclamer out of the way, I've found nearly everyone i've met to be exceedingly friendly. The university is huge (it has over 40000 students from Edinburgh Uni alone, and there's also 3 other universities, Napier, Heriot Watt and Queen Margaret) so you're going to meet many different types of people from all over the world with many varied interests, and certainly some which will align with yours. You can make friends in loads of ways, lectures, tutorials, pre-drinks, flat mates, societies, the gym, friends of friends, the list goes on! Edinburgh (depending on where you come from of course!) is reasonably big and there's always something going on.

My advice is that you should try and make the first move and do your best to approach people and start conversations, of course it's easier said than done, but try to tell yourself that everyone feels the same way and is in the same situation. At worst you may have a slightly awkward conversation, and if not, then great, you may have made some new friends. After you can get their numbers or add them on facebook to stay in touch, try to be proactive in terms of organising events and stuff too. It can be very easy to just stay at home and do nothing, try and force yourself at least for the first few weeks to attend as many events or society meetups as you can to meet some new people. Societies are a great way to get involved with some social events, many have meetups a couple of times a week and a few big events throughout the year. It's a good way to meet people with similar interests. There are so many societies that there's bound to be at least a handful that you'll enjoy, they range from volunteering, to sports to quircky ones like the hummous society, I think there are around 300 societies.

Societies: https://www.eusa.ed.ac.uk/activities/societies/findasociety/
Sports clubs: https://www.eusu.ed.ac.uk/clubs/

During freshers week there are loads of events which are specifically organised to help you meet new people and they're varied enough to accomodate most people, some of the ones I saw were: hikes,society taster sessions, wiski and gin tastings, club nights, cofee crawls, pub crawls, karaoke etc. There's also usually a lot of accomodation specific events to get you to meet people who are in your accomodation, like a barbecue or something.

Edinburgh has a lot of pubs, it's certainly not short on that. It's always nice to spend a night with friends hanging around and chatting for an hour or two or doing a pub quiz. A pint is around £5 at a classier pub and £2 is the cheapest i've seen which is at the 3 sisters union bar (or £2.5 at the teviot student bar). There are also a decent amount of bars which play live music, those can be very fun too if they're playing music to your taste. In terms of clubbing, every week there's an event called "big cheese" which is a club night put on by the student union where they play some cheesy tunes. There's also loads of other clubs of course, many have different themes depending on the day of the week where they play different music genres, entry fee varies depending on the night and club of course, but I think it's always in the single digits. If you enjoy clubbing, you'll have to check them out yourself to see which places you enjoy the best, it's something which is likely to be quite personal to you, depending on what type music taste and atmosphere you like.

Apart from that, anything you fancy can be a good way to hang out really. Cooking a communal meal, going to a nice cafe, visiting an art gallery or installation, cinema nights, going out on hikes, comedy shows, and so forth. As the year goes on you'll eventually find some favourites which you'll keep on going back to, wether it's a particular cafe, bar or gallery that you especially enjoy. Throughout the year there are also many random events which you can attend, for example vintage fairs (2nd hand clothing), talks organised by the uni, (there was a recent one by an astronaut), various markets etc.

With all this fun and newfound freedom it can definitely be hard at times, but make sure to not neglect your studies, it can pile up deceptively quickly and having a good fundamental understanding is especially important for a degree like physics, that said, having fun is definitely important too :wink:

Reply 4

CuriousKiwi21

Being honest the university doesn't seem to have that many black students and the black community seems to be quite small, if you're coming from London, it could be quite a culture shock. In terms of numbers, apparently in the 2015/2016 cycle 0.7% of students admitted were black, and the black population of edinburgh is about 1.4%.

In my personal experience, however, the people seem to be quite open minded; there is a fairly big LGBTQ+ community and since so many people come from different countries, you can't help but be exposed to different cultures. While I personally have never experienced or witnessed any racism here, that isn't to say that it can't happen.

Maybe you could try and reach out to some black Edinburgh University students on social media to hear their personal experiences? Best of luck with everything, I know how stressful applications can be :smile:

if you have any other questions, feel free to ask