Pros and Cons?

Hi,

For those that have been to the University of Warwick I'd love to know of the pros and cons.

I'm struggling to make up my mind on what will be my firm/insurance.

Thanks!

- Seemed to be a *bit* of a racial divide in terms of friendships groups formed on campus which was a bit depressing although this is *just* a generalisation! People of different races do mix, but I found quite a few groups were of one background despite the uni being pretty diverse.
- Again another generalisation but there also seemed to be a bit of a divide between international and home students with some friendship groups formed along these lines.

I stress that was just a generalisation and by no means an iron rule - if YOU want to mix with people with different backgrounds then you will. I think *some* people just feel a bit more comfortable if they try and get into a social group where most of the people share a similar background to their own.

Pros

- Good reputation
- High quality of staff (from my experience so far)
- Nice campus if greenery, ponds, ducks is your thing
- Convinent campus, especially when living on it: - all academic buildings, social, sport (facilities of which are very good e.g. swimming pool, gym, tennis courts, squash, plus large number of playing fields etc etc), food facilities on site including other things like post office, hairdresses, pharmacy, health centre, meaning, in theory, you don't need to go off campus if you're living there.
- Good transport links (if your bus shows up) - frequent bus services, large taxi rank, about 20mins by bus from Cov rail station which has trains to LDN
- Relativly easy off-campus accommodation system. Although you can do it privately, Warwick has a good system where you can rent a property through them. They have a big database of houses making it quite easy to browse for some properties to view.
- A good library and the learning grid is very helpful for group work (big tables, comfy chairs, whiteboards, plasma screens etc)


Cons

- Not in or nearby a nice city - I'm not a fan of Coventry. Living on campus otherwise known at the "bubble" can feel quite suffocating at times, dependent on your mental state.
- Heavy workload. Obviously dependent on subjects but I guess if you're coming to a "top" university then it's what to expect.
- Seemed to be a *bit* of a racial divide in terms of friendships groups formed on campus which was a bit depressing although this is *just* a generalisation! People of different races do mix, but I found quite a few groups were of one background despite the uni being pretty diverse.
- Again another generalisation but there also seemed to be a bit of a divide between international and home students with some friendship groups formed along these lines.
- 60s archietecture. Although I guess some are into that. The relativly new Maths and Stats building is a vast improvement.
- Members of certain male sports teams in drag on a Wednesday night.
- A Student Union about to be demolished - although it's being rebuilt.
- During revision time/exam time all you will hear on campus is talk of revision and exams.

There's much more, if I can think of more stuff i'll add it

This makes me sad . I've been pretty nervous about this but it's like hammered into everything they publish that it's SO diverse there. Guess they forgot to mention most of them clump?

edit: oh and the buildings aren't bad at all. If you go to other relatively new unis like York you'd appreciate Warwick's look. Plus they're rebuilding some of them and expanding all the time. There's that new computer lab building thingy too.

It might be a culture thing and it happens everywhere.