I have offers from both UCL (AAA) and Durham (A*AA) and am going to pick one of them as my firm choice but I'm uncertain which to choose.
I want to work in research/academia or museums/historical places or teaching or the civil service (particularly Parliamentary policy) but given my lack of certainty in that regard I'd like to keep my options open.
I'm pretty sure that I will want to do an MA following my undergraduate (I really love history and I'm sure I'll want to keep doing it) and I want to give myself the opportunity to do so at a top university (within the UK or possibly overseas) so I want to get good results and produce good quality work which I can use to apply to masters courses.
In terms of course content I'm pretty flexible. I enjoy studying a variety of topics and don't like being confined to a particular time period or flavour of history (hence why I didn't apply to LSE). I am not so keen on the sort of 'great man' method of looking at history and prefer a less traditional approach and social history in particular. I also like looking at local history and being able to visit the places I'm learning about and see objects.
Outside of academics I enjoy long distance running/orienteering and live music. I have lived in Essex my entire life and so Durham has great appeal because I would love to live somewhere with more interesting running terrain (I do worry about the weather though).
I find charity fundraising very fulfilling and would love to go somewhere where lots of people are involved in societies and social activities.
Academically UCL feels like a better fit and I would be really excited to be so close to all the amazing museums/resources that are in London which I could make use of. However, I'm worried I would feel lost at UCL and struggle to make friends whilst Durham seems to have so much more a sense of community. Are my preconceptions right? Is everyone at university in London depressed? Is Durham as isolated and small town-y as it seems?
(ps. how did current Durham students pick their college? IS there a trick?)