commuting to reading university

Noname60

Would it be easier to live in southwest London and commute to reading uni by train?

Reply 1

UniofReading

Official Rep

Original post by Noname60

Would it be easier to live in southwest London and commute to reading uni by train?

Hi @Noname60,

Choosing to commute over living on campus, especially from London, is becoming a much more popular choice among our students, but the decision is really up to you! It is a fairly straightforward commute from my understanding and our connections to London are fast, but I'd encourage you to really consider the decision before committing to it just to make sure if you do decide to choose halls/private accommodation in Reading then you have plenty of time to decide where you'd like to live whilst there are lots of spaces available.

I think the main things to consider are the intensity of your course and how much of the student lifestyle you'd like to partake in. If you're doing a practical or lab-based course, your hours on campus are likely to be between 30-40 a week - even longer if you factor in a commute! Many of our students choose to live on campus because of this - both of our on-campus accommodation sites are no more than a 10m walk from our main campus and its learning facilities, and our off-campus ones more like a 15-20m walk. If you have a lighter course, say humanities or social sciences, you'll still have a decent number of hours on campus, but commuting would be more manageable and less tiring as there's more independent work that doesn't depend on access to labs/specific facilities.

Living on campus is a popular choice too because it allows our students to live independently, often for the first time, and learn a variety of new skills in a very different and supportive environment to living at home. Of course, you can still do many of these things as a commuter student and our university is often running events specifically for commuters, it just means if you would like to join a society you would have to cater your schedule around attending their events. Often practice/socials/events take place later in the day/ evening and sports and dance societies have training sessions you would need to attend and be on campus for too, but of course you can study on campus before they begin or stay at a friend's overnight if events are on late. You can find out all about our societies here to see if there's anything that you like! I would really encourage you to join our commuter students Facebook group and see what others have to say, as well as check out this handy guide we put together for our commuter students.

I hope this helped! If you have any questions, please let us know :smile:

Kat
MA Diplomacy Student

Reply 2

greentiger

Why don’t you want to live on campus? Do you live in sw London already? If not, i’m not sure why you’d pick living there over being in Reading.

Being on campus makes it a lot easier to get to know people. From flat mates, to meeting people they meet, it opens more horizons. You’ll still meet people on your course, but living on campus at least for first year makes it much easier to get to know people and make friends.