Foundation year

igs2020

What are the best universities for a foundation year? I have an offer from queen mary (I want to progress onto neuroscience), but I have heard a lot of negative opinions about it on student forums.
Are there any better options?

Reply 1

Scotland Yard

Volunteer Team, Clearing and Applications Advisor

Original post by igs2020

The best university for a foundation year is the one that you want to do your degree in. Queen Mary is alright. I'm not going to lie to you and say we're la creme de la creme, but it's not a bad university by any means. My guess is that the bad opinion of Queen Mary comes from their relatively recent entry into the Russell Group, which leads to accusations of pretending to be better than we are (which I think is a bit of an unfair accusation), which are amplified by some of the slip ups they make (my last assignments here at Queen Mary had the grades released two days later than they should have been). But make no mistake, every university makes slip ups. The only major bad thing that Queen Mary has done is the treatment of some academic staff during the strikes that occurred last academic year. It even made the news, but funnily enough I'm yet to meet any staff or student that was actually affected by this. I assume that it was mostly the humanities degrees that got affected and the science degrees got by unscathed?

The matter of if there are any better options is entirely subjective. I suggest you go to the open days we have coming up in mid-June and see for yourself if you like Queen Mary! And if there's anything else you want to ask, please do :smile: