How do you know what Universities to apply for?

Wondering how you decide what Unis to apply for/ how to start looking at different Unis etc?

Wondering how you decide what Unis to apply for/ how to start looking at different Unis etc?

Course content.
Requirements vs expectations.
Environment.

Hi @linny_street
When I was applying to university I used www.unifrog.org as it helps you find universities that do the course you are looking for and compares them.
I would then start to look at the websites, course content, location etc. Once I had a narrowed down the ones I liked I would attend open days as this really helped me see if I could see myself studying at that university and you find out so much information about the university.
Higher education fairs are also great to attend. Colleges and sixth forms put these events on as well as UCAS who put them on around the UK. The events give you a chance to talk to staff and students from different universities, to ask any questions you may have and see what options are out there.
I have also recently done a post about what my deciding factors where on choosing a uni, so I will leave a link as it may be useful My Deciding Factors For Choosing Kingston University - The Student Room
I hope this helps and good luck choosing a university
-Grace (Kingston Rep)

Wondering how you decide what Unis to apply for/ how to start looking at different Unis etc?

Hiya!
Whilst I don't recommend basing your uni choses only on league tables, they can be useful to give a general idea of what universities to look at. Personally, I found looking at subject-specific league tables more helpful.
There are lots of factors to consider when choosing a university, below were the factors that I personally considered, which led to choosing Cardiff:
As mentioned by some of the useful comments above, sites such as UniFrog can be helpful to organise info, but in case your school doesn't have access to it, making a simple table still works (its what I did!). I also found websites like Discover Uni quite helpful, which compares stats like student satisfaction or employability after graduation between universities and courses.
Hope that's in any way helpful!
~ Fatiha, Cardiff University Student Rep

Wondering how you decide what Unis to apply for/ how to start looking at different Unis etc?

Hi @linny_street ,
When I was looking at Universities and deciding what to apply for, I looked at Unifrog too as someone else has said! It was helpful as it compared different courses and universities so from there I could pick out the bits I liked and them look further into those universities. I would then look on different universities websites and see if it lists things like the modules that you would be studying, how you are assessed etc and then narrow down your list based on how you like to be assessed (exams, coursework, group work etc) and the modules that you will be studying. I think I had a list of around 7 at this point that I would be interested in and a couple of Universities I had different courses that I liked the look of.
From here I would look into booking onto and going to some open days. These are very helpful to go to and I would say probably the thing that will make your mind up on where you want to go as it is very helpful to see the campus and where you will be studying so you can decide if you think it is a place you would want to go to and be happy at. I would recommend going to as many open days as you can, although sometimes this can be tricky if they are very far away from where you live. I went to quite a few with my parents and it was really good to look around and get a feel for the place. I would make sure you book onto your subject talks while you are there as it is a chance to hear from the tutors and learn a bit more about the course. If you can, I also recommend going to have a look around the town/city you will be living in after the open day as this can also impact your decision of where you go!
This should help narrow down your options a lot. When you are deciding between a few, you could ask on websites like this to get other peoples opinion of the university and course! You can have 5 choices and you don't need to know your top two until you start to get your offers so you have time to think about where you would like to go the most.
The things that narrowed it down for me were:

I hope some of this helps,
Lucy -SHU student ambassador