Tell me about your university experience

I want to go to university soon, I am currently in sixth form and everyone I have spoken to, from my brother, to family friends, external friends and more, they all said university was the time of their lives. They all had so much fun and balanced their studies and social life. All of them have evidently made lifelong friends and some have even found their life partners ( I am perfectly fine being by myself and I love my own company but its nice to have friends). However, when I go onto tik tok, I see so many individuals struggling to make friends and experiencing the worst of the worst. So everybody tell me, how was their university experience, from relationships, to studies, to social life, personal time, finances EVERYTHING. Should I look forward to it or keep my expectations and hopes to a zero?

Reply 1

Anonymous #1

Original post by abiiya.

How do you enjoy life in general?

University is like sixth form in a sense, but with a lot more independence and people who can be a lot more distant.

If you're the life of the party, then university is a blast. If you're miserable all the time, then university is a drudge. It's what you make of it.

If you are naturally enjoying life at sixth form and making the most of things, then you would find something similar at uni.

Uni is ultimately made of people, and people can vary from place to place and uni to uni. In fact, you can go to 2 different unis and have completely different experiences, solely because of the people there. The location, what's locally there, etc. are only secondary in my opinion.
Having said that, people are still people wherever you go. The good comes with the bad.

Finances-wise, I have seen people got into stupid amounts of debt in a three year degree unnecessarily. Poor money management won't help, and after uni this can get worse if they continue to be as bad. If you can manage a budget well, then you're fine wherever you are.

Studies are more academic and involve learning a completely different style of writing. It's not like A Level/GCSE where you learn the material and can find anything or everything on the internet to supplement your answer. The sources need to be academic, your writing style needs to be academic, and what you write in essays will need to go by a specific marking criteria. In this respect, it's different to what you have experienced before. Otherwise, it's kind of like 6th form, where you're independent learners and are responsible for getting the work done; there are a lot of free periods though.
If you're not spending at least 40 hours a week studying, you're doing it wrong by the way.