Colleges at Durham

I've been asked to rank my colleges for Durham and wondered if I'm allowed to put down catered colleges as I will be living at home and so will not need the catering but the colleges closest to my lectures are mostly catered?

Hiya,
College rankings are entirely dependent on your preferences so you are allowed to rank them however way you want to 🙂 Just to add, it is a common misconception that you need to be located near where your department would be, in first year, most of your lectures/seminars won't be held in your department and could be spread out across campus so choosing a college based on location to department isn't as important as you may think. Especially if you're living out, college is mainly a place where you live and sometimes socialise and if you're not living in college, you may not need to choose a college based on location to department at all. I would mainly recommend having a look at what sports, societies different colleges have to offer and ranking based off that as it might be easier.
Hope this helps!
-Ghala
(Official DU Rep)

Does it REALLY matter what the prospective student puts down? Or does the University decide? If, for instance, your first four choices would all be on the Bailey, does that mean anything in reality or could you be put anywhere?

Hey!
Durham tries to allocate students to colleges based on your ranked college preferences and the distribution of students across departments, so whilst the university's administration does definitely consider your rankings and it is well worth ranking all 16 colleges, there's still a chance they won't be allocated to your top preference.
There's a bit more info on this webpage explaining exactly how you are assigned to colleges if you're interested!
Hope this helps!
– Lesath (DU Rep.)