durham colleges

hi i recently got my offer from durham for law and would like to submit my college preference soon.
however, i heard that durham’s allocation can be quite spotty and allocate me to my lower preferences. the thing is, i absolutely do not want a catered college. if i were to somehow be given a catered college, would i be able to opt out of the catering?
meanwhile, can i also get some opinions on which colleges are better or just general recommendations? i’d like it to be near classes and have formals. other than that, i’m not too picky.

As far as I’m aware you can’t opt out of catering

well ok thanks! hope i get a college within my first few choices then.
are you currently a durham student? any insight on the various colleges you’re keen on sharing?

When I went to the post offer day they said students mainly get there first choice if not second. I was also curious of the same thing as I wanted to put down castle but I’m scared they come back with a catered college, I asked somebody and they said its no guarantee but the college will do their best to make you as comfortable as possible.

thanks for your reply! that definitely gives me some reassurance. i know castle offers both catered and non-catered. in that case, do you think we would we be able to specify that we want the non-catered option?

hi i recently got my offer from durham for law and would like to submit my college preference soon.
however, i heard that durham’s allocation can be quite spotty and allocate me to my lower preferences. the thing is, i absolutely do not want a catered college. if i were to somehow be given a catered college, would i be able to opt out of the catering?
meanwhile, can i also get some opinions on which colleges are better or just general recommendations? i’d like it to be near classes and have formals. other than that, i’m not too picky.

Hi!
Generally, the university tries to allocate you to a college higher up in your ranking (in my experience, I got my first choice, John Snow) but occasionally they allocate you to a college you didn't express the highest interest in because of numbers (mostly based on the distribution of students from different courses). The university lists out their fully policy for allocations here if you're curious.
I'd recommend trying to rank all the self-catered colleges first if you're deadset on getting a self-catered room. A lot of the time, catered college rooms come with a shared kitchen but they're definitely much smaller than self-catered accommodation and most of the ones I've seen don't even have hobs so it definitely would be impractical. As for St Cuthberts and Castle - which have both catered and self-catered options - the majority of their rooms are self-catered but you can express interest in their self-catered accommodation after you get allocated to their college.
I hope this information is of some help and I wish you luck in getting allocated to a self-catered college
– Lesath (DU Rep.)

Thats so much help thank you, I’m still debating st hildes and bedes, john snow and castle for my 1st choice just because of the risk of not getting self-catered for castle