Picking a collage for Durham

Hi guys! i’m thinking of applying for philosophy and theology at Durham, and was wondering how i should determine which collage i apply to? - not sure if the decision affects acceptance rate or is completely irrelevant in the grand scheme of things! Was just wondering what other people are going to base their choice on, thanks (:

Hi guys! i’m thinking of applying for philosophy and theology at Durham, and was wondering how i should determine which collage i apply to? - not sure if the decision affects acceptance rate or is completely irrelevant in the grand scheme of things! Was just wondering what other people are going to base their choice on, thanks (:

Hello!
I am so excited to hear that you want to apply to Durham!
Let me start off by saying that your college has absolutely no impact on your acceptance rate and your academics at Durham. In fact, you cannot choose your college before joining the university. So truly, choose the college you love the most and, on the flipside of that, whichever college you end up getting allocated to will become the one you end up loving!
As for choosing a college that can be quite tricky. When I applied, I considered a few factors, namely their type of catering, their room types, their location, their traditions and their societies.
Different colleges have different catering and room types. Generally, if you'd like to be self-catered, then you're likely to be in a college with more en-suites. Similarly, if you would like to catered, you're likely to be in a college with more shared bathrooms. This guide from the university gives you the exact breakdown of which colleges are catered and not and how many en-suites they have. I'd recommend before you decide by any other factor, to decide on these two because these are the biggest difference between colleges. I should point out however there are different charges for different rooms and it is worth looking into that here.
As for location, all colleges are in walking distance from the major teaching sites. Unfortunately, teaching site locations changes from year to year by course so you can't confidently choose the college closest to yours however as a Snowman (which is one of the furthest away colleges) the walking does become manageable! What you should decide however is whether you want to be on the Bailey or the Hill. The bailey has all the Hogwarts-y, old colleges with that classic Durham experience, whereas as the Hill colleges have newer and larger facilities, bigger rooms (and in my opinion) more spacious and beautiful gardens/outdoor areas.
Traditions-wise, all colleges have a lot of their own traditions and celebrations, but the major difference is some colleges are gowned and others are not. Gowns are the black robes we wear to matriculation (the ceremony where you ceremonially enter the university) and gowned formals (Durham-speak for fancy dinners). Just to clarify, all colleges have matriculation, formals, balls, dinners and all the bells and whistles that is Durham so the gowns are a pretty minor difference but again, most of the differences between colleges are pretty minor!
Extracurriculars also really do vary by colleges. Some colleges are much bigger than others so they tend to have more societies but even if the college you choose doesn't have the society you want - which you can check on each college's JCR website, you could always start one or alternatively you can join one of the many university-level societies (you can check out all the ones offered by the Durham Student Union here) There is also college level sports and different colleges have different spreads of sport societies, but again if you are a really avid sportsperson, you could always try tryout for TeamDU!
All in all, your college is important but it isn't at the same time. You'll love your college regardless of which one you get (I've never met a Durham University student who doesn't) and with the benefit of hindsight I can definitely say it seems to be much bigger of a deal than it really is!
Hope this helps!
– Lesath (DU Rep.)

wow! thank you so much for your help, i’ll make sure to do some more research with all your advice in mind to help aid my decision (:

Hi guys! i’m thinking of applying for philosophy and theology at Durham, and was wondering how i should determine which collage i apply to? - not sure if the decision affects acceptance rate or is completely irrelevant in the grand scheme of things! Was just wondering what other people are going to base their choice on, thanks (:

It's 'college', not 'collage'. People make spelling errors but you did it twice. If there is a relatively lesser known college you love, apply there. I always liked the look of Hatfield. It has a posh reputation.

Hi guys! i’m thinking of applying for philosophy and theology at Durham, and was wondering how i should determine which collage i apply to? - not sure if the decision affects acceptance rate or is completely irrelevant in the grand scheme of things! Was just wondering what other people are going to base their choice on, thanks (:

hey! i’m a fresher at castle so i thought i could help out 🙂 when picking my college, i thought about three main things: gowned/not gowned, catered/non-catered, and shared/single rooms. i knew i wanted a gowned, catered college, which left me with predominantly colleges on the bailey (with a few exceptions!). i was going to put chad’s first, but realised upon visiting that their rooms are largely shared. ultimately i put castle first, because of their weekly formals and the general literal castle, but i put mary’s second as it was so so pretty and closer to the sciences site. i then put collingwood as they had great facilities (despite being ungowned) and pretty much ranked the rest based off the gowned&catered requisites (with hatfield at the bottom 😉 ). in the end i got lucky and was allocated castle for both preliminary and final allocation.
hope this helps and im happy to answer any more questions!

Hi guys! i’m thinking of applying for philosophy and theology at Durham, and was wondering how i should determine which collage i apply to? - not sure if the decision affects acceptance rate or is completely irrelevant in the grand scheme of things! Was just wondering what other people are going to base their choice on, thanks (:

hey! i’m a fresher at castle so i thought i could help out 🙂 when picking my college, i thought about three main things: gowned/not gowned, catered/non-catered, and shared/single rooms. i knew i wanted a gowned, catered college, which left me with predominantly colleges on the bailey (with a few exceptions!). i was going to put chad’s first, but realised upon visiting that their rooms are largely shared. ultimately i put castle first, because of their weekly formals and the general literal castle, but i put mary’s second as it was so so pretty and closer to the sciences site. i then put collingwood as they had great facilities (despite being ungowned) and pretty much ranked the rest based off the gowned&catered requisites (with hatfield at the bottom 😉 ). in the end i got lucky and was allocated castle for both preliminary and final allocation.
hope this helps and im happy to answer any more questions!

Hi! This is very helpful as your preferences sounds very similar to mine. I have been offered a place to start 2026 and now have to rank the colleges.
At Castle aren't a lot of the rooms shared, similarly to Chad's? I love the look of both but not sure about sharing.
I also would be studying at the sciences site, doing Engineering, and was also wondering how much of a big deal you find having to walk further to get there from the Bailey colleges?
Thanks!