can you really have the uni experience at soas

My personal experience: not really. I ended up in my room by myself every night because hardly anyone goes out and 90% of people there are international students and do nothing but work. The freshers events aren't normal pub things, they're all "diversity awareness". The course was great though. Then I dropped out because the social side sucked so much, in halls my flat was entirely foreign postgrads.

My personal experience: not really. I ended up in my room by myself every night because hardly anyone goes out and 90% of people there are international students and do nothing but work. The freshers events aren't normal pub things, they're all "diversity awareness". The course was great though. Then I dropped out because the social side sucked so much, in halls my flat was entirely foreign postgrads.

I thought I had it bad, at least my flat (at UCL, mind) is entirely undergrad. The hall is about three quarters postgrad and it's a bit of a social bitch.

Hardly anyone goes out in the flat, though.

Wow. :/ I hope this doesn't sound ignorant, but a lot of the courses there seem to be things like Japanese/Korean and things, I would've thought a lot of British people would be interested in doing courses like that?

The university is mostly foreign people, and yes it does languages and english people do them but the whole place was a bit too "wacky" for me. There were some nice people, just the social scene wasn't for me.

I asked two of them their names and they didn't understand me. The other 4 I think I saw twice in my 3 months there. The place almost made me xenophobic.

Lol, I wonder if they would have understood you even if you had seen them more.

I dont geddit though. SOAS is central London, the pinnacle of all things to see and do. Why are people insistent on going to London then doing f-all?

I wonder if it's the only place in the UK that they've heard of. My flatmate reckons she googled "university london" and picked UCL from the bunch.

Probably because they pay £12,000 a year for it so think they have to stay in and do nothing but work. Awful. UCL sounds the best of a bad bunch really in terms of student life.

Well I love it, but I suppose it's only cause nearly all of the undergrads in our hall are on first name terms, there's only about forty-ish. When we go out, we get on the tube together and then lose each other bar a couple of people, good times.

I reckon the union should put some more stuff on, though. Apparently the first organised night is 26 January; that's two bleeding weeks of thumb-twiddling or getting ripped off. How was SOAS for union stuff?

You and Livingston would probably love it as you can't turn round a corner without passing a transgender awareness talk or a muslim understanding evening. There is literally nothing else. The union seems to ignore you entirely if you aren't a minority of some sort or if you don't have some kind of offbeat hobby like knitting olive branches or listening to mongolian throat singing.

Actually, I can't really be arsed with politics at uni, so I probably wouldn't be interested either. Can't you at least get a cheap pint, or come to the Duck and Dive at ULU?

I've got a mate in my French oral class who reckons he hated SOAS when he did Arabic there, as there was nothing to do bar admiring diversity.

Hahaha it's so true. I went to the ULU bar a few times but had no one to go with as no one from SOAS went there. I've dropped out now and reapplied, hoping to go to Durham (not heard yet) but I've got an offer from Glasgow, my second choice. I'm sorry to see I'm not in your sig anymore

Oh damn, this thread has me concerned. If I end up going to SOAS, would I be better off opting for intercollegiate halls, then? Is the social life in SOAS accommodation really that awful?

I'm at UCL and I wish I'd applied to inters. Is there anything holding you back from doing so anyway, Numbers?

Not particularly; College Hall'd be damn near perfect for me, assuming I was actually lucky enough to get a place, I just thought that it might be better to go for SOAS or UCL specific accommodation since I'd probably have more in common with the people going to my specific institution.

I love that place, except on a Saturday night; it's dark, full of crap tunes and drunken toffs. I had a great veggie burger there once with my flatmate though.

Which college at Durham are you off to? I "opened" it last year, I reckon they could sense that it was a bit of a half-hearted application.
I didn't get in.

I had a strange wave of MP pride come over me at the point of deletion, so strange that I'm reinstating your lovely testimonial.