best universities for product design

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which is better, Lbro or Brunel?? i can't decide..

Hiii everyone, the unis I've applied for are in my sig (no offers yet), but I've only had a chance to visit Brunel, and didn't even see the engineering department. So how would people rank the unis I've applied for in terms of the Product Design course? Many thanks, I know this is quite an old thread :smile:

Reply 22

jase951

make-cookies-not-war

Loughborough has 2 product design courses, one run by engineering and one run by the design & tech dept. So there's a difference between the 2, so I'd imagine brunel doesn't have an engineering one because its product design course is ran by the design and tech dept.

I incidentally also applied to Nottingham (when I was applying 2 years ago)...the same as you have.

Reply 23

make-cookies-not-war

jase951

Ahh thank you :smile:

I noticed there was a difference in that I applied for 3 BSc (Brunel, Brighton and Sussex) and 2 BEng (Loughborough and Nottingham) but to be honest didn't really know what the differences were, I just picked the ones that appealed to me most. But if they are run by 2 different departments then I guess they'd be quite different from eachother!

When I (hopefully) get some offers I'll go visit the unis then and have a look around. Thanks for your help :smile:

Edit: When I visited Brunel I didn't have much time to look around, probably why I didn't notice these things :smile:

like I said I'll have a decent look at the ones I get offers for.

Reply 24

koolchris99

I would say you either go to Brunel or L'Brough, they are both well respected in industry. i have got 18 months of placements at leading companies from being a brunel student.

Though take a look around and look at the work produced by the graduating students and go to the shows.

The grad books are a good start, youll notice 95% of L'brough's work is CAD, im not sure they actually make anything that works. Have a look at our book "thinking out loud" for comparison.

Our design show is at the London Design Center in June, sponsored by HSBC and autocad, i think L'Broughs is in a shed somewhere up north.

Also I have noticed at Lbroughs open days all they do is slag off brunel, it speaks volumes about the confidence they have in their own course if their major selling point is that uxbridge isnt very nice, rather than the quality of their own students work.

just my 2p.

Reply 25

sianvygus

Hiya,

My sig shows all the uni's/courses I've applied to. I'm really unsure about where I want to go, it's between Central St Martins, Sussex and Brighton.

Sussex gives me £1000 a year scholarship if I go there, Brighton is Sustainable Design which is what interests me but it's not very high up in the league tables and Central St Martins is just prestigious (although I doubt I'll get in).

I withdrew my application to Brunel because I didn't like the area it was in, I'm not too sure if that was a good thing to do or not. Ooops.

Anyone got any advice on what course would be the best?

Reply 26

matureunihater

Sussex is a joke, I went there and made a huge complaint about the course, during and after my time there. I do not know of any grad from my year actually getting a job in Product Design, there was a big complaint about the quality of placements for sandwich students, so some just continued into their final year. (Every Product Designer will tell you that a good sandwich placement is worth gold on a CV).

Ended up in situations where modules were cancelled and replaced with different topics and some of the lecturers completely miss out the content of some of the modules.
To top things off one of the lecturers who was a recent graduate from another uni, so had little work experience and no lecturing experience, was marking final year dissertations, modules and projects.

I understand some changes have been made there, but it is a "cash cow" for the Engineering Department which has seen its research funding cut and some of the best Profs leave, taking their funding.

Brighton Uni is very close, I dont know if the course is better, but Brighton has a lot of Art & Design courses so you get student/staff from lot of creative backgrounds. Personally I think that is a better environment, than an Engineering Deprt with most Eng staff/students, the Brighton PDES course has also been running longer and possibly has better industry connections. There was even a point at Sussex when the Eng student were wearing t-shirt saying their course was "a real degree" to try and annoy us PDESer.

I would also say this, PDES is very difficult to get a job in, unless you are a good blagger and even then you need a portfolio. Do as many personal projects as you learn new skills to build up your portfolio also try and get work/placements/internships every holiday to add to your CV, otherwise you will really struggle. Also consider being entrepreneurial, design it, make it, sell it.

Reply 27

FabianoBR

According to the Business Week magazine, the best UK university, and the only one between the best 60, when it comes to design is Central Saint Martin College of Art & Design (part of University of Arts London).

Reply 28

FabianoBR

What do you say about London Metropolitan University and Birminghan City University?
Also, does anyone know anything about scottish university that also offers product design course such as University of Derby, of Dundee, Robert Gordon University, etc?

Reply 29

FabianoBR

I didn't really fall in love with Brighton's course. Northumbria seems to be good. Also Brunel and Bournemouth.
What do you say about Staffordshire and Hertfordshire, both Product Design w/ Marketing?
It's difficult for outsider to get to know better about the course. Some of the universities offers not many informations about the course contents. How could I choose a course without knowing exactly what I am going to study? If there is basic important things as ergonomics, aesthetic, design history, materials & process, etc? Complicated...

Reply 30

FabianoBR

York St John seems to combined Product Design and Business Management in a very good way. I see that Business area is high rated but I can't find many references about design area. Anyone?

Reply 31

dehutirn04

I've recently applied and it is difficult to decide as there are no university league table to helps with product/industrial design.
I applied to Leeds, St.Martins, Loughborough, Northumbria and Brunel. I am yet to visit st.Martins and Brunel but all 5 of these courses look great although seem very different.
Northumbria has an amazing new design building which is so inspiring and the tutors seemed very approachable, however Loughborough is getting a new one for september 2011 which also looks great and St.Martins is relocating completely to Kings Cross and there is a video on the website and the plan looks beautiful.
One of the plus points of st.Martins course is that they let you tailor the course to whatever you are interested in, whether it's furniture or an electronics based product.
When I went to a new designers exibition last summer, Brunel's degree show products were pretty outstanding.
Leeds University is a great university overall, I'm not sure about the course as they weren't too detailed on the open day but it does have a good reputation and if you get 3 As on the Bdes or Beng courses they give you a one off payment of £1500.
I was also pretty impressed with Nottingham trent.
Hope this helps anyone who can't decide where to apply.

Reply 32

seanny93

Do any of you know what I could do for a 5th Course? :/

I've got AAD working at grades in Product Design, English Lang and Art.
Art isn't gonna budge :/ and my AS in maths failed so I cant use that..

with 300 ucas points I've gone for....
Northumbria, Loughborough, Hull and De Montfort.
Which are decent I guess.
I love the first three... but need a moderate just, decent course to choose from? :/
Help! I know I've got the chance of 2 A*s in PD and english its art thats hacking me off. Need to find a 5th course to make the most of the application.

-desperate for feedback-
:smile:

Reply 33

dehutirn04

I would say go for brunel, if you are applying for the BA course typical offer is BBC But I would have thought an AAD or certainly A*A*D would cover that? I can't be certain though. It is a well respected course, great industry links etc.

Reply 34

seanny93

Sounds awesome. I will defo look into it, UCAS application ready for sending so once i've decided on my 5th this is virtually it!

Don't Brunel want maths? :/
i've only got an A at gcse I havent got it an AS or anything further.

Reply 35

dehutirn04

No Brunel don't require maths for the BA course. Also Nottingham trent want 280 ucas points minimum and I really liked the look of it actually. Hope this helps! Have a look at the websites
http://www.ntu.ac.uk/apps/pss/courses/cf/94336-5/10/BA_(Hons)_Product_Design.aspx
and http://www.brunel.ac.uk/about/acad/sed/sedcourse/ug/design/dntch

Reply 36

theDaliKa

Received an offer from Leeds. Is Leeds so bad for product design? ;(

Reply 37

dehutirn04

I've got one too! I'm not sure I hope it's good but they didn't go into much detail on the open day. We'll have to see on the post offer open days! When is yours?