How to decide which university is right for you

Whether you’re reading this before applying to university, or you’ve had your offers through and are trying to decide which university to choose, here are some things I wish I’d considered when making my choice.

1. Do you want to study local or move away?
   So, this might seem like quite an obvious consideration… but really think about whether you want to move away. If, like I was, you’re in your mid twenties and live somewhere that you have well established friendships/relationships and family members then it might be harder moving far away.
   I applied to Bristol uni because it offered BSc Cancer Biology, and as this was what I wanted to get in to I decided this was where I would go. Whilst I was glad I got in to Bristol uni, I hadn’t given the move much thought until I was there and suddenly felt very lonely. It definitely impacted my ability to study as a lot of my time was spent trying to settle in to a new city and find friends there, or spent travelling back home every other weekend.
   
2. Do you get to pick any modules, and if so what modules are there to choose from?
   Again, another mistake I made in choosing Bristol was that I was so blinkered on this being the only course that focussed on my area of interest that I neglected to actually look at what I would be studying. It turned out that on my ‘Cancer Biology’ degree I was infact going to be learning biochemistry, microbiology, virology, immunology, and one module on cancer. Now, these do all have their role in learning about cancer, but what I hadn’t identified was that I actually didn’t find these things interesting and instead preferred learning about cellular mechanisms and molecular interactions. I was still set on doing the degree with the title that sounded like something I wanted to do, instead of looking at whether the content would actually teach me what I wanted to know.
   
3. What assessment methods are used, and how are these weighted?
   One enormous error I made was that I assumed there would be a mixture of assessments and each would be weighted roughly the same (i.e. exams = 30%, coursework = 40% and presentation = 30%). Oh boy I was wrong. At Bristol it turned out that for every year, for every module on my course, the assessments were weighted as follows: 5% midterm exams, 15% coursework and 80% end of term exams.
   Now, this is great if you don’t crumble under pressure and can remember an entire semesters work in detail… (who are these rare mystical creatures anyway!?).

The main thing to remeber is that university choice is very personal. Everyone has different strengths and weaknesses, and this will impact your choice of where to study. I just wish I’d made a more informed choice the first time round, rather than hastily rushing in to a Russell Group university with a good reputation, only to find that in a sink or swim situation it turns out actually I’m in the former party.

I am so much happier now that I am studying at Sussex. There are so many modules to choose from, which gives me total flexibility over my studies, different modules have different assessment methods and weightings (for example two of my modules this year have been 100% coursework assessed, others have been 50% exam 50% coursework). And I am local to my home town, so seeing friends and family is just part of my normal life and I don’t have the added pressure of trying to settle in to somewhere new. Of course, this is what has ended up working for me, and I wouldn’t have realised this had I not made the mistake of going to Bristol… so, every cloud!