Hi and welcome to Bath's Teams conversations.
This will involve me and a couple of ambassadors discussing various topics
around university such as what is university, looking at,
applying and choosing a university, as well as talking about what life is
like at the University of Bath. This video's topic is about choosing a university.
So you've applied through UCAS, you've
picked your subjects, you've hopefully got some offers back from universities as well.
And then you have the big choice of
deciding which university to put as your firm choice and which to put as your
insurance choice. In this video we'll be talking about
how we decided which university to go to, what kind of influences we had, any
must-haves we had from university and what to consider when looking at
choosing a university, We hope you enjoy this video.
I'm Callie Rice and I am the student recruitment assistant here at the University of Bath.
I myself was also a student at Bath for four years and I studied biology as my undergraduate [degree].
Would you guys like to introduce yourselves?
Hi, I'm Sarah, I'm a second year student
studying education with psychology here at Bath.
Hi I'm Mackyla and I study social sciences here at Bath.
I'm in my third year and currently on my placement year.
Hi i'm Anthony, I'm a second year physics student on the four-year integrated
master's with astrophysics.
So were there any sort of university
must-haves when you were applying to university, something that a university
had to have and if they didn't have it they were
basically off your list?
The biggest thing for me,
I know it's different for everyone but I kind of did
take league tables into consideration quite a lot.
The university for me had to be at least in the top 50.
I think that's because none of my family had been to university before
so if I was going to go, I wanted to go to a
good university. However for the subject I wanted to study,
which is social sciences, there were only four universities that
offered that degree so I had a very limited choice anyway.
Bath was ranked second in the UK for social policy and second in the
UK for psychology and so that did sway my decision
quite a lot. But obviously the main thing for me
was when I visited universities.
When I visited Bath,
it might have just been because it was on a really nice sunny day
but the university is surrounded by greenery, it's a campus university
and it's quite small and compact so it felt like a really nice
community vibe and it was almost like a village in that sense.
It felt homely straight away to me. I had visited city
universities and they just didn't have the same feel, they were quite big,
and I felt kind of irrelevant in
the big city environment. So for me it was the campus and
the league tables.
Yeah whenever my dad came over to visit
he would always describe the campus as like a university village, like a
student village and it was just students in this one little hub.
So I guess that is quite an accurate way of describing it at Bath.
Yeah for me I didn't have any must-haves but similar to Mackyla there weren't
that many places that did my course so I was kind of narrowed down by that.
You get five choices and I had four places where I
thought 'yeah I want to go there, I'd consider that,'
and I was looking for a fifth and for me
Bath was actually that fifth. I'd never thought about it before
but I went for an open day anyway because I thought 'if I'm applying I may
as well have seen it' and I just loved it, I really really loved it and it was
quite quickly in my top two so I was choosing between Bath and
another university for ages, I really dragged it out
trying to decide and I decided just before the deadline,
just based on that kind of gut feeling.
Similar [to Mackyla] I visited the campus and I could just really see myself there.
I really liked the feel of it, So I chose it and I'm really glad I did.
I think for me
I again was quite similar to Mackyla, I looked at the league tables.
I was achieving good grades and therefore very
much anxious to try and get ahead wherever possible,
trying to get into whichever unis were the best.
I was looking through all the top 20 unis for physics, I went to tons of them
and I originally had this long list of all the universities I was interested in.
I tried to go see as many as possible because when you go to them
you get a proper feel for what it's like, you can talk to people there, talk to
your lecturers, the head of your department
and it it really does open your eyes to what it's going to be like to study there.
I went to so many unis, way
more than I applied for, all over the country. I just wanted to go
see all these places. It ended up being a gut feel that
made me choose Bath over other universities because
it felt very much like the right place where I fitted in best.
At some unis I didn't like the fact that they were in a city and
that wasn't the right feel for me. I didn't grow up
in the in the centre of a major city and so I like to keep it a bit quieter.
I didn't want to go somewhere where the
physics felt like it was very narrow and they didn't
embrace all the different topics in physics and said they wanted
you to go there to study a very specific region. For me that was quite a big change and
I only found that out by talking to the departments. I spoke to the lecturers,
I spoke to the director of studies and they very much pushed that specific
region and so that was a negative for me. But also green
spaces, friendly faces, they all end up
really swaying your decision. You go to them, you speak to the
people who take you around, you see the accommodation and sometimes it just clicks.
That's why I recommend that you try
and visit as many as possible. Even though league tables are good for
some things they can't really tell you what your gut can tell you at the end of the day.
Definitely, I think open days are really
important just to get a feel for the university because when you do go on
open days you go to a lot of talks, you get thrown
so much information, but I never really remembered much from
open days other than just the feel of the university. So even
though I got told all about the amazing research they were doing or
that you'd study this and that and the other and this is how you'd be assessed
and all that, that wouldn't really be what I would
remember from the day, it would literally just be the university.
I didn't actually visit many of the universities on open days.
I visited them after applying on my
applicant visit days because I didn't have much time
to go and visit universities before applying.
After I got my offers back from universities they sent out an email
saying 'hey, come and visit us again on an applicant
visit day or an offer holder day.' Those are for people who've got an
offer from the university but before you've made your
firm and insurance choice. It's basically the time for you to start
thinking about of maybe the five choices
that you've got, which one is going to be that firm choice.
A lot of universities nowadays are inviting students back and that's
actually the day that I made my decision on Bath.
I went to all my applicant visit days and got to see the actual department so
that was quite nice and quite a change from open days because open days were
quite general, you'd see a little bit of everything, but
on the applicant visit day it was very much
biology focused. I got to see the biology department, speak to some of the
lecturers, speak to biology students specifically.
After I went to all of those I was driving back with my mum
and she was just talking about the different universities and she was
just saying, 'so which one's your favourite?'
I said 'I think it's bath but I'm not sure why,
it just feels right.' That's what I'm always telling students,
I don't really have a great answer other
than it just felt right to me.
But that seems to be what you guys are all sort of agreeing with as well.
Yeah and also obviously some people can't
visit universities but if you go on their websites usually they have
virtual tours so you can check those out as well.
Another thing is, going back to entry requirements,
I think that Anthony mentioned most highly ranked
universities will have slightly higher entry requirements
but don't let that put you off. I definitely didn't have
the predicted grades to get into Bath
you shouldn't let that put you off and if you feel like you can get those
grades and that you're going to put the hard work
and time in, do apply. I feel like anyone
should have the opportunity to go to a highly ranked university,
it doesn't really matter what predicted grades you've got
unless they are really really bad. But if you know that you've got the
ability to really push yourself then
definitely don't let that put you off. You can also
put a highly ranked university or higher tariff university as your first
choice and then the second choice can be
something with slightly lower entry requirements so you've always got
something to fall back on if you don't hit those grades. So I think
it's really important to not let that put you off.
Another thing on that, when it comes to putting high ranked,
prestigious universities as your first choice, there's a lot of them,
they're not actually considered specifically to be the 'famous' uni in the
world because there's so many countries and so many unis.
Employers don't look at that quite so specifically
and so you shouldn't take the university just because it has
higher entry requirements or a slightly more household-known name
because at the end of the day it might be too far from home it might not feel
right. It might be that the campus wasn't for
you, the department wasn't for you, whatever reason it is.
Put the one that truly feels right and therefore go to them and find out or
speak to them on the phone. I think a lot of unis do calling
campaigns where they'll want you to ask questions.
Take that time to speak to the students who are there and ask them 'are you part of societies?
What's the night life like in that area?
What's your course like? Are the lecturers
actually engaging?' Because sometimes it might all be taught on a blackboard
or it might be that the university doesn't really specialise in that course
and it's quite small there and you might feel like
it's quite quiet for you but there are loads of reasons why you would or
wouldn't enjoy it at specific unis and you'll end up very much personally
tailoring those to you because some people don't mind if it's a campus
or a city, some people don't mind if it's far from home or
other people really want it to be close to home or far from home,
it can be whatever. You end up coming to your own decisions
and your own reasonings and there's loads of resources out there to
help you make that decision but it's a very personal choice at the end of the day.
Yeah instead of just looking at
league tables, entry requirements, things like that,
it is important to look at other things. For me, I needed
specific facilities like the disability service, so it is
good to check out the facilities that they offer before applying.
Say if you have a niche hobby or something,
just check if they've got that sport or society at that university.
Also check out the students union.
Every university should have a student's union and they run things
like volunteering, they run things like
the part-time jobs on campus, I know that Bath does that and they have well-being
services. So it's not all just about the
academic side, it is about other stuff as well that the university can offer you.
Yeah I've had quite a few students come up to me and say 'oh do you have
this team, do you have that team, do you have a hockey team, do you have rugby?'
And for them it seems almost more important than the academic side of
things. They have to have this specific sport or
they have to have this society or something.
So some students do really have that kind of must-have
which is perfectly fine. If that's really important to you, do make sure you check
that out before you come to university. But something else that was mentioned
was distance from home and I actually found that more influential
than i realised it would be. Bath for me was only about an hour
and a half away from home and there were a couple of other
universities I looked at with similar distances but then there was also one
that was about five hours away on the train and I knew
once I arrived there even before I looked around that it was it was just
too far, after the journey I decided that was
just too far for me. Some people like to go to their local
universities, some people want to get as far away from home as possible.
There is so much to consider when choosing a
university, so things that we said like distance from home, league tables,
the academic side of things but also maybe
specific sports or societies, facilities that there are at university.
So yeah there's actually so many things to think about when choosing a university.
Also there's the National Student Survey.
If you do want honest opinions of
how students found the university there is the
NSS that you can look at. Just from that you can tell that students do
actually enjoy going to Bath.
You can also just talk to the
students on the open days and all that and
you'll also find out a lot about the kind of people that go there when
you go to them. I think the feeling thing is the biggest thing for me.
I think visit them if you can and
you'll kind of know where you feel like you fit in.
Something we haven't mentioned actually is also the city of Bath itself.
I've spoken to a couple of other people that really liked Bath because of
the city as well and I think that's actually a really
important thing because when people go to open days they do just
go to the university and especially if it's a campus university you usually
don't get to see any of the city and actually that's where I've spent a
lot of my time at university. After first year
most people will move out of their student accommodation and you do end up
living in the city centre or close to it.
So actually I spent two years of my university time in
the city centre. So I spent more time than I realised
and that's something really important to consider because if
you actually don't like the city at all then you're not going to enjoy
the city living afterwards. Do you guys have anything to say about the city?
Yeah I really loved the city and it's not something I
massively factored in when I was choosing but actually I feel so lucky
to be at university in Bath because I really love it and it's really
accessible from campus as well. I was
slightly concerned about being far out but it's a 10-15 minute bus ride
and and the city is small enough that it feels manageable, you know your way
around fairly quickly, but also it has everything you could
need. It has loads of shops and restaurants and stuff like that.
There's never been anything where I've been like
'oh I wish the city had that, I feel like it doesn't have enough'
because it does. So I think it's actually a really good size for a student city, it
is one of my favourite things about the university.
Yeah I also love this city. It's completely different from where
I'm from. I'm from a really big
industrial city and then when I came to Bath it's really quaint and nice.
It's a world heritage city and the only other one in the world is Venice so
it is very very picturesque. One thing that stood out to me is that
it's also really safe which is also different from where I'm from.
I've never felt unsafe in Bath.
I think it's like the second safest university city in the UK
and you can literally just walk around at night and
never feel unsafe. That's my personal experience anyway.
So today we talked about choosing which university to go to, we talked
about the different things that have influenced our decisions, things like
being a campus or a city university, distance from home,
league tables, the city itself as well.
There are a lot of different things to take into account when you're looking at
universities and actually going and visiting them can
be one of the most important things because
a lot of us feel that that gut feeling that you get when you just visit a
university can actually say a lot about the
university and if you don't go and visit them you won't necessarily know
whether you get that gut feeling or not. So I definitely recommend going and
visiting if you can. Obviously not everybody's able to
but there are loads of resources online these days, loads of ways to communicate
with students or watch clips online, find out lots of
information. So do make sure you research your
university before you decide which to put as your firm and insurance choice.
Thanks again for listening to our #TeamsBath conversations on choosing which
university to go to and we'll see you again.