Hi everyone and welcome to the Ultimate channel for students my name is Francesca and hopefully
I will help you have the best fresh start at university.
Today I'm going to talk, I'm going to answer a question that actually a lot of you have
asked me and that is why Exeter University.
My mother went to Oxford so it was obvious for me to get to try, and you always want
to like give it a shot and do what your parents tried.
Unfortunately my written English was not the quality that it should've been and so I didn't
get in for obvious reason you cant be in Italy all your life and expect your level of English
unless you practice it is going to be the level of people who are working all their
life to get in their, it's fair enough.
What happened?
Well you're left with 4 other options and my 4 other options were Bristol, Bath, Exeter
and Nottingham Trent.
Nottingham Trent was a mistake I've put the wrong code like right now I laugh about it
but it was such a daft thing to do.
I mean classic Fran mistake so please make sure that when you're dealing with UCAS, so
if you're applying to English Universities make sure that you double triple check the
code of the University that you're putting in, just double check and I ended up applying
to Nottingham Trent.
So let's just put Nottingham Trent on aside and focus one the 3 that I chose, Exeter Bath
and Bristol, so when I did my choice of Universities I wanted to make sure that it was a really
recognized University because if I'm not getting into Oxford maise while will get into the
next one you know?
The second thing that made me want to apply to those and not maybe Warwick or something
else is because it was in the South West.
For me the South West was an important place to be as it was considered the sunniest part
of England and you know that it's kind of a lame argument like Fran, you're not going
to find any sun in England but I wanted to at least those few sunny days I wanted to
be extra sunny.
You know coming from Italy I really needed to see sunny days as much as possible and
I was quite surprise actually by how Exeter was so sunny during my first year I remember
being in a t-shirt until like the beginning of November and that is unheard of on me I'm
someone who is always cold, always need jumpers on and if I was in a t-shirt then I was like
ok maybe it was just like my year like a gift from england "welcome ! we're going to give
you sun all the time"but it was just great, I loved it!
SO also why not London, you know London is a classic destination where loads of people
want to go.
The thing is London for me is too big, it's too big, it doesn't have that campus feel
you know, I mean I'm sorry if I want to live in London I'll do that later on, for now I
just want to enjoy my student life and I wanted to go out like 6 times a week, London is not
the place.
But the main reason why I wanted to go to Exeter and Bristol and Bath was the campus
feel.
ok maybe Bristol a bit less, the real focus here was bath.
Bath was my firm choice, I wanted a campus...
You know when you go on holiday to these kind of clubs like club med or something and there's
always that group of young people who hang out all the time and party all the time together
yeah I kind of wanted that but on a bigger scale.
Instead of having two weeks with 20 people I wanted 4 years with 20 000 people, you know
like dream.
My first year was like a holiday cuz the degree didn't count, I had 8h a week of lectures,
it was ridiculous, I had so much time to party and I literally did that I treated my Uni
like a holiday camp it was ridiculous and I don't know if I'd ever manage to do that
if I did something else you know?
Like if I did Economics or if I went to London there's no way I would have felt that holiday
feel if i went to a city instead of a campus you know.
So yeah that was insane.
As I said my firm choice was Bath and not Exeter.
2 reason actually just one: I visited Bath and I didn't visit Exeter University.
Bath was one of the only open days I've managed to do with Oxford back in the day so I just
knew about Bath, I saw it, I was in love with the campus... actually no: I was in love with
campuses but then when I went to see Bath I thought I was in love with Bath but actually
I was in love with a campus feel.
I was just so obsessed by it and Bath asked me for 5 really hard marks to get in my French
Baccalaureate and it was horrible how by a fraction of the mark I didn't get one of the
marks and these dumb ass recruitment people in Bath were like "Oh no sorry you didn't
get the marks" and I'm just like are you serious like I got all of the other marks and for
one mark, for a fraction I don't get in?
I was destroyed, I was so obsessed with Bath.
I was like, I had the booklets in my bag all the time, to remind me to study.
When I didn't get in Iwas heart broken.
And then I went on Exeter and I was like "eurgh I am left with Exeter, what the hell is that,
you know because I never visited it so I was like let's go on Youtube and check it out
and see if they have anything.
They didn't have any videos like if you go now on Exeter University, well, you'll see
me but you'll also see new videos like back 4 years ago there was no videos it was depressing,
one of the videos was so not accurate, it was just like what the hell is this and I
just hated the idea of going to Exeter, like it's crap, this is crap I'm not going to manage
to make friends, it's not the same as Bath, oh my God.
So imagine my surprise when I arrived in Exeter and oh my God good looking people, so many
good looking people, hot guys everywhere.
Literally like it's a sports campus and obviously i didn't connect that it was a sports campus
and it was so many good looking guys and so many good looking girls as well I was like
wow, this is such a good looking campus and apparently I didn't know this but there was
this whole like stereotype that Exeter university was a good looking campus, like yeah!I realized!
It was so...
I arrived there and I was like wow, it was insane, what a year what a first term, student
life was insane, nah I had the best time at uni, my first term in Exeter in first year
was, I loved it, I loved it, although the first few days were crap, I will link down
below my first days, I explain it in many details, I just managed to have the best fresh
time, best fresh time lol, best fresh start in my Uni and it was... it's thanks to my
mentality also because at the start, it was difficult especially for someone who's not
from the UK and just doesn't not know anything about the culture, like it all depends on
how you react to certain situations and how your mentality, how you're going to rewire
your brain in a certain situation so I'm not going to promise you, oh yeah you'll have
the best fresh start in Exeter because it depends on you, you decide if you're going
to have a good time, you decide if you're going to have a bad time, no matter what they
put in front of you and that's the same with life, no matter what life throws at you, you
will decide if you want to see it in a positive way or in a negative way, always, that's my
belief at least, my opinion.
So yeah so Exeter, everything was walking distance, I hate transportation like I hate
to have to walk or have to be in a bus to get from one place to the other, for instance
my house right now this year is in the middle between campus and town so it's like 5 minutes
walk from town, 6 minutes from campus, perfect.
Location is so important for me and the fact that Exeter is so close to everything.
Exeter is just perfect and if I would've had an open day in Exeter I would've realized
that earlier and stop whining about oh I didn't get into Bath cuz now I'm just like well I'm
glad, everything happens for a reason so don't be heart broken no matter what happens even
if you don't get into uni, even if you don't get through clearing make sure that you make
the most out of the situation because everything happens for a reason then just take the sign
and do what you have to do with it.
Like this video and I will see you in the next video, bye guys!