A touch of Sweetness

Monday, June 29, 2009

I just came back from the UK on the 21st June. It was the first “working” trip for me and was a little more tiring than the usual holidays. The main aim of this trip was actually to visit the UK universities and get a feel of the environment there. I shall share my views on the universities I visited. Hope they will be of some help (=

London:
1) Imperial: Located in the South Kensington area, the environment here is rather peaceful and the building is rather modern. South Kensington is the “posh area” (for the riches) so I quite like this feel compared to the other universities. Also, the Royal Albert Hall is just nearby and I hope to be able to play there one day. It is really grand and the history of the building is just amazing.
I visited the engineering faculty and the post graduate business management faculty there. Both buildings are rather new to me so I find it just like NUS but maybe slightly newer. Also, around half the student population are Asians and there are many people from China there.

2) UCL: I do not like the feel at all even before reaching the building. Firstly, all the faculties are scattered everywhere, some even combined with University of London. It was a rather messy university, with all the buildings scattered everywhere. Once you step into the building, it is nothing compared to Imperial. I forgot which faculty I visited but it was rather run down and dilapidated. I did not stay long there as I would never want to go there at all.

3) LSE: The feel here is like an in between of Imperial and UCL. The faculties are all nearby and neatly organised on the piece of land. There were new and old buildings depending on which faculty you enter. The only thing is that I hardly see any Asians there so racism might be a problem. I suppose since foreigners spend a lot of money just to go abroad to study, they would rather go to a university with a better ranking such as Imperial. But I suppose LSE specialises in economics so I guess the choice is entirely up to each individual.

Edinburgh:
4) University of Edinburgh: When we went there, term was already over so there were not any students on the campus. This university is rather new and modern and also very peaceful but in terms of ranking wise, is not as high as Imperial. I did not go into any faculty as we did not follow any university tour but I just walked around and discovered this music auditorium which was pretty cool. That’s about it for University of Edinburgh. A rather brief walk about as I am aiming for Cambridge or Oxford (see below).

Cambridge:
5) Cambridge University: Cambridge actually branched out of Oxford. It was started up by 6/12 (?) people from Oxford. Cambridge has 32 colleges. Students apply for a specific college which is their residential area. Everyone has to travel to the different faculties located within the Cambridge Town. Tutorials are held mainly on a one to one basis in your own college by your mentor.
I personally like the feel of Cambridge as the colleges are pretty close to one another, just like one big family. And I like the town feeling (there are shops around the colleges so it is very convenient). The colleges there are all quite peaceful and nice but since you apply to each college, you have to look at the academic subjects I suppose.

Oxford:
6) Oxford University: It is similar to Cambridge and has exactly the same system since Cambridge is a subset of Oxford. It has twice the number of colleges there and Christ College is the biggest and quite peaceful. Oxford is much more organised but I personally prefer Cambridge feel though Oxford’s colleges are more systematically built and the faculties are easy to find unlike Cambridge.

Yup. Hope the above info is useful though they are just my personal feelings after I went down personally to each university.

-when are you coming back? ;