University of Southampton Guide reviews

University of Southampton review

Southampton is a working port, so expect seagulls but dont expect a beach. There's plenty of parks and lots of greenery. It's not a big city like Birmingham or London, but there's plenty of shops and nightclubs to suit everyone. The union has recently been done up, we now have our own nightclub, three different bars and hopefully a pool and cinema by december! There isn't too much concrete around and the facilities are good on campus (shop, travel centre, hairdressers, banks and waterstones).

Most of the halls are nearby or at least on a decent busroute. My halls (Monte II) were wonderful, I lived with twenty girls, some of whom I still live with and I'm still good buddies with nearly all of them. We had an excellently cheap bar, a wonderful burgervan and a vending machine that we could run to in the Hollyoaks adverts! There were also loads of washing machines. It was easy to find accomodation in second and third year (£48/week)as long as you are in groups of 5/6/7 etc.

My course is very interesting and also pretty rare (anyone else heard of an undergraduate masters!?). We go out on boats, and spend time in labs, lectures are only two or three times a day, four times a week. There's plenty of work to do but overall it's pretty slack.

I have time to work part time in a nightclub and learn to dive. I hope to be a scuba instructer soon, this is through the uni club who are wicked.

Hope this lures you to Southampton!

University of Southampton review

Southampton (Soton, or South-humpington to its inmates) is suitably green, but enough of a city to enjoy yourself. The New Forest is about 20 mins away if you miss the smell of woodlands and the countryside, but the City is busy enough too, if you like that kind of thing!

There are loads of clubs, and most night-life is student based with at least 2/3 students nights at different clubs on different nights of the week so that you always have a choice of where to go! If you don't fancy the 5 min cab ride to town, you can walk (~30 mins), or head up to the union (~15mins from most halls, or Portswood, where most of the student houses are).
There are loads of new buildings on the campus, including the mystery overhanging lecture theatre at Engineering, and all the halls and houses (~£50/wk) are close by.

If you're looking to study chemistry, be prepared to go into uni 5 days a week, this does mean that in the first year, once you get home from uni, there's very little other work to do, a distinct advantage when other subjects have essays etc. (heehee). You generally only have 5/6 lectures a week, there's between 2 afternoons and 3 days spent in the lab, and there's a couple of tutorials, but altogether its not too bad. It's quite a small department, so everyone knows each other, and Chemsoc works hard to get everyone drunk at least once a fortnight!

One common misconception is that all chemists are geeks - don't go to uni believing this, everyone makes an effort, and it relly makes no difference at uni whether you were the coolest clown around, or the geek who aced all their exams at school - no-one cares, they accept you for being who you are now!

Anyway to sum up, Soton rocks! Come and join us, and see what you're missing out on!