What really matters?

As we've said elsewhere, three-quarters of university applicants start by thinking about what course they want to study. You have to start somewhere and the course is a big part of student life — one in which applicants feel like they can exercise some choice.

However, you don’t have to start with the course. You shouldn’t rule yourself out of being the one in four that doesn’t. After all, as we’ve already seen — what’s on offer as far as courses are concerned isn’t entirely straightforward.

Instead of what they want to study, the one in four start by thinking about where. They may think, for example, that to keep the debts down they’ll live at home. That makes the choice a matter of geography (not the course...).

But there’s more to it than that. They may have a particular idea in their head about student life. Punting, sipping Pimms, sharing strawberries with a teddy bear and reading poetry with a chum. Or, maybe, living in a shared squat with a beer in one hand and a can of beans in the other. Or perhaps studious hours in the library and the lab, inching towards a moment of sublime discovery.

Whatever your vision of student life and whether you want to seek it out or avoid it like second-hand Y-fronts, your choice of university matters. Not every university offers the same lifestyle.

Sure, within limits, there’s room for different types, but in some places the parameters are wider than in others and it might be that in some places you just don’t fit in. It’s rarely a matter of unfriendliness — more often just a case of what clicks. It has to be right for you. If you have no idea about your course, then why not tackle the ‘Which university?’ decision from the other end? Start with the whole list of universities and pare it down to your favourites — then see what interesting courses those universities have on offer.

Student life is about a lot more than the course. In fact, once you’re at university, what makes a difference to the quality of your life is more down-to-earth.

Issues like, will the cash machine let you have another tenner? Will the damp patch on the wall freeze if the landlord doesn’t fix the heating? What’s my chance of pulling at the club tonight? Can I be bothered to walk all the way to the library? Can I wear these underpants four days running? How the hell am I going to get back to my flat at 3 am? Is this supposed to be edible? Where’s my change from that pint?... and a million more like them.

The fact is, depending on which university you choose, you might find yourself with more money or less, having heaps of fun or none, working your socks off or slacking like a bag of porridge.

This is going to be where you live for the next three, four, even six or seven years. How much it feels like home may end up being a lot more important to you than whether your next lecture is on the Law Lords or Bosnian warlords.

The challenge — because that’s what it is, more than a problem — is to work out which university offers a complete package that suits you.

You might want to do an initial round of eliminations based on which universities do your course and their entry requirements (then again, you might not), but, after that, consider what you’ll be doing for the 70% of the time — at least — that you’re not actively studying.

Increasingly, students are referred to as ‘the customers’ of higher education. Sure enough, with the recent funding changes, the process is likely to cost you enough to dump you in £15,000 to £20,000 of debt. So applicants have every right to act like customers.

Would you spend twenty grand on anything else without knowing as much as possible about it? Would you buy a car, say, without looking under the hood and taking it for a test drive? Of course not.

Acting like a customer involves asking questions to check that you’re getting the product you want, to check that you’re getting value for money and to check that you couldn’t do better elsewhere. With over 400 places in the UK where you can do a degree, most of which would be willing to accept any decent applicants, you can afford to be a bit picky, to demand your consumer rights.

No two universities are the same and it’s not a case of which will take you, but rather of which is offering you the most.

Make them sell themselves to you. Find out all you want to know to stretch your £20,000 investment as far as it will go and to make sure you’re getting what you — as an individual — want.

If you want punting and Pimms, don’t accept anything less. If you want a dingy squat, don’t bother about promises of plush student halls. And if you want long hours of study, don’t choose somewhere where propping up the bar is considered hard work.

The next few sections look at that side of life — everything about being a student that’s non-academic, extracurricular, necessary and unnecessary, a pain in the butt and just plain fun.

The University chooser is designed to help you try to identify issues that may be important to you. The next few sections are also part of that — they’ll give the low-down on why you should care how many students per counsellor a university has, what facilities the students’ union lays on or what difference it makes to you if a university’s big or small, old or new, in a town or out on a limb.

A few questions

• Have you tried out the University chooser?
  
• What do you imagine student life will be like?
• What attracts you most about student life and what therefore, apart from courses, are your priorities?