Sunday 21 February 2016

Review: Edge Hill University

Hi everyone, last weekend I went to the applicant day at Edge Hill University (open days and applicant days are a little different, but i'll get into that in a different post) and I was very pleased with what I saw and I will explain why in this blog post.
However, first I would like to highlight the importance of planning ahead; by this I mean think of questions beforehand, along with other preparations (I have plans for a blog post on this as well), but I also mean looking up traffic before you leave as I did not and got stuck in over an hours traffic on the motorway meaning I missed over half hour of the applicant day. However, since I also went on a university residential there last year I am going to put my views from both together to form this review.
Right, enough waffling, here's the review:
Positives:
  • Accommodation: The accommodation here is really nice and there is one for everyone, from the back halls (the cheapest of the accommodation) to the new and more pricey halls. If you wish to know more about each accommodation along with a rather useful little video of each click here. I personally like the look of Forest Court as it was the middle accommodation but still very nice and has a mixture of shared bathroom and en-suite (en-suite being more expensive of course). Also, I found that not just at this university, but at all the others I have gone around, that the bedrooms with shared bathrooms are much larger with more storage so it depends what you're looking for. Unfortunately, I was unable to take pictures as applicant days are during term time so I was looking in people's actual bedrooms so it seemed  bit rude and inappropriate to  take photos. However the videos are very good :)
  • Campus: I absolutely love the campus at Edge Hill, 160 acres with all the buildings really close together and then just loads of tracks/pitches and fields perfect for revising on or exercising in. I have put an extremely bad quality picture of the campus map below (sorry if you can't read my writing!). 

  • Scholarships: There are loads of scholarships available at Edge Hill, and cater for a variety of people's backgrounds. If you wish to know more about their scholarships click here.
  • Societies: There are loads of fantastic societies and sports to join and there is a huge variety. There are so many I like the sound of that I fear I'm not going to have enough time for anything else! If you wish to see what societies they have on offer click here.
  • Location: For me personally the campus is in the perfect location; in the countryside with a little town called Ormskirk nearby and Liverpool 20 minutes away. This means that you are away from everything but night clubs and great shopping areas are close by.
Negatives:
  • Cohort: This is just a negative for me and others on my course really (although it may apply to others) but for Educational Psychology the cohort is no more than 30 and the head of this course told us that there is a possibility that they may have to turn people away after they have firmed it which of course is a big negative. I only hope they will tell us before the beginning of May if this is the case so we can ask UCAS if we can firm another.
Despite this negative I really really like Edge Hill and i'm 90% sure that I am now going to put this as my firm choice. I can definitely see myself going here and it really is a lovely university. Hope this has helped some of you and has given you some useful information however I would still suggest going on an open day to get a feel for it yourself as this is just my opinion.