Student review [#20427] for Audiovisual Communication
at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid - UC3M

I completed the Audiovisual Communication degree at uc3m in 2018. Overall, I’d rate it as an ‘ok’ experience cause despite my disappointment with the program’s structure I do believe there’s other good parts that come along with the experience of studying at UC3M.
In general, I’d say the biggest downside is that the program constitutes mostly of a heavy theoretical part about the history of film and TV, which can be interesting in some classes but most of them just consist in memorizing a lot of content by heart for the evaluations. I found that many lectures lack the practical approach necessary to prepare the students for jobs in TV or film productions.
There are a few classes that I did enjoy and found useful, that offer a bit of that practical approach where you get to be in the production studio on campus, apply film theory to your own work, play around with cameras, develop your own radio episode with a team in a radio booth, etc. but it feels like a very minor part in comparison to the rest of the degree and you only get to scratch the surface of learning about media production and postproduction. Also, there’s some classes that are compulsory like economics or law which I didn’t find useful at all in relation to the program and ended up taking a lot of work to get over with.
All of this is very noticeable specially after graduation, where most of us find ourselves extremely unprepared for roles in current media productions. If that’s something you’re interested in, I’d recommend searching for another program way more practical and oriented towards current job positions.
On the other hand, I think the best part of the university is all the facilities and a very nice student environment with a constant flow of activities and workshops of different fields available. The resources at UC3M are, from my understanding, pretty good compared to other public universities with a similar communication degree. There’s camera equipment available for students to borrow and a radio and tv studio in the campus. Also, the library is a very modern building, quite big and has lots of film and tv content for rental, plus available computers to work. The rest of the spaces like the open-air gardens and the cafeterias are super nice as well and are very suitable for gatherings with other students.