Royal Holloway - RHUL Speciality : Politics
programme: Politics and Philosophy

From a distance, Royal Holloway looks like Hogwarts’ effortlessly glamorous cousin. The Founders Building is all red brick, turrets, and drama, the kind of architecture that convinces you you’re about to have a life changing academic experience before you’ve even stepped inside. Then you do step inside.

The magic fades quickly in the seminar rooms and lecture halls, where harsh white lighting and narrow corridors reign supreme. There is something uniquely humbling about power walking to a lecture while carrying a bag heavy enough to alter your posture, squeezed through corridors that feel actively hostile to students with books.

Still, the campus has its charms. The cats are undeniably adorable, lounging in libraries, sunbathing like they pay rent, at least until you witness one mid hunt at night, at which point the whimsy is replaced by a strong urge to never emotionally recover.

What Royal Holloway gets right, though, is its people. There’s a genuine sense of community here: familiar faces on the way to lectures, quick chats in the library, shared eye contact during the daily mission to find a free seat. It’s comforting in a quiet, understated way.

Royal Holloway might not sustain its Hogwarts illusion indoors, but between the beauty, the chaos, and the community, it gives you something arguably better: a place that feels lived in, slightly absurd, and oddly grounding.