Student review [#15828] for Biological Sciences
at University of Birmingham

As a whole, my university experience from the University of Birmingham was a very happy one!

The university itself boasts a fantastic location- whether you are a campus or city type of person, Birmingham has something for you. UoB has a huge and beautiful campus, which is a haven for student life. It even has its own train station- which any open day tour guide will tell you about 500 times. You can be on campus, enjoying the lovely greenery and eating a ridiculously overpriced sandwich and then ten minutes later in the heart of bustling Birmingham city centre.

The University of Birmingham also has a fantastic social scene with many different societies and sports clubs offering memberships to fill every student’s interests- whether that be singing, as part of an A Capella group or learning how to parachute. These experiences are enhanced by the fact that the university’s social calendar is chockablock full of fun nights out, with many of the best clubs in the UK located in Birmingham and many of the best nights out being exclusively for society members only.

The University of Birmingham is a great university to get the typical student experience and you’ll be blown away by how good their courses are compared to how shocking their organisation is.

Which leads me on to part 2 of this review: the lack of investment in infrastructure.

As someone who really enjoyed their university career, it was really difficult for me to take a step back and admit that this university has flaws. This is probably true for any university, but universities are businesses first and foremost. The aim of the game is to try to get the most students and with that, the most money. So universities tend to focus on investing in the things which make the biggest impressions to prospective students. These things are buildings. Not a day went by that at least some part of the university hadn’t transformed into a building site. And while the money poured into new sports halls, new libraries and new green spaces (yes, even that needed to be ‘built’), virtually no money was seemingly spent on improving the admin team to fit the demands of the extra capacity of the university. I feel bad saying this, but there were honestly so many mistakes and so many errors with timetables that staff actually stopped bothering with the whole system. I went on a year abroad (which I would definitely recommend!) but there was virtually no structure or guidance to trying to make that happen and absolutely no care whatsoever was given when you were out there.

Overall, I loved my university experience, but I also realise how lucky I was that things turned out the way they did. I would hate to think what would happen if something had drastically changed in my life- I can honestly say that I’m not sure they would have been able to handle it. I encourage anyone who wants to go there, as you are guaranteed a good standard of teaching and a good student experience… as long as nothing goes wrong.