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2012 UCAS Applicants Thread

The Economist

By The Economist
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Loeszie.

Loeszie.

Posted
Posted (edited)

I received two offers this week =D

One from King's College London for Hispanic Studies with English. Their condition is 36 points with 665 at HL, with a 6 in HL Spanish and 5 in HL English. The other one is from Queen Mary University of London for Hispanic Studies and Linguistics. Their condition is 32 points with 6 in HL Spanish and English.

I also got an e-mail from English and Hispanic Studies at Queen Mary with a written exercise I need to complete in 2 weeks. And Wednesday I'm flying off to Oxford for my interview! (:

Edited by Loeszie.
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Gaby

Gaby

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woot congrats ppl!!

I've been waiting for my UCL decision... can't wait any longer D:

I've heard that UCL is really slow with offers, my friends is waiting for an answer from Psychology Department and they wrote to her saying they will take longer than usual to consider her application. God, they're even slow at replying to emails...

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ninety

ninety

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I hope some of you future lawyers end up at LSE next year. I'll show you guys around, it's a pretty awesome Uni and the library is simultaneously wonderful and nightmare-inducing for wildly differing reasons.

I'm sorry if this offends you, but I've heard from various people that the social scene at LSE is... non-existent. I've also read similar things online and in Virgin's Guide to British Universities. My classmate's sister graduated from LSE 1~2 years ago, and according to my classmate, his sister's become a lot more depressing after going to uni :P

My first choice uni is split between UCL and LSE. I really like LSE, but I'm a bit put off by what I've been hearing/reading. How do you feel about it? Is there any truth in it?

woot congrats ppl!!

I've been waiting for my UCL decision... can't wait any longer D:

I've heard that UCL is really slow with offers, my friends is waiting for an answer from Psychology Department and they wrote to her saying they will take longer than usual to consider her application. God, they're even slow at replying to emails...

I guess UCL can't help it, being such a prestigious university and all... :P

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Arrowhead

Arrowhead

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I hope some of you future lawyers end up at LSE next year. I'll show you guys around, it's a pretty awesome Uni and the library is simultaneously wonderful and nightmare-inducing for wildly differing reasons.
I'm sorry if this offends you, but I've heard from various people that the social scene at LSE is... non-existent. I've also read similar things online and in Virgin's Guide to British Universities. My classmate's sister graduated from LSE 1~2 years ago, and according to my classmate, his sister's become a lot more depressing after going to uni :P My first choice uni is split between UCL and LSE. I really like LSE, but I'm a bit put off by what I've been hearing/reading. How do you feel about it? Is there any truth in it?

I totally get your point and concede that LSE is not one of the most social places on the face of the Earth, but that comes down to how much effort you put into it. Last year, I was partying two nights a week at a minimum, which could easily have been more had I put in the effort. By the same token, I knew people who partied once a month and that's it.

One thing you realise at University is that the importance of a 'social scene' is limited only to your first-year. By the time you enter your second-year, you have a million other, real-world worries; and also because people establish their core group of friends in first-year generally.

There's also the fact that at LSE, most of the students that come here are very studious and driven. This place is a hubbub of intelligentsia and I do not feel the need to be modest about that fact. Every student here is confident, smart, and determined (in varying levels, yes, but they all inevitably are, some hide it more than others). More than anything else, everyone here is über-ambitious and drive you to be better than you've ever been before to keep up with them.

It's a give-and-take situation, less of a traditional Uni experience and more of an intense educational one. Also, you can always do what I did, make loads of friends from King's, UCL, and SOAS in your first year by living in intercollegiate Halls. You're fine thereafter and it's almost like getting the best of both worlds (even though managing it sometimes is murder).

One last thing I will say that coming to LSE is worth it if you've applied for the right degree, for example: Economics, Accounting and Finance, Law, Political Science, arguably even History. But there are other courses that are taught really pathetically and you're better of at UCL or somewhere else for that matter because the LSE Department for that course sucks, like International Relations.

Oh! And don't believe any of these Ranking Tables, different ones will tell you different things because they give more weight than others to different Uni aspects. They're very unreliable.

Cheers,

Arrowhead.

Edited by Arrowhead
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ninety

ninety

Posted
Posted
I hope some of you future lawyers end up at LSE next year. I'll show you guys around, it's a pretty awesome Uni and the library is simultaneously wonderful and nightmare-inducing for wildly differing reasons.
I'm sorry if this offends you, but I've heard from various people that the social scene at LSE is... non-existent. I've also read similar things online and in Virgin's Guide to British Universities. My classmate's sister graduated from LSE 1~2 years ago, and according to my classmate, his sister's become a lot more depressing after going to uni :P My first choice uni is split between UCL and LSE. I really like LSE, but I'm a bit put off by what I've been hearing/reading. How do you feel about it? Is there any truth in it?

I totally get your point and concede that LSE is not one of the most social places on the face of the Earth, but that comes down to how much effort you put into it. Last year, I was partying two nights a week at a minimum, which could easily have been more had I put in the effort. By the same token, I knew people who partied once a month and that's it.

One thing you realise at University is that the importance of a 'social scene' is limited only to your first-year. By the time you enter your second-year, you have a million other, real-world worries; and also because people establish their core group of friends in first-year generally.

There's also the fact that at LSE, most of the students that come here are very studious and driven. This place is a hubbub of intelligentsia and I do not feel the need to be modest about that fact. Every student here is confident, smart, and determined (in varying levels, yes, but they all inevitably are, some hide it more than others). More than anything else, everyone here is über-ambitious and drive you to be better than you've ever been before to keep up with them.

It's a give-and-take situation, less of a traditional Uni experience and more of an intense educational one. Also, you can always do what I did, make loads of friends from King's, UCL, and SOAS in your first year by living in intercollegiate Halls. You're fine thereafter and it's almost like getting the best of both worlds (even though managing it sometimes is murder).

One last thing I will say that coming to LSE is worth it if you've applied for the right degree, for example: Economics, Accounting and Finance, Law, Political Science, arguably even History. But there are other courses that are taught really pathetically and you're better of at UCL or somewhere else for that matter because the LSE Department for that course sucks, like International Relations.

Oh! And don't believe any of these Ranking Tables, different ones will tell you different things because they give more weight than others to different Uni aspects. They're very unreliable.

Cheers,

Arrowhead.

Wow, thanks so much for your reply! Incredibly insightful :D

You're totally right. I guess it all depends on how much you try to socialise. And yeah, I thought that if I went to any of the Universities of London and stayed in an intercollegiate hall, I'd be able to make more friends :)

By the way, if you don't mind me asking, how do you find UCL, SOAS and LSE? How do they compare? I've applied to all three of them, and if I do get offers from all three, I'm not sure how I would decide which one to go to.

UCL is large and famous in many fields, but I like LSE for their philosophy. It's also impressive how LSE receives so many guest speakers each month. SOAS is a good place, much smaller than UCL and LSE, but much less famous outside of the UK. I'm drawn to SOAS because I love languages, and I was thinking that maybe I could learn some new languages (outside of class) if I went there. Also, their law course apparently has an Asian-focus, so that might be good for me because I want to practice in Hong Kong.

And I wasn't really swayed by the ranking tables. When I did university research I found that none of the tables agreed with each other, so I just decided to go for the Universities of London because I wanted to be in a big city :P

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ninety

ninety

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Posted

I'm feeling so dumb... I've been practising for my oxford interview and it's terrible, I'm unable to do simple stuff esp in calculus. and my interview is on monday. and the fact that one of my interviewers specialises in calculus is not helping at all :(

I should probably go and die in a hole...

From all the things I've heard, I think luck is really important for Oxbridge interviews. Sometimes you're lucky and they might ask you something that you've learnt. Other times they might ask something you haven't learnt yet but are JUST about to cover in class, so you don't know how to answer the question. Some people in my year even took a day off before their interview to prepare themselves, but I don't think taking the day off helped them much. There's only so much preparation you can do, so why not relax for a bit :) Good luck on Monday!

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Arrowhead

Arrowhead

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Wow, thanks so much for your reply! Incredibly insightful :D

You're totally right. I guess it all depends on how much you try to socialise. And yeah, I thought that if I went to any of the Universities of London and stayed in an intercollegiate hall, I'd be able to make more friends :)

You're welcome.

By the way, if you don't mind me asking, how do you find UCL, SOAS and LSE? How do they compare? I've applied to all three of them, and if I do get offers from all three, I'm not sure how I would decide which one to go to.

UCL is large and famous in many fields, but I like LSE for their philosophy. It's also impressive how LSE receives so many guest speakers each month. SOAS is a good place, much smaller than UCL and LSE, but much less famous outside of the UK. I'm drawn to SOAS because I love languages, and I was thinking that maybe I could learn some new languages (outside of class) if I went there. Also, their law course apparently has an Asian-focus, so that might be good for me because I want to practice in Hong Kong.

First of all, don't get swayed by the fact that you will be able to do a language outside of classes, that's not going to happen. I was naive enough to think the same in my first-year, big mistake. Law alone is intense enough to take up all your time. Also you seem keen to actually have a social life outside of Law, taking additional courses, not the best idea. You will feel different a term into Law school, trust me.

Okay in terms of actual Law, it doesn't matter at all which or what subjects you study at Uni. I'm going to be taking Medical Law as a module next year and I have no interest in it whatsoever. It's because that's an easy course. You just have to cover some basic subjects for a qualifying Law degree: Contracts, Torts, Property, EU, and Criminal. Beyond that it's a free for all.

All the Unis are brilliant, I would advocate UCL and LSE over SOAS however, if you get the opportunity, simply in the name of prestige. Between LSE and UCL? I don't know. Both are equally brilliant in my books. Most people at LSE will tell you that LSE is better than UCL, but I'm not so sure about that. Both have strengths and weaknesses over each other.

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Loeszie.

Loeszie.

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Congrats Desy! :)

I have all my replies as well (of which one is not yet official/still has to be confirmed but they said they'd be making me an official offer within 4 weeks) and I have 4 offers and 1 rejection. When I just sent off my UCAS I really didn't expect I would do this well, so I'm happy!

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