Who /Durham/ here?

I've done degrees at warwick and cambridge and as a whole the warwick students were not "just unlucky".

There's a pretty clear difference when you look at the whole populations.

they're noticeably less intelligent on average

overall, to me their maths course basically looked a whole lot shitter than imperial's.

I reckon that if you're willing to study in london and are actually good at maths you'd want to go to imperial, and UCL's maths department knows it can't compete with imperial fro the best undergrad maths students so it intentially makes its undergrad courses more gentle to cater to the weaker prospective maths students who would consider going to ucl

It sucks though. Oxbridge applications have such a high degree of luck in them that a lot of good people end up in warwick etc. undeserved.

Of course, in Warwick you have rejects and those who had Warwick as first choice, while in Cambridge you only have first choice people, so the level is going to be higher.

I'm a Durham maths/physics student now passing to third year, ask me anything.

The physics department, specifically the astrophysics, is one of the top in the world right now, which is partly the reason why they're building and renovating new physics buildings. They have a newly acquired supercomputer and have some high power telescopes, so if you're into that, I guess you'll be delighted.

The engineering department isn't as highly rated as the physics, and I don't really know too much about what they do, but they do have some cool competitions and they get to go places (also most likely half of the engineers will be doing rowing).

If you decide to do physics in the end, opt for the hard maths option and not the physics maths modules, since I bet they don't give any intuition into what the concepts are (a 2nd year physics student asked me right before a QM exam what an eigenvalue was lmao).

really depends on what college you go to and who you associate with, typically the people in the hill colleges are more laid back while the ones in the bailey are more business, and that most likely comes from the fact that they are more educated and posher.
(Hill colleges: Aidan's, collingwood, mildert, etc, Bailey colleges: Castle, Hatfield, Cuth's, etc)

Which college, familia?

What are you doing now in order to land a job in the future? What are the most common things physicists from Durham end up doing when they graduate?

Also how much of your life do colleges take up? I don't want to go autismo and then have to face those people for 4 years

>you can still go into engineering fields with a physics degree
How?

Don't you need to do postgrad in engineering?

Or do companies give you engineer training?

I'm not that guy but I'm also on Physics at DU.

A bunch of the people who are actually into physics (usually on the 4 year Msc course) will probably go into research, usually by landing work with some internal or external research group. Every year there are internal projects advertised that you can apply to work on over the summer or you can ask a professor whose work you're interested in.

Most of the Bsc grads I know are working in finance or software or something.

Currently I'm working with a Quantum Information based group and I'm hoping to work in that field of study at a postgrad level.

College is usually where your main friendship group is formed but I know a couple of people from a college next door who pretty much socially migrated to ours. Once you get into second year and live out, college separation means a lot less.

I should warn you, house signing season for the following year comes ridiculously early in Durham. Try and pin down a group of ~4 people who you could stand to live with for a year and sign before the good houses are gone. If you don't you'll either end up housing with randomers, living about an hour away from everything or living in college which can put a bit of a damper on your social life.

Aidan's, you? I didnt know anything about the colleges when I applied so I got it chosen randomly

Right now I'm a lazy shit and not doing anything, but my aim right now is to do a maths PhD. I honestly don't know what other people do when they graduate since I don't know that many 4th year physics students, but the 2 that I do know are doing a PhD in physics. Also there are lots of companies that come and give employment opportunities so I wouldnt be too worried.

College life takes up as much as you want it to take up. In your first year you are going to be living in college, so use that to socialize as much as you can. If you are lucky enough to have a single room, don't spend all you time in there, make an effort to go out. There's always going be people in the corridors, in the common room or in the bar, so especially in your freshers week, just try to hold in your anxiety and sit around people. They also don't know each other that much. If you have trouble with that, just have a drink (but don't get drunk) and then join a group. I also suggest you go out on every themed night on freshers week, and go with the group. If you dont make any friends then it's just your fault.

Also join at least 2 college sports team if you're sporty (and even if you're not), one of them that you're good at and another new, like rowing, mixed lacrosse, hockey.

Trevs, I'm like the only one of my friends who actually chose to apply there. There are two definite groups here, those who are involved in the Musical and those who aren't. There's no great social divide between the two or anything but you can pretty quickly tell who falls into either group.

Yeah this is also pretty spot on
>College life takes up as much as you want it to take up. In your first year you are going to be living in college, so use that to socialize as much as you can. If you are lucky enough to have a single room, don't spend all you time in there, make an effort to go out. There's always going be people in the corridors, in the common room or in the bar, so especially in your freshers week, just try to hold in your anxiety and sit around people. They also don't know each other that much. If you have trouble with that, just have a drink (but don't get drunk) and then join a group. I also suggest you go out on every themed night on freshers week, and go with the group. If you dont make any friends then it's just your fault.

You can become a lot more socially competent here quite easily, I've found. The colleges are very welcoming to new students and the atmosphere at freshers week isn't that daunting once you're there. Everyone else is just as anxious to make friends as you are and there's no secondary school level bitching (except for Hatfield and Castle, I hear). You'll find some people you like in your freshers group and you'll pick up other friends over the next few weeks.

birmingham

really? you surely have stronger anecdotal evidence than me, but in my school the only people who got into oxbridge was me and another retard. people a LOT smarter than me were rejected (both higher academic achievement and that undefinable creativity of the mind).

maybe they become smarter BECAUSE they went to cambridge, and not vice-versa?

p.s. they may be more intelligent as a mean average, but probably not as a median.

is there much difference in the colleges?

because on university challenge they arent considered separate enough to be teams.

I think that's partly due to the fact they aren't as independent as Oxbridge Colleges, i.e. they're more a part of the whole university than their own institutions.

>college 2016
>not just braindead partying

Theyre memes

There's not that much difference, but specific colleges have a different culture, since the people that apply to those generally behave similarly. For example, Collingwood typically is the sportiest college and wins most events, while Hatfield and Castle usually behave more seriously and you have a lot of those people that others label as posh cunts

Anyone else here /Manchester/ ? Chose this one over King's College London because of how expensive London was.

So far no regrets, it's been more of a trade-off between prestige and practicality.

Kings sucks. It's only relevant because of medicine.

most optimal uni world reporting in

I always see cool projects coming out of here, I wish I could have gone to a school like that.

I know several PhD students from Durham and they are all some of the most miserable postgraduate students I have ever met.

That said my sample size is quite small.

I can see that being the case

I like it here as an undergrad but I wouldn't want to spend more than 4 years in the same minuscule town.

>be from irrelevant country
>all my universities are pretty much irrelevant
>feel like brainlet because I still had to put a lot of effort into getting into one

Im off to Durham hopefully. Should be fun. Did a summer school there last year and the chemistry facilities seem good. Looking forward to it.

user don't worry, if your country isn't in the anglophone sphere ratings don't matter to you that much. They are usually weighed by how much they are cited, so of course that the papers in English are gonna get cited more than others.

I did some study in Spain and that shit was intense. It's just not as known because of those reasons, not because you're a brainlet (probably)

I'm spanish (but dont study there) and I can attest to that. The maths exams of the engineering students have incredibly hard questions

They have seen more sunny weather in Durham than women's pussy

>tfw starting a foundation course at Leeds this year and I come from bumfuck nowhere with straight C's from 2012

You'll make it if you work hard enough

do we have many oxbridgefags in Veeky Forums?

>Oxbridge
>Veeky Forums

choose one.

j-just asking...

hopefully im going to oxford in oct. to do math.(pending on a level results)

I'm in the same place, but for comp sci.

Veeky Forums sounds more like the oxbridge reject place

good luck fama-lama-lam. what college?

Keble. Right across the road from the comp sci building, couldn't be better.

if you dont want to an academic -> only matters where you do your phd -> stop crying

if you dont want to be an academic -> doesnt matter where you go anyway -> stop crying

only disadvantage of going to a shit school is your peers may be plebs, but having friends is silly anyway

>2nd best uni in the country
>not oxbridge

I'm only a lowly pleb undergrad, but I sometimes browse here. It's kinda relaxing, because the only things I deal with during uni are biochem (my major) - there's other cool stuff that pops up on Veeky Forums often.

Its a very good school

i put my head down and impressed some people to get an offer

i browse Veeky Forums sometimes and they have a famous "oxford girl" who does physics and reviews books on youtube

Same place chemistry

Attention whores gonna be attention whores senpai