London University Queen Mary & Westfield College

I'm currently a student at Queen Mary, part of the University of London group. I thought I'd write this to give some help to anyone thinking of going. I know I could have done with this information when I was thinking about university and you often receive very one-sided information.

Queen Mary is a university also including Barts school of medicine and dentistry. It is a campus university and situated in an area of London called Mile End, really near to Whitechapel and Canary Wharf. Although it is techinally the 'East End,' it is only just over a mile away from Liverpool St (hence the name) and takes about 15 minutes on the tube to get to Oxford Street - so it's not far out at all.

Although QM is part of the University of London, which is great because it shows that the university is reputable, this can also mean that QM will be compared to other London universities. The other obvious large London universities are UCL, King's and Imperial, which all have their own strengths too. However the selling point of QM is that it is a campus university in the East End, therefore it is cheaper to live here. It was been rated highly by the Guardian in it's university guides, and is especially strong in areas of English, Drama, Law and Medicine.

The campus is pretty large now that new halls have just been built, so a lecture is only about one minute's walk away from your kitchen, which is very handy. It also allows you to mix with students who are studying other subjects as well as being able to live in a modern and comfortable student home, which has won a Housing Award recently for the high quality of the accomodation. In comparison to the cost of halls for other London universities, QM students can expect to pay between £80-97 per week, which might sound a lot, but for London it's cheap.

The people at the university are also one of it's unique features. Rather than having students mostly from private schools, it is completely diverse, with lots of students coming from low-income homes, from all different walks of life and areas of the world. Because of the university's international exchange programme there are also a lot of American students on campus which makes it very lively. This also means that students at QM get the opportunity to study abroad too.

The student union is brilliant with plenty of clubs and socities, and there are on-campus shops too. The student union offices have just been refurbished, and a new gym is being built for September 2008.

Overall I'd definiatey recommend studying at QM. It has a great reputation, it's friendly and is ranked just as highly as the other London universities but without the pretentious attitude and with a lot more diversity.