Advice on post-grad course selection

[L'Impresario]

In the fine .org tradition, I’m obliged to ask for your contribution regarding a couple of universities that have offered me a place, although due to some utterly stupid mitigating circumstances I might not be able to get my degree before the last week of September, thus putting the whole scheme at risk (or at least delaying it considerably).

I’m taking all sorts of opinions these days on which uni I should choose and there are quite a few knowledgeable people here, as well as many Brits and Belgians (ermm, no, I didn't mean to say that these ethnicities can't be knowledgeable:sweatdrop: ), so I guess it's a good place to gather some additional info. The possibility of having some actual alumni of the following unis isn’t that far-fetched either.

I’m mostly interested in the academic part, but I can’t say that I ain’t susceptible to “external factors” – hell, If I wasn’t that lazy I’d also apply to FUBerlin and Sorbonne 1, just for the experience of studying in two of my favourite cities. Needless to say, I mailed my applications during the first two weeks of June, can’t get lazier heh

Anyway, the choices are:
(BTW it’s an MA in International Relations)

1) University of Essex (http://www.essex.ac.uk/government/)
2) University of Warwick (http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/study/postgraduate/socialstudies/pais/internationalrelations/)
3) University of Kent at Brussels (UKB) – Brussels School of International Studies (cooperating with VUB and ULB) (http://www.bsis.be/programmes02.html)

I can’t seem to decide, although I think Warwick has the best reputation and appears to have a great range of facilities. Still, this might be very fickle thing to depend on. Futhermore, one can easily point out that Essex has one of the best evaluation scores for Politics, while UKB offers whole range of the resources of its partner institutions (Vrije Universiteit Brussel and Université Libre de Bruxelles), is located very close to the HQs of quite a few international organisations, the EU etc. I've been also meaning to finally get the french language proficiency (DALF C1) and this could be a good opportunity to pick up Dutch (one cannot live with a single Germanic language).
Finally, the economic factor could play a significant role (Warwick at £6800, Essex £4035 and UKB 13.000 euros - good thing most unis want about 20% up front:juggle2:). But quality is always the priority.

So, any info/ suggestions you could kindly provide on campuses, places, actual living costs and the like to help this confused soul?

[Blodrast]

Cool, congratulations !

I am afraid I can't be of much help, tbh, because I don't know much about any of those Unis. However, may I suggest that, if it's feasible, you contact (through email), some of the students who work in the same department you're gonna be part of, and ask them a few questions ?
I'm thinking, sit down and come up with a list of questions that you'd be interested to know the answer to, and that would be a factor in your decision. For instance, I don't know exactly what would be important to you, but here's some hints: how expensive is life there (including finding accomodation - rents may vary hugely from big cities to small university towns) ?
what are their complaints, or good things, about their department ? (You _know_ which department you'll be in, so you can find the right people to ask about this). What can they tell you about the facilities in general, other than what you can find on the web yourself ? etc.

And you can just come up with something like this, and email it to a couple of students in each Uni.
It's just a suggestion, of course - I'm a lazy bastard myself, and I don't know if _I_ would go to all that trouble :)

good luck !

[L'Impresario]

Thanks for the help~:)

The problem is that you can be inserted into the relevant email lists *after* accepting the place offer. I'm still in the initial phases of determining which uni will work best for me
Anyway, I 've only managed to get hold of a Warwick graduate (but from the economic sciences faculty) and heard some quite positive comments, but nothing solid enough for comparison purposes.
And I wonder how reliable these UK university evaluation lists are, especially since they haven't been updated since 2001, IIRC...
And then again one hears of departments that have excellent undergraduate courses, but the postgraduate ones aren't up to their general reputation.

On the subject of living costs, I guess England, even if Coventry (Warwick) and Colchester (Essex) aren't London, is somewhat more expensive than Belgium, but then again Brussels is a pretty central location...

[Blodrast]

Nonono, you misunderstood me. I didn't mean that you get on the relevant mailing lists, I meant _directly_ email some grad students over there. How do you get their email addresses? Just browse the web, I expect most departments would have pages with their grad students, if not, then at least the profs in those departments should have lists of their grad students...

[L'Impresario]

Yes, I was fearing you'd mean so heh
Well, AFAIK they don't have such pages, and I think it's too much work emailing random professors in the middle of the summer;)
Eitherway, I had sent a couple of messages to my current profs that probably have had some relevant experience with these unis, but all questions are strictly academical, and the one answer I've received so far tells me that it's hard to make a choice between, at least, Essex and Warwick :P

[Blodrast]

Heh, no, no. We're having a communication problem here ~:)
What I meant is that you'd email some _students_, not profs, students, from the respective departments. You'd email those students directly, not through department-wide mailing lists.

How would you get their email addresses then ? From the web. I'm preeeeeeetty sure that all grad students are required to have web pages - heck, even some undergrads are required to.
How do you get to them ? One of the easiest ways is to go to professors' web pages, and they usually have a list of their grad students. Pick one student from a prof, another student from another prof, etc. Since you send them all the same email, it's enough to write it just once, then copy/paste :).

But like I said, I can perfectly understand if you think it's too much trouble - I'd probably feel the same. However, this is a good method to find out the cost of living and to get a general idea about what it's gonna be like when moving into another town - and the _students_ are the right persons to ask, because you're gonna be in the exact (financial) situation as they are, so it's best to ask _them_ for an opinion, as opposed to asking a prof, or a guy with a job, etc.

Hope this helped a bit, anyway ~:)
Good luck in any case !:2thumbsup:

[L'Impresario]

Yes, I understood what you said, but I must admit that I didn't know that it was a common practice for MA students have their emails openly displayed - thought that this was reserved to research students or Phds. In my current uni at least we 're hard pressed to find even a prof email that's functioning :wall:
General living costs are outlined in the uni websites, but I just wanted some more personalized info and opinions.

Well, thanks once more, I guess I'll find my way around in the end~:cheers:
(once the weather gets a bit cooler tho)