Just firmed my offer for a London university. I'm from OOP NORTH and used to things being relatively cheap. Any tips from Londoners/people currently in London university of the best places to go for cheap food and cheapest ways to get around, etc. General tips about London would be appreciated too.
>>4176 Get an oyster card is my first recommendation. Next make a good and proper analysis of your weekly monetary expenditure and your available funds.
Stick to student joints for cheap booze, though sports clubs are pretty good too if you can find any locally. Don't get dragged into going to expensive joints out of peer pressure more than you can help.
>>4176 For fuck's sake don't make a big deal about you being not from the south of England. Not saying you're the kind of fellow to do such a thing but that whole WHOO ARR YOU'RE ALL A BUNCH OF SOUTHERN TOFFS CANNAE EVEN SAY WORDS RIGHT carry-on you find some types mouthing off on is probably meant to be endearing but is instead just fucking irritating.
>>4178 >For fuck's sake don't make a big deal about you being not from the south of England.
It's London - everywhere past the M25 may as well be in Central Asia, and anything north of Watford is 'the north'.
Buy a bicycle. The tube is cripplingly expensive and the buses are painfully slow. Cycling in London takes a little bit of bravery because of the sheer weight of traffic, but it's not actually very dangerous because of the relatively low speeds involved.
Over three years, a zone 2 student travelcard will cost you £2,544 if you pay annually. A zone 6 travelcard paid monthly would cost you £5,378 over three years. A cheap mountain bike, a good D-lock and three year's worth of maintenance will cost you no more than £300. Learn to fix your own punctures and do basic maintenance, it's really very easy.
Learn to cook. It's not hard to have a basic repertoire of meals, but it'll save you a fortune and make you very popular. You can prepare things like bolognese sauce, ratatouille or chilli con carne in big batches and freeze it in individual portions.
London is expensive, but it's extremely good value if you make the most of it. There are huge numbers of free gigs, events and attractions, so resist the temptation to stay in or prop up the bar at the Student Union. Take the attitude that your massive rent is a ticket to an all-you-can-eat buffet of culture and get your money's worth. Make a habit of checking Time Out and don't be afraid of going to things on your own.
As a Londoner I find that the National Theatre to be really good value on occasion, especially as it's just across the bridge from one of the KCL bars. It can be around £10-15 for decent seats to good plays if not less.
>>4177 Noted. Up here the 'latino quarter' (about 3 bars) is dirt cheap - is it the same there?
>>4180 Nah. Cocked up AS levels and had to go for some lower calibre institutions (with a foundation year). Done a shit load of retakes and now pretty much guaranteed in to the normal course (they move you up if you do well enough) though.
>>4178 I'm in London as you say. The amount of people who are actually the SOUTH is going to be low.
>>4179 Noted. I'll probably look through as may markets as I can find.
>>4181 I've got a bike that I'll bring down with me.
That's a lot of money. I'll probably only take it on occasion anyway.
I can cook well - parents made me do it from a young age.
I'm looking forward to all the gigs and stuff most - there's jack shit where I live. My music taste is already... unusual and so I'm fine with going places on my own.
>>4185 I'll have to see how well I've done in my A-Levels in August, and see what I can do. Now I've done a lot of retakes I'm up to ABB at AS (also 94% in General Studies but who gives a shit about that?), and if I can repeat this in May/June it'll make QM is a possibility in the second year. I think I'll ride it out, though, do the year in industry and apply for post-grad at somewhere nice.
>>4186 By the time you get to post-grad it'll be 10k minimum. Double that for 'prestigious' Universities. Make the most of your undergrad, post-grad is so over-subscribed and often unnecessary.
>>4187 I did the first year of the degree with the Open University.
>>4189 Are you talking exclusively about postgrad in QM?
I'm a postgrad and it's £2000ish a year part time at York. It's also definitely not over-subscribed or unnecessary. It's an industry MA which required an academic BA as entry. There's about 20 others at most.
My mum got her degree with the OU whilst working full time and raising kids. She's now a professional teacher, and the OU has consistently come up at interview. It shows more self discipline than whatever the regular, timetabled campus degrees are called. The downside is that she didn't get to meet and be taught by leading figures in the field like you can otherwise be, depending on course and institution.
>>4191 I'm really talking about the glut of post-grads in Social Sciences and Humanties. Folks who just see it as another year to put off the real world - there are far too many of these. STEM subjects are a different kettle of fish.
OU was great - two years part time with them and two years at QM I feel I got the best of both worlds. Paid fuck all as well (thanks work).
I definitely think it depends on where you're graduating from. Nobody is going to complain about someone who did an undergrad at Oxford, and then postgrad at Harvard and Cambridge, for example.
>>4194 EE at QM is well thought of and has good industry links: go for it if you can. As for post-grad, get your first degree out of the way first and see what the job market it like.
I found the local ladies found it quite endearing when I first moved down to the smoke. How I was from out of town and how it was all wierd and how I didn't know where was best to go. But then it was 1997 and Oasis and the like had made it quite fashionable to be a mannerless northern gobshite.
Happy days. Stay away from Finsbury Park/Highbury area OP, it's ashithole.
A STEM civil service would end up streamlined and efficient while providing sound and sensible advice based on facts instead of directorships within a week actually.
So you're right, the civil service as we know it would fall apart, but it would be replaced by something far superior.
Almost all STEM student fall into one or more of these categories:
a) They can't write for shit, which is quite important when your job includes at the very least writing reports that need to be easily understood, nevermind speech writing, PR etc.
b) Know material but don't know the least bit of how it should be applied. As useless as fields such as history, philosophy and English might seem to you, they have valuable weight in giving perspective and insight into the way the world is currently running. I'd rather it was run by people that actually understand these things than some chemistry graduate who hasn't a clue about anything except chemistry.
c) Are far too narrowly focused. See b) mostly, but it seems an enormous waste to be putting people skilled in a specific field into something so general as the civil service. Apart from the fact they wouldn't have a clue what they were doing, either.
Your arguments about somehow making it streamlined and efficient is hilarious - bureaucracy is bureaucracy is bureaucracy; it won't improve until there's real drive for improvement. What people are trained in is quite frankly irrelevant, and STEM students in my experience are some of the least practical and efficient students out there outside of their fields.
What you're really advocating is for a larger and more powerful body of expert scientific advisors that isn't just ignored by the government. I can only advise you, however, that you need to stop being so arrogant about your chosen field and actually attempt to understand why humanities dominates the civil service and areas like it (hint: it's a bit more complex than 'they're not good enough for anything else', as much as you might want it to be).
Again, this is coming from a maths student. At least I admit the limitations of what I'm learning.
From my experience STEM students don't seem to have much of a capacity for critical thinking, let alone independent thought. They will approach issues purely with positivist analysis, as they are accustomed to doing in studying the sciences. This is perhaps why STEM students only seem capable of being either dogmatic libertarians, Marxists or anarchists, or moderates who tow the line of their favoured political parties.
>>4227 >while providing sound and sensible advice based on facts
Which is why they'd be useless. Ministers aren't interested in facts. They can't sell facts. They want ignorant calls to emotion, because people are stupid and ignorant calls to emotion work.
>>4222 There's something really pitiful at seeing someone come onto the internet in the effort of convincing total strangers that his degree programme is superior to theirs.
My post was a flippant phone post which I only made because I'm too close to my monthly cap to watch porn, but if you want to have an actual debate about it, I'm happy to defend my point.
Most of my peers are fairly well rounded individuals, they can differentiate between their and they're, form a sentence and present ideas in a logical and coherent flow. I think those qualities are sufficient for behind the scenes CS reports, memos and the like.
Interestingly, the driving force behind STEM reports is concise brevity. The driving force behind humanities reports is expansion and explanation. I think the former type would result in a much greater work rate among the CS, as the reports would not pander to the lowest common denominator by explaining everything in depth twice over. They would instead briefly explain the situation and provide a conclusion based on the information available while expecting the reader to have a basic comprehension of events in his or her field and a moderate level of intelligence. If you do not possess both of those things - stop running the fucking country.
As for your comments on speech writing and PR - surely those positions will be occupied with relevant degrees in English and Media?
I wasn't saying every civil servant should be a STEM student, I'm saying that people in STEM roles in the CS should be STEM students, just like people in media roles should be Media students, people in home roles Criminology, foreign roles History & Politics, treasury roles Economics and so on.
I'm arguing that a Classics & Latin degree should not make you a "well rounded individual, one of us, a good chap."
Moving on to b, I completely agree, but you aren't making a complete point. Why should the minister for agriculture be surrounded by senior civil servants who do not have a degree related to agriculture and who have never worked in agriculture?
I'm not dismissing the humanities, just so you know. I'm dismissing certain humanities, just as I dismiss certain sciences. History, Media, English, Politics, Law, Art - all demonstrably essential. Philosophy, Classics, Latin - not necessary.
I honestly have no reply to c. I think you need to wind your neck in with that one mate.
As I explained in response to a, STEM is all about concise brevity - bureaucracy is the anti-thesis of science and would not be tolerated for long if the balance of power within the CS lay in favour of the STEM students.
STEM students are taught to think critically - problem solving skills and real life reactions are the building blocks of any industry based STEM graduate. I think you're thinking of academic STEM graduates, who are usually the most bumbling and incompetent ones, they are left behind to drag the next generation up while the decent ones move on to do important things.
>What you're really advocating is for a larger and more powerful body of expert scientific advisors that isn't just ignored by the government.
Nope - I want more senior civil servants to be STEM graduates with industry experience - I want some of the leaders of our country to be educated in their field rather than good all rounders. I want aces in every hole instead of a spread of jacks. I want the STEM students in STEM roles, I want the humanities students in humanities roles, and I want the decision makers to be a well balanced mix of both rather than purely jacks.
>actually attempt to understand why humanities dominates the civil service and areas like it (hint: it's a bit more complex than 'they're not good enough for anything else', as much as you might want it to be).
I thought you were being reasonable at first, now I realise you're being a cunt. Nice one. The reason humanities dominates the CS is because of the networked nature of the CS. Nepotism and the old boys network are still alive and well in whitehall, the senior roles are filled with humanities graduates, who dine with their old lecturers, who introduce them to the next upcoming humanities student, who becomes the next head of the civil service. That's why STEM will always play second fiddle to the humanities in the CS, and that's why it will always pay to be a "well rounded individual" who can speak in Latin and quote Plato in the CS, while knowing the risks and rewards, using analytical techniques and just generally understanding the subject matter of your department will mean diddly fucking squat.
>>4232 >Nepotism and the old boys network are still alive and well in whitehall, the senior roles are filled with humanities graduates, who dine with their old lecturers, who introduce them to the next upcoming humanities student, who becomes the next head of the civil service.
Yeah, no.
>>4240 Yes, but it was nepotism on the basis of being a posho, and nothing to do with his subject. Indeed, among the Oxford crowd, PPE tends to be regarded as the subject people do when they're not really good for much else.
We've had this conversation before, if I'm not mistaken. Nepotism is almost impossible to stamp out because people have a natural affiliation to being drawn towards those they consider 'their own'. Large employers, with graduates from these places, will also head-hunt in elite institutions because it tends to save on risk, and on top of all of that, having been to the same school/university/whatever together is a good way of hitting off well with an interviewer and making a better impression of yourself.
I really don't know what the proposed solutions are to that, really.
>Indeed, among the Oxford crowd, PPE tends to be regarded as the subject people do when they're not really good for much else.
As a 'member of the Oxford crowd', this is quite simply bullshit, unless 16 essays in 8 weeks has suddenly become a hell of a lot easier than I realised.
Well this is the thing - diversifying at the top involves risk-taking from large institutions, which just isn't going to happen.
Why take someone who could be amazing from a Redbrick when you could just take someone from Oxbridge who's guaranteed to be at least very good (in their eyes).
Not him, but as a PPEist they're usually around 2,000 words. The reading lists are the real killers, though - they expect you to do around 40-50 hours a week of work outside of lectures and tutorials, on average.
>>4252 I blame that lad who clearly has a hard on about the Civil Service coming in and shitting things up.
>>4251 PPE is not alone with these kind of demands and hours, I might just add. Historians have a hell of a reading list and let's just say Greats is a bitch.
Oh, I don't disagree. I'm just disputing that it's the thing you do if you're "not good enough for anything else". Every course requires at least 35 hours a week of self-directed learning, and PPE is by no means the easiest one out there.
I'd say classics and maths are the most difficult, though, and in that order.
>>4254 I agree. PPE is not for the feint-hearted. Not sure there is a 'not good enough for anything else' course at Oxford, it just doesn't work like that from an admissions perspective.
Although thinking about it I do wonder about Art History types...
I've never come across any, although Fine Artists tend to be some of the least "intellectual" types - they make up for it by being completely batshit or ridiculously creative, though. Usually both.
That being said, it's definitely not something you do if you can't do anything else due to it being rather unique.
Oh, that's not that much. I attend a lesser university and whenever I have 3,000 word essays to do, I give myself at most a week to do them each, on top of other stuff. I probably write more than 2,000 words in notes every week anyway.
Not a jot, mate, because you're objectively talking bollocks.
I can see first-hand where people I know are going with their degrees - you're sitting on here telling me everyone's going to be unemployed. I wonder why I'm not changing my mind.
>>4643 I receive two applications for a position in my team. One of them has a degree in women's studies from Oxbridge, the other has a degree in computer science from Leeds Uni. What do I do?
I'll tell you. The applicant with the degree in women's studies instantly goes in the bin, even faster if they're female too.
No Oxbridge graduate would stoop to work for the likes of you. A humanities degree from Oxbridge is a fast track into the media and arts. Just look at the careers of Footlights alumni - almost everyone involved goes on to have a successful career in the arts.
You do English Lit at Leeds Poly and you end up on the dole. You do English Lit at Oxford and you can do whatever you bloody well like. If you knew any Oxbridge graduates, you'd understand that. The rules are different for them; By the time they graduate they're already on the inside, looking out at the rest of us.
>>4651 I have many Oxbridge students practically begging for jobs. What with being one of the most prestigious custodian banks in the world. People cut off their limbs to come work for us, and we have a great view from canary wharf. I can speak in far more truth than the swill you've been fed. I'm the one on the inside.
>>4658 JPM have a pretty good graduate scheme if you're willing to sit in the back office for a few years. I can highly reccomend it. Shame the E is the only useful bit.
>>4661 Don't get me wrong, philosophy, certain history would be really interesting and all, just not interesting enough to justify however much it costs nowadays. Degrees are an investment and must pay a return.
There's plenty of fun to be had elsewhere, such as making an arse of yourself over the Internet for a few easy giggles.
But this goes back to the point >>4651 was making, about the fact that Oxbridge (and Redbricks to an extent) really do open doors regardless of what degree you're doing. If you want to define success as working in the city or some other job better than 99% of others out there, then you're probably right in that STEM are the only ones worth doing. If, however, you're being a bit more realistic it's still safe to say that an Oxbridge candidate will still net themselves an interview in the vast majority of jobs they apply for.
Oh, and it's a bit silly to argue that Oxbridge aren't top in maths, the sciences, law or medicine, too. They really do top 2 pretty much all of them.
>>4651 Probably not relevant for Women's Studies but a lot of people are let in on the relatively soft degrees (Land Economy mainly) to represent the uni at rowing and other sports. I heard the Oxford team's captain is 28 or so 'Master of Studies'.
