Im from The states and am thinking of applying to Brighton, Sussex and Southampton for media and communications. Can anyone give me an Idea of these schools reputations, and if possible the cultural differences from American universities.
thanks!
In terms of prestige/general reputation, I’d say Southampton>Sussex>Brighton, but I’m not sure how the media courses stack up. But Brighton’s a great city to live in - better than Southampton IMO.
One major cultural difference you’ll find is the drinking culture; the legal age is 18 rather than 21 and a lot of student social life is focussed on alcohol. Sports OTOH are much less important, unless you play yourself.
Seconding Conformist 1688. Also, UK unis are generally more hands-off than US unis: you are expected to sort things out for yourself. You won’t find a load of adults who are paid to mind you or make life easier for you. And, the proportion of students who either live at home or in ‘digs’ (rented accommodation as opposed to university housing) is higher in the UK than in the US. I don’t know much (anything, really) about media / communication studies, but in general there is less continuing assessment in the UK than the US, and more of your marks are based on exams / papers / large projects (depends on the subject).
Look those unis up on the student room, an excellent web site. I do not know of anyone doing media/comm studies in the UK, they appear to do traditional subjects like English.
There are thousands of students studying media in the UK. However, this is probably the least respected course you could possibly take here (and you do understand that you will study only that? No “minors” no switching?). So don’t expect to get a job in the UK with this degree (Google “media studies UK bad reputation” and you will see it’s the favourite “Mickey Mouse” degree attacked by, ironically enough, the media!). I am not sure if this means media studies is of high or low quality in the UK, but I am not sure it is possible to tell.
It looks like you really want to live in Brighton, since two of your choices are based there. If you are conservatively minded, you won’t like it. It’s like the San Franciso of Europe (but is a small beachy way - and there isn’t even any sand on that beach!).
Yes, the most important difference is as @cupcake says “you will study only that”. If you are (for example) a math major in any US institution, then in addition to courses taken in the math department, you may take some English, some History, some Physics, as well as mostly math. If you are a maths major in the UK, you are unlikely to take a single class outside of the maths department while you are an undergraduate.