Nuim V Ucd

cobby*

So whish is a better overall college? Which is better for the craic, the nightlife, the lectures, the people in general?

Susannahmia

Euch I hate UCD. Full of D4 heads, everyones so spread out and it's feckin windy!

Firetrap

Well....posting this poll on the NUIM board is definitely a way to get an unbiased opinion

Smurfpiss

pretty much everyone i know who went to UCD hated the place.
I mean they made friends for life, but as an institution its a bit ****e.
and its so huge and out of town ya may as well be in maynooth cause of the remoteness.
maynooth is good fun, small and friendly.
depends on the course too.
but yeahhh biased forum to be asking on!

OriginalKeith

wonder who actually voted that 10% for ucd? :eek:

markf909

Everyone knows Stillorgan Tech isn't a patch on Maynooth.

TouchingVirus

I was totally unbiased..I swear

Rosita

I went to UCD and didn't hate the place. While everyone can get down in the dumps with exams and what not I didn't ever really come across anyone who hated the place. They may have hated and been unsuited to some of the academic grind but presumably that goes on in other colleges too. And I often think that students that have diffculty mixing with others are unlikely to have a whale of a time in any other college either.

To deal with some of the specific standard criticisms of the UCD campus:

1) The Remoteness – Well, so what? This is a ridiculous criticism. Remote from what exactly? What is the magical focal point from which it is considered remote? Okay, if you fancy popping into Brown Thomas or a pint in Mulligan’s it’s a bit of a stretch if you call a fifteen minute bus trip that.

Pretty much everything you’d need as a student is on campus. For the overwhelming majority of students the overwhelming majority of the time anything they actually need –as opposed to wish for in a utopian world – is on campus, and most students will have accommodation nearby anyway. So quite how it is "remote" I am not sure.

2) Its size – again, big swinging mickey. I studied for a BA in UCD and never needed to venture outside the Arts Block for either lectures or library attendance. The Arts Block is a small self-contained world from which many student don't need to venture. And if you have some kind of fear of open spaces you would enjoy the crowded corridors of the Arts Block.

But UCD caters for nearly 25,000 people so yes, there are green spaces, and yes there are places where you can walk without being knocked over by the masses. Is that a disadvantage to the place? Not that I ever found to be honest.

3) Lecturers? I can speak with only limited authority on this one as who really knows these things in any really broad context, but UCD strikes me as a place lecturers look to go to rather than move away from. I can think of a few departments, English, History and Politics for example where UCD lecturers, Declan Kiberd, Michael Laffan and Tom Garvin are arguably (inarguably in the case of the first mentioned) the acknowledged published experts in their areas. Let me put it another way – would anyone feel in any way inferior if writing on their CV they they studied for their degree in the college of James Joyce, Roddy Doyle, John McGahern, Peter Sutherland, Garret Fitzgerald, Eamon De Valera and many others?

4) It’s windy? You really couldn’t make this up! Yes, it’s an island nation. It gets windy quite regularly. I’ll take the hit on that one. It rains too sometimes.

Broadly speaking I would say that most colleges are much of a muchness in terms of nightlife, craic etc. Certainly in UCD there is a huge amount of stuff happening as you’d expect with such a large student population. Paradoxically however this can cause problems for those who don’t want to get involved in anything and simply want to hang around. The problem is that so many are involved in something that some people can fall between the floor-boards if they are not easily socially adaptable.

I sincerely doubt myself if NUI Maynooth is inferior* to UCD or vice versa in any significant way but I would not be in a position to comment not having experience of both. It would be useful perhaps if people declared their experience of both before commenting so that we can look at comparisons in context. Hating UCD because of its mere existence is hardly rational. Neither is it rational to rate colleges ahead of others merely because you attend them.


*It depends how you interpret this of course. I looked to the NUI Maynooth website (I live within reasonable distance to the college) for information about a full-time taught History MA (a fairly bog-standard uni course)and to my disbelief it said that the university did not offer one for 2007-08 which is quite extraordinary. UCD offers twelve such courses.

convert

Maybe you should try posting this thread in the UCD forum too....
That way you'd get opinions of students who are actually in UCD, rather than just getting the opinion of those who opted not to go to the biggest university in Ireland.

Anyway.... you should really choose the university which offers the best courses for you rather than relying on other people's opinions and recommendations.

Have a look at the university websites and see what courses they offer, the entry requirements, what you'll be expected to do, whether there are options for studying abroad for a year, and what the options are for postgraduate courses, etc.

If you're into sports or society life, it'd also be worthwhile to take a look at what clubs and societies are in each university and what options are available for your social life, which is also an important aspect of college life!

While UCD may be comprised of a large number of D4-heads, you'll also find a huge number of students who are actually normal and don't, like, tawlk awll funny, like, you know what I meawn!