Opinions on a few Uni's/Uni life as a mature student

With experience they may do. I think they will insist on a foundation year.

I've never heard of a university accepting on GCSE and experience alone. Most will ask for an "access" course, or some evidence of level 3 education

There's a 7X year old at Lincoln in there second year of CompSci I believe. I have a couple of friends there doing the course who have told me this.

It's rare to get someone in their late 30's or early 40's studying medicine though. Although not discriminated against, the NHS must weigh up the £300k cost of training a doctor vs time left to work!

In terms of access to university - I took the option of doing a one academic qualification called the Access to HE diploma. As others have said, a foundation degree's another option. I'd heartily recommend the former, given I found it fine, and it got me into an AAA law course, etc, etc, so didn't hold me back at all.

Agreed - I got into one of the top 3 most selective medical schools with an Access course...
 
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Mature students - How do you deal with being around people that have zero life experience? Having lived in Plymouth for the last 15years I've seen many a student be a right **** on a night out. I really can't see myself in halls, that would be a recipe for disaster.

I wasn't a mature student, but my core friendship/study group at uni were all around 30 when I was at uni at "normal age". I never fell in with other people of the same age, I found many of them to be naive, immature and narrow minded. This changed with some of them as the course progressed but I always found myself more comfortable with older people who were more worldly.

Most of my close friends before uni went on to work in trades and do apprenticeships, not sure if this had an effect.

What do you mean by life experience?

I don't understand 90% of your post as it appears to be rambling but in answer to the above, most of my friends appeared to have a much better appreciation of what life was about and what I could expect after uni. This was much more useful than a group of 19 year olds playing with sticks and lying in a pool of their own vomit.
 
I've never heard of a university accepting on GCSE and experience alone. Most will ask for an "access" course, or some evidence of level 3 education


GCSE alone, no. Experience (lots) plus O-levels or GCSEs could do it, but I think you would need to do a foundation year or access course. A lot of people that only did O-levels when they were younger and have retrained at university have got a degree. Of course completing some college courses before applying would help a lot and that's why A-levels are the easiest and most straight forward route to access university.

I know a few people that have done it. One example is someone that only had a few O-levels and had worked in the police for around 15 years and then went to university to do two degrees in computer sciences (one after the other).
 
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Damn it - write a longer reply but it logged me out :( Short and easy this time.

What's the difference between a foundation year and access course? Would one be more preferable over the other?

My choice of uni isn't set to the 3 mentioned. I choose Exeter/Bristol because that'll allow me to visit friends at weekends etc and Newcastle because I've always wanted to go there, everyone raves about how great it is. If other options are more realistic then I'm open to suggestions. UWE Bristol I will look into.
 
Damn it - write a longer reply but it logged me out :( Short and easy this time.

What's the difference between a foundation year and access course? Would one be more preferable over the other?

My choice of uni isn't set to the 3 mentioned. I choose Exeter/Bristol because that'll allow me to visit friends at weekends etc and Newcastle because I've always wanted to go there, everyone raves about how great it is. If other options are more realistic then I'm open to suggestions. UWE Bristol I will look into.

I've got a friend who goes to Newcastle, apparently they lock down what you can go onto on the internet, he has had to pay for a VPN to play DotA 2 with us. :( However seeing as you don't really want to go to halls you should be okay!
 
im nearly 31 :( but im at University of Portsmouth, year 2 doing social work, I have an almost wife, baby and to be honest its awesome even with all that responsibility I enjoy going to Uni, I know when I was 18 I would never of handled uni and ended up just going out.

Its a bonus im no where near the oldest on my course its great, although halls sound like my idea of hell.
 
My input on this from a personal perspective anyways

I'm thinking about going to uni as a Mature student when I'm 21. But that time I would have had 4 years experience in work and would be more likely to get a place. I didn't particularly focus well at school purely and simpley because I was lazy. But now my work ethic has changed greatly since working as part of a business. My job role isn't what I want to be doing really so I do study at home to try and get more qualifications and eventually get into a job that I enjoy.

All in good time!
 
I've got a friend who goes to Newcastle, apparently they lock down what you can go onto on the internet, he has had to pay for a VPN to play DotA 2 with us. :( However seeing as you don't really want to go to halls you should be okay!

Yeah they lock down pretty much every port, so no online gaming or torrents! Having 110mb internet in your room is nice for newsgroups though. Or was...

We already connect via a VPN to connect to the Newcastle internet in halls - do you know how he uses another one? I'd be happy to pay to play!
 
Yeah they lock down pretty much every port, so no online gaming or torrents! Having 110mb internet in your room is nice for newsgroups though. Or was...

We already connect via a VPN to connect to the Newcastle internet in halls - do you know how he uses another one? I'd be happy to pay to play!

I'll ask him later if you fancy!
 
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