In our last blog post we presented a gameplan for people who are going to be attending university open days. Advising you on what to look for and where to think of it, the post was real next-level-thinking stuff. Seriously, check it out if you haven’t done so already.

But after we wrote it a thought occurred to us: what if some of you good people haven’t even decided which university open days you’ll be visiting yet?

Always prepared for every eventuality, even when we’re armed with no more than a keyboard and a stack of university prospectuses, we thought we’d get right on the job of helping you to decide which open days you should be checking out.

We’ll be working on the assumption that you’ll only be visiting open days of places you’d be interested in accepting offers from or at least applying to–we know you’re all busy people who don’t spend your time touring open days out of a misplaced appreciation for student-union architecture.

There are a couple of ways you can decide which universities are worth visiting. There’s of course the matter of which ones offer a course you’re interested in. And then there’s the method of consulting those university league tables that them newspapers pump out once a year.

Both these are fine ways of making a decision, but here we’re going to propose another method: working out what type of university setting you think would best suit your personality.

What do we mean by this? Basically factors such as the size of the city or town the university is in, how far it is from the city centre and so forth. Such things can have a big impact on how much you’ll enjoy your overall university experience. It probably won’t help you decide which university’s course is best, but it could crucially help you decide where you’ll be happiest. And we’re given to understand that happiness is considered to be a Good Thing nowadays.

Central, big-city universities

The backbone of the UK university system is made up of universities based in or close to the city centre of the country’s main provincial cities. Leeds, Newcastle, Belfast, Glasgow…. you get the idea. All are cities with populations in the hundreds of thousands, and all have at least one–and often as many as four–universities in them.

These universities are generally big, both in terms of their physical area and their number of students, though there are some exceptions to this rule, such as little Leeds Trinity University, which has just 3,000 students.

The large student body of these places often makes for a boisterous, bubbly student community who love to live it up, both at their student union and in the city at large. Cities in this category are big enough to have a great selection of entertainment and services, but because students make up quite a large proportion of the population many of these things are aimed squarely at students.

The universities themselves are more likely to be considered as precincts rather than campuses, with their buildings situated on normal streets rather than surrounded by parkland, as you find at a campus university. Students are likewise more integrated into the city; although many of these places have studenty neighbourhoods, they are also undeniably part of the fabric of the rest of the city and its non-student population.

So if you like the idea of being part of a buzzing city and not separated from the real world, then this sort of university will probably appeal to you.

London universities

Hang on a minute, isn’t London a big city? In fact, isn’t it the biggest city of them all in this country? Well yes, it is; and that’s why it gets a category all of its own. You see, there’s a big, big difference between studying in a city with a population of about 300,000 and one with close to ten million. And let’s not even get started on the difference in the cost of living between the capital and Cardiff…

The London student experience is therefore fundamentally different to the provincial-city one. There’s of course a lot more going on–in terms of culture as well as bars and other night haunts–but it’s less geared towards students.

London is therefore perfect if you don’t want to feel like you’ve been pigeon-holed as a student and want to hang out in the same places as people with real jobs. You will have to pay for it, however; two-pound pints are thin on the ground in this neck of the woods. And while you’ll have all sorts of exciting places on your doorstep, it’s also unlikely that your neighborhood will have a studenty vibe, with London’s students tending to be spread much more thinly across the whole city.

Small-town universities

How small do we mean when we say ‘small-town’? We’re talking anywhere up to 100,000 people. A city of this size will offer a much more intimate atmosphere for students. Universities in small towns are often a bit smaller than their big-city counterparts, though they nevertheless their students tend to make up a bigger proportion of the population.

Smaller town generally means that while the local clubs will be a bitter shorter in supply–or non-existent in the case of the smallest towns, such as Nottingham Trent’s agricultural college, located on the outskirts of the pretty Nottinghamshire village of Southwell, population 7,000–there’ll probably be more in the way of cozy pubs and cafs. It’s likely that the university’s own social facilities will be a bigger part of life in small towns, as anyone who’s been to an Oxbridge bop will be able to attest to.

A smaller town and possibly a smaller university also means that you’ll also be more likely to bump into the same people, day in and day out. This is great if you don’t like the impersonality of big cities, but some people tend to find it a bit claustrophobic.

It also tends to be the smaller-town universities that are the ones situated in historical splendor, such as Bath or Durham. So if you like to be surrounded by charming old buildings, you might want to hunt around in this area.

Campus universities

You’ll find campus universities in all of the different types of town and city mentioned above. Nevertheless, the campus university requires a category of its own. A university that classifies itself as a campus university is likely to be a lot more self-contained than city-centre ones, with its buildings being surrounded by a hefty perimeter of parkland.

If you like the peace of leafy surroundings, campuses are great. But they’re not for everyone. If the idea of a small town where you’ll always be bumping into course-mates doesn’t appeal to you, campus universities can sometimes have the same dynamic, especially if the university’s accommodation is located there.

For campuses located on the outskirts of reasonably big cities that have good transport links and whose students tend not to be so tied to the campus, such as the University of Nottingham, this isn’t really an issue. But more self-contained and remote campuses can sometimes suffer from the claustrophobia and detachment factors.

If immediate access to lots of city stuff isn’t high on your list of priorities, however, and you like the idea of being part of a tightly-knit student community, a campus university makes an ideal choice.

A final word of advice before you start scoping out open days. Although it’s good to have an idea of what sort of university you think you’d like before you head to open days, it’s just as important to be prepared to let your preconceptions be challenged. You might think that London’s the only place for you, only to discover later on that you’d have thrived at a friendlier, small-town university. So do throw in a couple of wildcards into your open day shortlist!