There are four types of accommodation at the University of Essex - The Towers, The Courts, the Houses, and the Quays. I have lived in The Towers and "spent time", shall we say, in the Courts numerous times during my three years there, so I think I have quite a good grasp on what the living experiences are like.

The Towers - these are the cheapest halls on campus, and nicknamed the "suicide slums" because there used to be a spate of people diving from them, so the Uni had the windows triple-reinforced to prevent this. When I went there, the all-in rent was £56 a week, although this has been steadily rising every year.

Each tower has about 14 floors, and on each floor there are 16 rooms of decent but not huge size. There is a single bed in each room, a desk, a bin, and a pretty good chair given the price of the rooms. Each room also has an Ethernet port so you can plug in a computer, but beware that games consoles are sadly blocked by the University routers. However, there is a brilliant student-run DC++ hub, which allows you to tap into the Uni's high-speed Internet and download at about 1.4MB/sec. However, if you're bold enough (like I was) to download in the University's own labs, you can look forward to about 10MB/sec!

In my halls, I was matched with about 50/50 English students and International ones. The Uni has the highest quotient of foreign students in the country, and I found this very enriching in regard to expanding my cultural knowledge. Also it was fun to note cultural differences between us, and mostly their standard of English was very good, and even if not, they tried very hard. Gender-splits though, are quite different, and I believe the term "sausagefest" was banded around our flat more than once.

The kitchen area is spacious, although it does get a bit too crammed during dinner time, so I tended to time my meals differently to avoid this. Also, there is only one toilet and one shower on each side of the floor, meaning that you do have to sometimes wait, but to be honest I never found this a problem.

I've never lived in a big house, so I was fine with the fairly small, cosy atmosphere of the Towers, but can understand why others wouldn't want it. This is why they go for the Courts, which are a bit larger, and only have 4-5 people per floor, and you also get your own cleaner, although personally I would hate both of these things. It is also a LOT more expensive (about £120 a month more) for what I consider to be absolute luxuries.

The various types of accommodation cater very well for students of all tastes and budgets, and I thoroughly enjoyed my experience there.