Not a good reputation (University of Plymouth in general)

Member Name: jamiebeck

Product:	University of Plymouth in general
Date:	21/05/09 (39 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: nightlife and people

Disadvantages: poor university structure...not enough student focus

My review is for BA (hons) Accounting and Finance and the University in general.

Let me start about talking about the good points and then I'll move on to the rest. Firstly if you're looking for somewhere with plenty of things to do and a good nightlife, Plymouth is your University, plenty of bars (4 wetherspoons, varsity, big SU bar, vodka revs, walkabout....) theres the hoe which is a very nice spot by the sea where they do graduations also. The uni and city have plenty of activities available such as sailing, skiing, boating, martial arts, football, rugby, hockey etc etc and are very reasonable.

As for the bad points, Plymouth isn't ranked highly with the snobby large graduate recruiters so if you're hoping to join a large company such as PWC, Deloittes or Shell, beware, they do prefer the red brick universities and in times like these you'll be lucky to get far in your application.

Specific to my Accounting and Finance course this year we have been overwhelmed with students (mainly international) and there is clearly too many for the lectures. In the first few weeks you had to struggle for a seat in class and the timetable was totally unreliable, some lecturers had to resort to emailing students to confirm or disprove what the timetable said. My opinion is that the University were too busy counting the money coming in than sorting out extra lecturers and organising the University better.

As for the lecturers, most of them are brilliant, I find it unfair to mention names but you can tell that alot of them are dedicated to helping the students by how frequently they reply to emails or put info up on the portal, some do it daily, some dont. In fact one lecturer I had to email quite a few times just to get a reply. I understand they're busy but the university should be made aware of this overcrowding. Some lecturers are better at teaching than others, some were made to teach whereas others dont let you through their wall of jargon and are better off being in a research facility somewhere far away.

Financial support, however, has been very good. For example I found myself struggling for cash at the beginning of term and after submitting bank statements etc to the financial support team they were able to give me a grant straight away, very good service.

All in all I've had a brilliant time here but that is down mainly to the people I've met, as for the university, it does the bare minimum in my opinion and you don't receive the full benefit of being recognised as a graduate due to its average reputation.

Summary: Average academically, great socially