The toughest part of making a choice is that, however much research you do, you never know what it is that you don’t yet know.
You may have missed the one big thing that should have influenced your choice more than anything else. How do you protect against making a decision you come to regret? U-Multirank can help you make all sorts of comparisons between universities and can point you in the direction of more information. But nothing beats seeing a university for yourself. If you’re thinking of studying at a university on the other side of the world, it’s not always easy just to pop over and take a look around. But if you’re planning to spend three or more years at a university, investing time, effort and money in the experience – if at all possible – surely it’s worth spending at least a few hours there first?
Making a campus visit is important before deciding on a university, but it may not always be possible. If you can’t visit in person, try to visit virtually. Spend time looking around the university’s website and social media accounts. Social media can be a great way to get a real sense of the campus and how students feel there. Tip: Look at posts the university is tagged in, and not only their filtered posts to get a peer perspective of the campus. Try to contact some of the students and chat to them about their lives. If you can’t get excited about the idea of studying there, then move on. It’s not the place for you. There’s plenty more universities to choose from.
U-Multirank is a great site just for messing about, making weird comparisons, seeing which universities are like each other and in what ways other ones differ. Spend a few minutes doing that and, in particular, looking at some of the detailed performance measures that U-Multirank uses. We’re confident you’ll start to ask yourself questions about universities you didn’t think of before. Some won’t matter, but some may be the difference between finding the perfect university for you, or failing to consider the crucial factor that becomes so important to your student experience. Go explore. Good luck.