University of Warwick

Location

Unlike what its name suggests, it is not in the town of Warwick but located on the outskirts of Coventry, southwest from the city centre; it falls in the middle of Coventry and the county of Warwickshire. The Tesco super store is located at walking distance from the university. The campus is about an hour from London and 30 minutes from Birmingham by train.

Campus

Having a sprawling 716-acre campus, the university has three main buildings on campus called the International Manufacturing Centre (IMC), Department of Computer Science (DCS) and Zeeman Building (Maths and Statistics). These buildings have been designed as a symbol of modern architecture intentionally contrasting with the other British universities with medieval architecture. The campus has a grocery store, pharmacy, two banks, salon, post-office, a copy shop and a travel agency.
The Warwick Arts Centre is in the heart of the campus and very rightly so. It comprises of the Butterworth Hall- a 1500-seater concert hall, a Theatre, a cinema, two art galleries, a Music Centre, practice rooms and rehearsal rooms. This arts centre gets over 3,00,000 visitors a year.

Residing Options

The campus currently has around 6300 bedrooms for both graduate and undergraduate students. All of the universities are self-catered. Some of the highest ranked campus housing facilities are Arthur Vick, Westwood, The Apollo Works, Cryfield, Whitefields and Rootes. The university guarantees housing for all the first year students. A lot of post graduate students also stay on campus but overall most of them live off campus in either Coventry, Kenilworth or Leamington Spa. A bus service is available from all of these places and one can invest in a bus pass which would cost about £120 per term. Living off-campus will cost you about £4,935 (including travel cost) and living on-campus costs around £5,628.

Faculty

With the total academic staff being 2400, the faculty to student ratio at Warwick is a good 1:4. The courses are intense, especially the Science courses where the students almost always fall short of time before their assessments. You may get to study a year in Paris depending on your course. There is a reading week before examinations when there are no lectures held. The business department is mostly based on group projects so it is a lot more interactive. The economics faculty at Warwick is considered as one of the best in the world.