Cardiff Metropolitan University

The support that the SU and other areas offer are great, the student services don't seem to know what facilities are available for students and they don't offer them when they are applicable. I had to complain to admissions about the service i received from the student loans team and they did resolve it quickly but more training is definitely needed. I only knew what they were missing as I have worked for the uni before.

I think the support you receive massively depends on the course director and not enough investment is made into whether they are supportive of students when allocating those roles. In my undergrad I had a personal tutor and some really good support, weekly meetings and my PT showed a real interest in getting the best result for me and setting me up well for working in industry, my masters there is no personal tutor, the grading is a joke they will give you feedback and then when you change it mark you down for not including the information they advised you to remove, feedback is three lines on a 2,000 word assignment and there is no information on who to appeal to about the marking and feedback. It is assumed as masters students we just get on with it without any support which is wrong. I don't feel comfortable talking to my course director because I have had multiple instances of a conversation changing a week later and her denying she advised me on certain points.

The university campuses are modern and a lot of consideration goes into student needs and communication with course reps, but those course reps rarely get feedback from the students, so maybe more focus on incentivising why students should share their opinion. Overall it is a high quality institution but I think a lot of the small things that actually affect students day to day are not known by the uni and there isn't procedures in place to help students safely in a few areas.

The university is supposed to prepare us for "the real world" and achieving jobs ect. There are some areas of the course which attempt to do that but again the feedback is not what is a good example of good work ethics and it is more tailored to what the lecturers want to see. I have worked for the last ten years in multiple industries and yet my CV feedback was to change everything when I uploaded it. I have acquired jobs and worked throughout university and yet the lecturers say that my cv is not good and will not get me jobs. I feel there is heavy power issues with some lecturers who believe their word is everything and they are always correct.

I have been marked low on assignments and then in further lectures the lecturers have used my assignment and changed some aspects of it in their presentations (i.e recipes and processes) for universities to have such repercussions on students plagiarism and then to blatantly be using students work they barely gave a pass to is completely unreasonable.

The sports scene and facilities are great, although heavily tailored towards rugby and netball, which is apparent with their personal gym on campus only for their use with high quality equipment, whereas the communal gym has been reduced in size as the roof is collapsing.

Overall I would recommend Cardiff metropolitan university, but solely dependant on the course you wish to study. Some courses have really good support and allow for a good development and job opportunities, others are very difficult to progress through and there is no support for students.

I lived in halls for three years, and I had a great time.

The halls are safe, there are on campus wardens on call every night and their support is great, the communication from the halls administrative team is brilliant and their support is great.

There were plenty of opportunities to meet new people through halls, the rooms are high quality and the rent was reasonable when I lived there.