Is British education the BeSt? You judge!

Great news: Austria’s largest education fair is coming to Vienna from 7-10 March 2019.  BeSt Vienna (the acronym stands for Beruf, Studium, Weiterbildung) will offer a terrific opportunity to find out more about studying in the UK.

The excellent British Council will have a stand at the fair, at A18, offering advice about studying in the UK.  I strongly advise you to visit.

And at 12.00 on Saturday 9 March there will be a talk in Vortragssaal 3 with top tips about how to choose the right university, how to write your personal statement, and how to apply. Universities UK International will discuss the effects of Brexit and life in the UK as an international student.  These talks are extremely popular – if you can’t be there, you can follow it on live streaming at: https://bestinfo.at/de/samstag-abstracts/studieren-in-grossbritannien.html.

The UK is a famously modest place and we don’t like to brag about the excellence of our universities (if you really want to know, click here).  So instead I thought I’d list a few fun facts about universities in the UK.

1. Durham is the UK’s most haunted university (the link has the Top 10, including Exeter, York and Royal Holloway).
2. At Oxford all new students must swear an oath promising to protect and preserve the contents of the Bodleian Library.  The oath reads: “I hereby undertake not to remove from the library, or to mark, deface, or injure in any way, any volume, document, or other object belonging to it or in its custody; not to bring into the library or kindle therein any fire or flame, and not to smoke in the library; and I promise to obey all rules of the library.”
3. University College London (UCL) was the first to admit female students on the same campus as men in 1878.
4. Edinburgh University boasts the UK’s Oldest Student Newspaper. ‘The Student’ was established in 1887.  The paper was established by Robert Louis Stephenson, author of Treasure Island and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.
5. Four in ten academics in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) are from overseas.
6. Over two million students are in higher education (undergraduate or above) in the UK.
7. The UK attracts more international students than any other country, except for the US.  As of 2017, international students in the UK make up 14% of undergraduates and 38% of postgraduates.
8. The most popular subjects to study in the UK are medicine and business studies.
9. As of 2016, 56.5% of students attending UK universities were female.
10. The poet Lord Byron, while studying in University of Cambridge kept a bear as his pet as a protest against a ban on pet dogs (there wasn’t any prohibition on bears).  Byron’s lover Lady Caroline Lamb summed him up in the famous phrase “mad, bad, and dangerous to know”.  His child Ada Lovelace, is sometimes considered the first computer programmer.