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This week, David McNicoll, who has just completed an English degree gives us his lowdown on Durham University.

Being a student in Durham:

Durham is a small city that feels dominated by its student population. It is virtually impossible to separate the campus and the city, with university buildings extending right through the city centre. Despite - or perhaps because of – this, relations between students and locals can be on the frosty side. A genuine North-East accent will get you all sorts of benefits, with shop-keepers, bar-staff and taxi drivers bending over backwards to help you. An attempted Geordie accent - how-weigh the lads pet like – is more likely, however, to simply get you bent over backwards.

The city centre hosts the likes of Topshop, Miss Selfridges, River Island and Monsoon, but only small outlets of each. Fashionistas and shopaholics are likely to be more impressed by the MetroCentre, Europe’s largest shopping and leisure centre, 15 minutes by train from Newcastle, and containing over 300 shops.

Within Durham itself there are chain stores such as Waterstone’s, WH Smith and HMV, and numerous quirky smaller shops. The Indoor Market can always provide a surprising afternoon, while real finds come at the more traditional market held in the town square on weekends, and always worth a visit.

There are numerous places to eat from bog-standard fast-food joints (Burger King / McDonalds) to upmarket slower-food joints (Pizza Hut /Pizza Express) to restaurants with pasta like mama used to make (Emilios / Ristorante de Medicis). There is a curious lack of curry houses, an abundance of Italian eateries and a preposterous number of Greggs bakeries. Happy hour meals in places such as Emilios can come to as little as £4 a head – elsewhere expect to spend about a tenner on dinner.

The size of the city means you don’t have to worry about transport. Everyone in Durham walks everywhere - a gentle stroll will get you from any of the colleges to the centre, main library and both the science and humanities lecture sites well within thirty minutes, with most people “budgeting” for more like twenty. If you’re feeling particularly lazy a taxi will get you across town for less than £4. Buses connect the city to places like Newcastle and Sunderland, while Durham is on a train line connecting London, York and Edinburgh among others.

However, you should beware of boasts that Newcastle is “just down the road”. The train journey is only 15 minutes and a return ticket is well under £4 with a Young Person’s Railcard. Yes, this means day-trips to the Toon are cheap and easy, but getting back to Durham can sometimes be a problem, with the transport less than reliable, especially with regards to the last train.

The College System:

Durham has a collegiate system, meaning that every student belongs to one of 16 colleges. As physical places, each college acts as the living place of all its first year students and many others, with all the facilities you would expect in university halls. However, you remain a part of your college (on an administrative and spiritual level) even when you move out of the actual place for your second year. This is because each college has its own student organisation for deciding about the running of the college and its own sports teams.

There is fierce inter-college banter when it comes to sport, but relationships between students at different colleges have been known to blossom. Pride in your own college - indoctrinated into you during freshers’ week - is encouraged, but you quickly come to realise that there’s not much truth in the stereotypes. Certainly any rumours you’ve heard about the type of person who goes to certain colleges shouldn’t put you off applying anywhere. Surprisingly enough, everyone at Mary’s is not a lesbian and there are people at Hatfield whose Daddies do not own half of Hampshire. And, yes, University College is based in the Castle and the Castle was used in the Harry Potter films.

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