Singleton Park
Swansea SA2 8PP

Tel 01792 295 111

admissions@swansea.ac.uk

www.swansea.ac.uk

Sunday Times ranking 44= (44)

Teaching excellence 66.2%

Student satisfaction 74.6%

Head teacher ranking 88= (73=)

Peer ranking 46= (48)

Research quality 62.6%

A/AS-level points 300

A-levels for entry 87%

Unemployment 5.7%

Firsts and 2:1s 52.5%

Student/staff ratio 15.6:1

Dropout rate 11% (13%)

World ranking 383=

Undergraduates 8,582 (2,775)

Postgraduates 1,031 (1,437)

Teaching staff 549

Applications/places 13,527/3,126; 4.3:1 (-0.1%)

Clearing entry 8.8%

Bursaries Up to £1,845

Scholarships 90: £3,000

EU/overseas 1.6%/5.4%

Mature 17.8%

State school 92%

Lowest social classes 27%

Low-participation areas 15%

Live in 36% (91%) £59-£107

Life’s a beach for students at Swansea, or at least it seems that way if the evidence of a lower than expected dropout rate and one of the best results for a city-based university in the national student survey are to be believed. The university is set just back from the beach at the head of the Gower Peninsula, one of the most scenic parts of the UK. It is not hard to see why Swansea was named Best Student Experience in the 2005 Times Higher Education Supplement university awards.

The recent completion of the £50m Institute of Life Science (ILS) gives Swansea a truly impressive research facility. The ILS is a joint venture involving the university, the Welsh assembly and IBM. It houses one of the world’s fastest computers, Blue C, which will analyse results of investigations into health issues such as obesity, diabetes, heart failure, breast cancer and asthma, as well as the Boots Centre for Innovation to help researchers and entrepreneurs develop products for the chemist chain. Up to 350 specialists will be based at the ILS.

Together with the Institute of Advanced Telecommunications (with its valuable links to market leaders such as Motorola, Sony, Cisco Systems and British Telecoms) and the Wales Institute for Mathematical and Computational Sciences, it all gives Swansea a considerable research profile. The university – which this month left the University of Wales federation – attracted more than £36m in new research funding in 2005-06, double the amount of the previous year. The school of engineering in particular has established close links to leading companies including Airbus (UK), working on the new double-decker Airbus A380.

Bursaries are available to offset increased tuition fees in Wales. Wales-domiciled students will get a Welsh assembly fee grant of £1,845. For others, there are 90 excellence awards of £3,000. Sports scholarships of £3,000 over three years are also available – next to the main Singleton Park campus lies a £20m sports village containing Wales’ only 50m pool.

The city is rated as very friendly by students and with another university in town, the soon-to-be-called Swansea Metropolitan University, it is well set up to cater for them.

Open days October 27.

Student view Owen Morgan, students’ union president: USP You can revise on the beach.

Worst feature Bus queues to university are long.

Location A short walk to the city centre and a stone’s throw from the beach.

Social scene On campus bars and a thriving city centre.

Rated excellent (12) Biological sciences; chemical engineering; civil engineering; classics and ancient history; computer science; electrical and electronic engineering; geography; history; materials engineering; modern languages (German, Italian and Spanish); physics; psychology.

Degree of student satisfaction: 74.6%

Sports Science 84.9; Education studies 81.5; History and Archeology 79.9; English-based studies 79.5; European Languages and Area studies 78.5; Human and Social Geography 77.7; Physical Geography and Environmental Science 77.5; Physical Science 75.3; Sociology, Social Policy and Anthropology 75.0; Politics 74.5; Media studies 74.0; Civil, Chemical and other Engineering 73.6; Business 73.3; Law 73.0; Psychology 72.5; Computer Science 70.9; Other subjects allied to Medicine 70.9; Nursing 70.7; Mechanically-based Engineering 65.6; Biology and related Sciences 64.0

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