Hello! I live in Los Angeles and have received offers from King’s, Durham, St. Andrews, and Edinburgh to study English Literature. They are all wonderful universities in their own ways, but I am having trouble weighing out pros/cons. Could anyone weigh in on how the universities are regarded?
Regarded for what? Prestige? They are all highly ranked. For careers? if you want to go into academia, you can get into a PhD program from any of them. Outside academic circles, name recognition is pretty limited in the US for all of them, so I wouldn’t see that as a reason to choose one over the other.
However, what the course is like is a big reason to choose one over the other! UK unis give you rather fewer choices than US ones- especially in the first years. How carefully have you read the descriptions of the English Lit course for each uni? [Here[/url] is what you would study in your first year at Edinburgh; [url=<a href=“http://www.kcl.ac.uk/study/undergraduate/courses/english-ba.aspx%5Dhere%5B/url”>http://www.kcl.ac.uk/study/undergraduate/courses/english-ba.aspx]here[/url] is King’s; and[url=<a href=“https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/english/undergraduates/modules/”>https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/english/undergraduates/modules/</a>] here](http://www.ed.ac.uk/literatures-languages-cultures/english-literature/undergraduate/prospective/course-information/first-year) is St.Andrews (Durham’s site is down for maintenance). They are strikingly different.
Other obvious differences include size, region, and city v town v village.
Kings and Edinburgh are both in and of the cities that they are based in- but one is a mega-city (8.5m people/~26K students), and one is rather smaller in both population (500K /~33K students) and geography. Durham and St Andrews are both in and around towns - Durham with approx 50K residents v ~17K students and St Andrews with ~16K residents and ~8k students (of whom about 15% are American- more than any of the others.
Although Edinburgh has a few dorms, most students live out. St Andrews only provides housing for the first year, after that you live out. Kings has housing (esp for international students), which matters in a city with super expensive housing costs. Durham is collegiate (you belong to a college within the university, even during 2nd year when students typically live out).
Did you look at the course options before applying?