Hi everyone,
Could someone name the pros and cons to University College Dublin and Trinity College Dublin? I am going to be studying abroad in Dublin next spring, and I want to go to a school with a fairly easy course load so that I can tour Europe. I am an engineering student, so I would like the engineering classes at the school to be easy.
Any help is appreciated. Thanks!
Dublin isn’t in the UK, so it might be better to repost in the general International section.
University College is Catholic and Trinity College is older and Church of Ireland. I am not expert on it, but my understanding is University College is easier, if that is what you are looking for.
Sattut is correct that the colleges were originally founded by those religions, but that is no longer a meaningful distinction (same as Princeton was originally Presbyterian, but nobody really goes to Princeton thinking that they are going to a religious school).
TCD is in Dublin cIty centre and UCD is in the suburbs; both have some housing for international students, but the odds are that UCD’s will be closer to campus - most (but not all) of TCDs student accommodation is a bit out of town (there is a light rail near by, and it is easy biking distance). TCD is by far the prettier campus overall, though the main engineering building is just as ugly as the buildings at UCD (both unfortunate '60s architecture)
Where are you doing engineering now? that might make a difference as to what feels ‘easy’. But, the bad news is that neither is easy for engineering: it is one of the harder courses at either university, and both have a lot of labs that are not really miss-able.
Also, if your grades matter, be aware that the marking system is very different in Ireland, and that for most courses the vast majority of your mark is based on the final exam. Irish students are well used to this (since 7th grade their grades have always been based on final exams), so they know how to pace themselves and how to cram. They will pretend that they never study- but they do (or they end up repeating their exams at the end of the summer, in order to go on to the next year). US students who are more used to a lot of continuing assessment sometimes find it hard to get used to this system.
If you choose TCD and have a choice of courses the head of the Manufacturing Engineering course got his masters & phd at Stanford, and has been re-invigorating the course over the last few years.
@collegemom3717 Thank you very much for the detailed response!
I am currently an engineering student at UC Berkeley. I understand that engineering will not be easy; is either TCD or UCD substantially easier in terms of engineering? Or are they pretty comparable?
I’d say pretty comparable overall. I am a few years out of date ( I taught in the engineering school @ TCD several years ago). At that time UCD had the stronger course, and it still has a (slightly) higher points requirement for entry. TCD’s course was just coming out from very old-school teaching methods / curriculum (being pulled along by the manufacturing engineering head). But for a term I don’t think you will find a dramatic difference in the work load in engineering (allowing for variation between specific classes / professors of course).