The University of South Wales as been a really good fit for me personally, I love the location because coming from a rural village, it is near enough to the city center to have easy access however it is also far enough away that I can not get too caught up with city life. Being in a town, you have access to a lot of supermarkets and necessities. The campus also has a student bar and a student nightclub which are close to the halls and private accommodation wherever you choose to stay. The course itself has been great, it covers a broad range of topics especially in your first year. They allow you to build on essential skills to make sure that everyone on the course is at the same level to move onto more specialized subjects in the second and third year. You can work at your own pace which is a nice factor that I love about the course and if you are struggling, all lecturers will be willing to help you along. I have used some student support facilities like counselling and the careers team through the advice zone. Whenever I have reached out to these facilities, all staff have treated me really well and do their best to help. I used the careers team for application help and they reply quickly and make sure that the application is the best it can be. Overall, I'm happy I chose this university, they have assisted me really well and the course has provided me with the essential skills and knowledge I need to go into my career.

I completed the last part of first year and the whole of second year online due to COVID. Throughout this time, the lecturers all made the best efforts they could to make this new learning environment run smoothly. With online lectures we had no in-person teaching except for one or two lab sessions if restrictions allowed. This meant that we were not able to complete the practical features of the course which we all were disappointed with. This was not the University's fault and they made our field trip possible by changing it from Africa to UK. This was not as exciting but we learnt the same skills and I ended up loving it. Since being back on campus for my third year, it has been a lot better, we are able to complete practicals to learn these essential skills for our next career steps. One thing I would like to be improved with this course would be more international species being used. For quite a few assessments, we have to use UK areas without completing a practical. For some of these, it would be great if we could expand and use the same research and apply it to a species/area that we are especially interested in. This was the only criticism I had of the course as I expected more international focus.

Close to the city center without being too busy. There are regular trains and buses to take you into the city and to shops nearby. Trains to the center leave every 10 minutes. The town also has access to all shops and necessities that you need for living. The halls on campus have security measures however when in private accommodation, you do not have any security in place. This is something to think about if you're particularly worried about moving to a new place. You have the opportunity to meet a lot of new people with all student halls and private accommodation being nearby. On the other hand, if you aren't very social there is no pressure to mix with new people, it is completely your choice.

Glamorgan court is the older student halls on campus. Everyone wants to get Mountain Halls which are the newer accommodation but I personally liked Glamorgan Court. The rooms were a standard university room with an ensuite and you share a flat with 5 other people. In terms of room allocation, you send in an application and then you get access to a website where you are able to choose your exact room. This is very competitive but even if you do not get the one you really wanted, you can join a waiting list and someone from the accommodation team will give you a call if there is availability for your favourite option.

The students to teacher support is great, booking meetings is easy and they always try there best to make you succeed even when odds are against you. For example on my course recently we lost our module leader, but the module leaders have really tried not to let this affect work in the way that they are still making themselves available for support on modules they don't even lead. The new course leader has also come in and done a fantastic job, as part of our course we are meant to go to Africa and i think without him it wouldn't be happening BUT NOW we leave in June. The negative comes from the lack of support from the heads of the school. Im a student rep and ive had various meetings with students, lecturers and even the heads at some points and the interaction with them is always fake promises and diversion of questions. The student meetings that are also meant to have an impact fall upon deaf ears and the lecturers always advise us to put our thoughts forward as "it will have more of an affect than them bringing something up" but again these issues never seem to get resolved leaving people blaming the lecturers when its truly not there fault. So in essence the uni is great for student/lecturer relations but the support from higher ups is lacking which affects everyone studying here.

The best aspect by far is the opportunity to go to Africa to study big game in the wild which is what you'd expect from "international wildlife biology". And although covid stopped us going last year the module leader has managed to allow us to go this year instead which is exciting. The negative is that some teacher didnt get on so well with the online teaching methords last year and now we have them in person they also dont produce the most engaging lectures which i think has had a significant impact upon my classes attendence

My uni is on the outskirts of pontypridd based in an old arts college. The town itself isnt the most well kept but there are plenty of bars and cafe's for students to work within. For my degree there is a lack of places to go and work to get relevant experience. But the atmosphere is generally good.

No