University rating
Tell us about your overall university experience so far.
I've absolutely loved my time at NCH. I feel like I've grown as a person and as an academic during my time here, and I enjoyed it all immensely. I would definitely recommend this to anyone interested in immersing themselves in the humanities.
Facilities
How good are your university's facilities?
All the teaching at NCH takes place in a beautiful historic building in Bloomsbury, London. The Registry, as we call it, has been like a second home to me for the duration of my degree. I would come in for my lectures and tutorials, I could hang out in the JCR, or write my essays in the Study, or do my research in the nearby Senate House Library, where NCH has its own dedicated collection. Societies and individual students could book out any room in the college for quiet study or events. As for sports facilities, NCH is based only 10 minutes away from Student Central, which houses a wild variety of societies, which I could join. I fenced for a year!
Student support
How good is the support offered by the uni? Think both academic (tutors/feedback) and personal (counselling, etc).
NCH is great at creating support structures. As a student at NCH, you are always treated as an individual, and not a number in a statistic. The academic environment is very personal, inviting discussion and independent thinking. Together with one-to-one tutorials this leads to a situation where you know your lecturers very well, and so there is no awkwardness about reaching out to them about any help you might need. Moreover, the Student Academic Services team is always there to support you through your timetabling and other issues, and the Student Wellbeing team is always available to talk to about any mental health concern you might have. Additionally, there is the Welfare officer on the Student Union, if you'd rather talk to them. All in all, there is help when you need it.
Students' union
What do you think of your Students' Union in terms of student representation and facilities?
The SU is very well integrated into the student body. The small size of the college means that I knew all of the SU officers, and I never had any trouble reaching out to any of them.
Local life
Is your university in a good location in terms of distance to accommodation and local amenities?
NCH is based in central London. I'm personally not much for clubbing, but the theater scene had me fully booked for entertainment for all the time I've lived here. Then there are plenty of museums and art galleries (chief among them the British Museum, which is about 2 minutes away walking from NCH, perfect for procrastinating that essay), not to mention all the evening lectures and events which are open to you as a student in London. If there is something you like to do, you are guaranteed to find a way to do it in London.
Societies and Sports
How would you rate the variety of societies/sports?
The best thing about the societies at NCH is that if you really want there to be a particular society, you can do it. This is like we ended up with an eclectic selection of societies, including Board Games Society, which is separate from the Gin & Chess society, which is different from the Wine & Bridge society, which regularly puts on casino nights. This is not to mention faculty themed societies, like the Philosophy research society, the Politics reading group, the Literature society, which, you guessed it, organizes poetry and play reading evenings, or the History society which is very good about organizing outside trips. And of course my personal favourite, the Bedfellows, which is the drama society, which puts on termly performances, often involving plays written by our students! And there is the NCH Live society which so far gave life to one fledgling band.
Lecturers and teaching quality
What do you like most and least about the way your course(s) are taught?
There are plenty of things I love about the way my courses are taught. Top three: individual attention (one-to-one tutorials, small class sizes, extremely responsive lecturers), academic discourse (my classes always facilitated discussion and the professors and tutors welcomed different points of view & various opinions, especially when they were well argued), and the expertise (you can always tell when the academic is an expert on a given subject, and when they are passionate about it. In my time at NCH, both of these were almost always the case. This made for a wonderful learning environment, where you want to dig deeper into a subject, because your tutor is so enthusiastic about it)
Some things I didn't personally mind about the teaching style, but which I imagine some people might dislike: you need to be really engaged. The class sizes mean that if you skip lectures, your tutor will notice, and they will usually send you a concerned email about why you couldn't attend your scheduled session. And if you don't do your reading, it will show. There is no hiding in the back of the class here. On the plus side, if for whatever reason you feel like hiding in the back of the class, there are multiple support structures you can fall back on.
How many contact hours per week do you have?
15
Career prospects
How does your uni make efforts to increase your employability (careers department, work placements, transferable skills)?
Part of the NCH Diploma is the LAUNCH course, which run alongside my degree for three years and which was designed to teach me skills necessary in the workplace. I practiced my presentation and public speaking skills, as well as effective teamwork, communication, financial literacy, and negotiation skills through a series of real life assignments and group projects which I completed as part of the LAUNCH course. These included advising a real charity about their business plan and branding, as well as coming up with an innovative product and creating a business, financial, and marketing plans to go with it.
In addition to that, NCH organised multiple career evenings, giving me a chance to network with multiple professionals from a range of fields over the course of my degree.
Moreover, from my second year onward I had an assigned career adviser, matched to me based on my career interests, who was monitoring my progress, and who I could reach out about any career queries I had. I had access to the NCH career portal, which helped me with career research, and I had plenty of CV and cover letter help, as well as interview practice.