Astrophysics with a Professional Placement Year - MPhys

Cardiff University

The city is mostly walkable but public transport is still an option whenever needed. Student support can be hard to find out about but when you get in touch with the right person, and they're making this easier to do every year, it can lift a weight off your shoulders.

Amazing teaching staff who are always willing to give up their time to help you with anything. Material is well taught though some facilities do feel dated. University accommodation is small and not amazing but it has great locations near the city centre and close to the university campus.

Overall I have enjoyed being at Cardiff because of the city and the people I have met. The university, however, has often times failed me. Cardiff as a city is gorgeous and has so much going on, I would choose to live here again and again. I have a lot of respect for the Cardiff Physics department, and am grateful for all of the lecturers who have made these last few years engaging and enjoyable. However, on a whole the university lacks organisation, there have been many times where my grades have suffered due to a lack of preparation or certain oversights. For example, our second year fields and flows module grades had to be adjusted as the lecturer made it too difficult for the majority of the year group. It has since been said that this years cohort had a much easier exam due to last years disaster. Whilst I am glad they have improved the module, it is upsetting that our grades were impacted in a year that counts towards our degree classification. Another example of this is the third year atomic and nuclear exam. This exam was abysmal. Due to a lack of proper checking before printing the final exam, the disrupted formatting meant that multiple questions were unreadable and this couldn’t be answered. Furthermore, the exam itself was disgustingly hard. I commend our lecturer for giving us all the resources he could, telling us to do problem sets and past papers which would help us with the exam, however almost all of the resources we were given were inapplicable to the final exam. The majority of our class came out of the exam feeling betrayed and upset for not being given the proper guidance. In terms of organisation, the university has personally failed me in my global opportunities internships. Last summer I was given the chance to apply for an internship in China, and I was a successful applicant in this. At the time of this incident, I had already had zoom meetings with the professor, was in the process of booking my flights, applied for my visa, and had taken time off work to attend the 6 week internship. It was at this point I was notified that I did not qualify for funding as I had already received funding for a previous internship. This was never communicated to me that I could only receive funding once. It was a complete joke that this wasn’t told to me before. Luckily, when raising this issue with the uni, they were able to give me funding and I was able to go. I am glad that they rectified their mistake however it was a mistake that should never have been made, I should have been made aware that I couldn’t receive funding again at the beginning of the application process, not when I was confirmed to go. Overall, I believe Cardiff University is in a lovely city and it has is good points but at the same time it lacks proper organisation. Regardless, I am still glad that I have attended here and will always cherish these years.

The amount of student facilities at the students union is immense. There are so many different things that the students union can do for you. The university accomodation is very small and uncomfortable

The best part of my experience at Cardiff so far is the people. I feel as a student here everything is very inclusive and with the student union's supoort alongside other student run activities and societies its very easy to be included and not feel alone. On the more academic/educational side, I feel the lecturers, at leats in my course, are very understanding and helpful whenever a problem may arise. Moreover I feel an overwhelming sense of support from my tutors and lecturers who encourage every aspect of learning. However, I do feel the course content itself could be improved and certain teaching methods make it difficult to understand and follow sometimes. But mostly Cardiff is a fantastic city to be a student and an amazing university to be apart of.