A RUTHLESS Review of the University of Birmingham (VS London) | Theft, Social Life, Academics

what is going on guys my name is kenji and welcome back to my channel hope it's on the first time you're watching one of my videos but in case it is i'm a fourth year medical student study king's college london and i hope you guys like this pink sort of vibe i'm rocking i've got a pink lampshade behind me pink t-shirt and it is 20 20 after all so i'm rocking very hard in this video in this video i'm going to tell you guys about my personal experience studying the university of birmingham and i'm going to be breaking down the university into four broad categories first one talk about the academics then the social life then the actual city itself which is birmingham and lastly the safety of the city although i am studying medicine now in king's college london some of you might know that i actually did my last degree which is biomedical science at the university of birmingham and that's exactly what this video is going to be about i'll also be comparing uh billion to kings since this experience of the different universities that i've been to and i'll also be comparing birmingham with london since they're the two biggest cities within the country if you haven't already subscribed while you're watching please make sure to do so and give the video a thumbs up it really really does help me reach more people and make the channel grow but without further ado let's get started someone starts off by talking about the academics of the university whether or not it's actually a very academic or good university to go to and this is probably the easiest category to talk about the university of birmingham is undoubtedly one of the best universities in the country right now where it currently stands in 2020 it's ranked 13th in the university rankings and it's also ranked as the 22nd best medical school in the country i should also say that it's a russell group university meaning that it undertakes some of the best research within the whole entire country and because of that i want to be raising this university a 4.5 out of 5 in terms of its academics and probably give an equal rating to king's college london because i think they're more or less on the same level in terms of their academics nice and easy let's move on to the next one the next and probably the more fun category to talk about which i think you guys find interesting as well is the social life and i want to be completely honest in saying that the social aspect of the university of birmingham is probably the best i've ever seen in my life i'm studying medicine kings and i've also traveled the country visiting my friends in their different universities and there is no place better than i've ever experienced a social life to be than at the university of birmingham the reason why i say this and kind of in comparison to london is that in london most people live at home because it's a big city a lot of people live at home and also because it's a city a lot of the accommodations that you live out in your first year tend to be quite spread out which doesn't really make you feel like part of a big community like birmingham did in birmingham the majority of the actual student population isn't from birmingham so the majority of us actually live on or around the university very very close to each other actually only really in like one or two areas in the whole entire city which makes you feel a lot more integrated it makes socializing a lot more easier in my first year i lived in halls of residence in a place called harborne which is a small area of birmingham about ten minute walk from the university and in my second year i lived in selyok which is a huge kind of student village where the majority of the students in second third fourth and fifth year live and because of that whenever you're walking to and from university to the shops to the gym to the restaurants you almost always bump into one of your friends i used to go campus almost every single day because of the gym and the majority of my friends also went to campus every single day for other reasons as well and when you walk there you honestly end up bumping into at least 10 people on the way which makes living in the area a lot more exciting if you're into clubbing and partying that sort of thing there is one street called broad streets which has pretty much all of the clubs in birmingham which is super super cheap and super fun some of the best clubs i've ever been to in my life and you can honestly have the best time of your life for 15 pounds alone because of how cheap it is in comparison to london there aren't really any clubs at student specific in birmingham they honestly had clubs though dedicated students that's not really a thing in london and the worst thing about clubbing in london is that it costs so much money entrance to a club on its own can cost you 15 pounds and a single drink can cost you around 10 pounds in comparison to birmingham like i said i'd be completely broke i'd go out with 15 pounds and have the best nights of my entire life in regards to university itself they have a huge huge number of sports teams and societies and loads of different things to be part of in my first and second year i actually played football for medical school which is amazing and in my final year i played lacrosse there are tons of different societies as well so if you're interested in harry potter society the um i don't know justin bieber society photography society they have a huge number of different societies you can get involved with which all take place on campus and if you're into sports the university of birmingham is one of the best teams in the country for undertaking sports i'm not entirely sure on the statistics but i think the university was actually like second or third in terms of the oval sport rankings in the country don't quote me on that they have a very very good team and some of the actual great britain athletes actually played as part of the university if you're not into clubbing and clubbing zoning sort of thing there are tons of restaurants in and around the city that you can go to loads of different activities and loads of different places that you can uh go to as well so because of that i want to give the social life in birmingham a five out of five and giving the win to the university of belgium and not kings college london [Music] now let's move on to talking about what it was like living in birmingham from the accommodation the things to do and the actual city itself living in birmingham was one of the cheapest places i've ever lived in my life the rent itself was more than half of what i pay in london i was paying around 90 pounds a week for a nice house in london compared to 275 pounds per week for my accommodation london so living in birmingham as well as your normal drinking eating and going out and paying for rent all of your costs together was extremely low in my opinion it's obviously not one of the cheapest places to live in the country but in comparison to london which is what i'm living in now it is so much more cheap and so much easier to pay for your living in terms of the fun things to do in the city you won't exactly be spoiled for choice but he also won't be short on the things that you can do so listing a few things you can do in birmingham they have the bullring shopping center which is kind of similar to westfield shopping center in london which has loads of different shops restaurants and retail stores you can visit which i quite enjoyed visiting there's also cadbury world which is the cadbury chocolate factory i didn't actually end up going there in my university degree but i will go back there one day there's also city centre which has loads of different shops high streets and also a number of seasonal things for example the christmas market that came every single christmas was so amazing and was one of the best christmas markets i've ever visited in my life and although there are quite a few fun things to do in birmingham you can't really compare it to london for obvious reasons london is obviously a humongous city with an infinite number of things to do so comparing it to birming which is the second biggest city in the uk isn't exactly fair in terms of the transports in the city transport is okay you can't really again compare it to london and the chains are quite cheap and affordable and getting within the city is quite easy but only goes to major destinations for example if you compare it to london underground the train goes to almost everywhere in the entire city whereas birmingham only really went to the major areas of the city traveling outside of the trains is usually quite difficult the buses are really inefficient and really expensive and you're better off just getting an uber if you can't get a train and that's one thing that i didn't really like so because of this i want to rate the living in birmingham a three out of five and living in london at kings definitely takes the win for this category the next catcher i want to talk to you guys about is safety and that's one thing that i know a lot of you will probably be thinking about especially if you're an international student safety in birmingham is honestly one of the things i had a problem with and it's very unfortunate that i did have that problem living in london is by no means safe but there definitely isn't any time where i felt threatened for my life or for my belongings and whether i'm going to walk into a lecture walking to the hospital getting around the city or even coming back from 9th out to 3 o'clock in the morning the city itself in london is always really busy there's always people around the cctv and normally public transport is good enough to get you almost exactly outside where you live so you don't really have much of a walk in dangerous areas or empty areas than you would in comparison to birmingham during the years i spent in birmingham there was loads of different incidents mainly to do a theft and i want to talk to you guys about these experiences i was actually attempted to be robbed twice one was during my second year of university and the second was actually after i graduated last year and unfortunately it wasn't uncommon to hear about robberies attacks and serious incidents within birmingham while i was studying there we had this facebook page university where all the students kind of was part of and would kind of notify each other about different things going on around the city and almost every single week almost multiple times a week we had messages from literally one of our friends or some random person we didn't know in the university notifying us of a man going around robbing people literally one or two streets down from where i lived unfortunately because thieves know that the area called seliyok is where the majority of students live and will come from the library sometimes later nights carrying valuables like laptops and their phones a lot of robbers would actually target these areas because they know these students will have money on them and have valuables on them i also must say that i'm not entirely sure why but the population in birmingham definitely seemed a lot rowdier especially in places that has alcohol like in clubs or bars which i don't really like i must say however that the actual university itself the actual campus is very very safe i definitely saw security there all the time um roaming the area there's always cct cameras as well so the actual university itself is very safe and i didn't have a problem with it so as i said in my second year we lived in san diego and we actually got robbed one of the people we're living with accidentally forgot the back door open and when we came down the morning all of our stuff was taken our huge 50-inch tv was taken our xbox was taken our speakers were taken and no one got harmed fortunately that was quite a traumatic experience when i went back to visit one of my friends at a house party as i left the house party with a bunch of my friends at 2am on a busy night in the center of the city about five or six people actually came up to my group and tried robbing us which again wasn't very good experience and i don't mean this to scare you some people might have a different experience with birmingham that's just my opinion and because of this i want to give the university of birmingham a one out of five and king's college london wins for this category of safety [Music] so those are the four categories i thought were the most important uh when reviewing the university if you have any specific questions about the university itself please feel free to leave a comment down below and get back to me on that and i have a bunch of different friends in different universities across the entire country so if there's any specific university that you'd like me to review and maybe interview my friends please leave a comment down below and i'll get back to you i hope you found this video informative and if you have please smash that like button it really helps my channel grow and reach more people and make sure you're subscribed and turn on post notifications so you don't miss any future uploads thank you so much for watching i'll see you guys on the next [Music] one

Channel: Kenji Tomita

Views: 38,485

Rating: 4.9242425 out of 5

Keywords: university of Birmingham review, university of birmingham, University of birmingham experience, Studying at University of Birmingham, university of birmingham accomodation, king's college london, king's college london review, university of birmingham medicine, university of birmingham biomedical science, king's college london medicine, kings college london medicine, biomedical science medicine

Id: gt-QdC2k31g

Length: 10min 31sec (631 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 05 2020