Dear Yip Jui/'s bro,
Nice to hear from you! It's always a pleasure to talk to fellow msians interested in coming to essex. There aren't many of us here (20-30).
Essex Uni is a small, cosy campus university about an hour away from central London by train. There's about 7-8000 students here (HELP and Sunway-Monash probably have more!) so by the time you graduate, you will kinda know who's who in uni. To give some idea about the size of the campus – it takes me less than 5 minutes to leave my room for lectures/classes.
International students make up about 50% of the students on campus. There are not many Malaysians here though – between 20 and 30 (including postgraduates and staff). But I guess you learn to make friends with other nationalities, which is great! For example, my closest friend here is from Portugal, and there is a history of msian girls getting together with german guys (3 so far!). ok, you didn't need to know that… but anyway, point is you won't feel alone. There's also a huge number of students from China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan on campus, so if you can speak mandarin/Cantonese, you'll get along without much trouble.
I think Essex university is severely under-rated. We happen to have some very strong academic departments (especially government, human rights, and economics). Our Econs dept is one of the top 4 research departments in the UK, and one of the few UK unis to receive 24/24 score for teaching. Our government department is the best in Britain, and our human rights centre is one of the first in the world to offer undergraduate studies in human rights. We also pioneer a lot of the work in international human rights, with a number of lecturers being special rapporteurs to the United Nations.
I'm not sure about management, but I know the syllabus for straight economics students is quite rigorous. I study part economics so I can attest to the quality of the education in that department. In fact I do regret a bit for doing a joint degree cos I'm missing out on so many interesting modules!
For a university this size, we have an extremely wide range of extra curricular activities to be involved in. You can pick up rock climbing, gliding, belly dancing, free Japanese and Arabic classes run by students, and audition to act in plays run by the theatre and arts society. There's actually quite a lot to do on campus, but it really depends on the individual student to be as active as he/she wants to. Visit our students union website www.essexstudent.com for more information about the societies and events going on on campus.
The Malaysian society here is rather small (as expected!). We organize some makan sessions during the celebrations – hari raya, deepavali, christmas, and Chinese new year. We also have joint events with other asian societies like Taiwan, Thai, Japanese… we don't have msian nites, sadly ;)
Does your bro have any hobbies/interests that he would like to pursue whilst here? You could ask me, and I'll tell you what the uni/town has to offer.
The university is situated in Colchester, a quaint town, which is apparently the oldest recorded town in Britain. The town centre is about 45 minutes walk away from campus, or 10-15 mins on the busses, which are quite regular. We don't have a Chinatown, but we have two shops in the town centre which sell all the Chinese cooking ingredients you need. If that's not enough, there's also another shop in town that specializes in food from asia and the middle east. So there isn't much need to make the trips to London for food.
There are also quite a number of restaurants, pubs, clubs, a cinema, concert hall, and other places to do your shopping in the town centre. And here's a random fact - Colchester also has one of the highest concentrations of charity shops in towns in the UK (where u can buy stuff ppl donate for dirt cheap). We also have a farmers market every 3rd Saturday of the month in Wivenhoe, which is the nearby town, again within walking distance.
Actually, you don't even need to go to the town centre to get stuff you need. We have a large 24 hour Tesco outlet a short 15 minutes walk from campus.
Essex is a rather flat chunk of land on the East of England. Being on the east coast means less rain than Manchester, which I'm grateful for =) Traditionally, Essex is an agricultural area. It even has a stereotype of its own, where Essex girls are known to be a little naughty, being farmers kids. But things change, of course, and the towns and cities here are developing fast, due to the migration into London, and the rising property prices there. I know quite a few locals who work in London but choose to live here because of that (morning trains into London are always packed!).
Ooh and I'd like to mention too that the university has quite an active society for international students to get used to living in Britain – Friends International. The people there are really friendly, and they are always organising short trips to nearby places for international students. They also have a good host-family program, where you can meet up with a local family once a month or whenever you're both free and get to know a bit about the local culture, food, celebrations, etc. One of the full-time staff workers there spent something like 16 years in Indonesia, so if your bro needs some practice...
Personally, Essex has been good to me. I have no regrets not ending up in LSE, York or Warwick. The academic departments I'm in here are really good. And I feel that coming here, I've learnt so much about Britain itself, and interacted so much with the locals and other internationals. Not taking swipes at Manchester or London, but sometimes when surrounded by so many Malaysians, it's too easy to just hang out with Malaysians and not meet new people, and learn about different cultures and worldviews.
I guess another plus point in being in Essex is that if you're not really the socialite, it's quiet enough for you to do your own thing and just study. Some students (ok, 1 of the 3 singaporeans on campus) complain that life in essex uni is just waayy to slow paced for him, but I'm biased – I like quiet and slow =)
Ok, gripes. What do I not like about Essex Uni? I think the quality of service and education is great! But I don't think I can say the same with equal conviction about the students here. Compared to the larger unis, I think Essex does lack the depth of quality. Perhaps because it is less glamorous than the larger city universities or because of its reputation in England, I don't know. I know for one thing that if you're a top student, you will have a good opportunity to shine here… hmm but that's not too bad a thing either. Talent and hard work is often recognized and well rewarded. Last year, the top graduates in the economics and government departments were both Malaysians. One went on to do her masters in Belgium, after receiving a scholarship from the research institute there. The other, if she weren't bonded to Bank Negara, I suppose, might have gone on to do her masters in Oxford/LSE like a few of her other batch mates.
I find myself wanting to say this again and again - it's almost always the case that your university education is very much more dependent on what you make of it than where you're studying. Essex uni, despite being small (and boring?), is a uni which does offer its students the platform to learn and grow. It's just that us students need to be more proactive in making the most out of the opportunities given to us!
Hmm. I've rambled on enough. If you would like to know more feel free to drop me an email. If you haven't already visited our university website – www.essex.ac.uk for more information, please do. The website is not really a pretty one, but it does contain some useful information if you spend a bit of time scouring its many pages for it.
Hope I wasn't too long winded..
Warm regards,
Markus
