UQ Program: Bachelor of Arts
I just spent the most amazing, fun-filled, action packed semester at The University of Sheffield, in the third year of my B Arts/B Education (Geography & Drama) degree. I’d never considered going to Sheffield before, but I decided to take a chance and have never regretted it since! Sheffield is a student city right in the heart of England and with very few tourists so I was able to get the full British experience! Sheffield is the greenest city in the UK, has the lowest crime rate and is the cheapest to live in- sounds great right? Well it is!
A full-time course load at Sheffield is usually 3 courses, and I took all of mine from the Department of Geography. The assessment load is a lot less over here, and you only need 40% to pass. I only had 3 exams and two essays all semester- that’s it! As everything is due in the last couple of weeks of the semester, this leaves a lot of time for partying and travelling during the semester, including the massive 3 week Spring Break you get over Easter- Spring Semester is definitely the best semester to visit! The club Corporation or “Corp” as its better known here was a favourite of us international students, with every Wednesday being school disco night and having the cheapest drinks in town (alcohol in the UK is much cheaper than at home!!).
The University of Sheffield has been voted as having the best student union in the UK, and it’s easy to see why! They really go above and beyond for the students and they are the heart and soul of Sheffield Uni. There are over 300 clubs and societies to join, tonnes of sporting teams, they organised heaps of day trips around the country, and basically just do everything on campus! They are amazing! There’s also a great mentor system here that you can sign up for, my mentor was so helpful when I first arrived & was feeling homesick. The best thing to cure homesickness is just to keep busy!! There’s so much to see and do in this amazing country, it feels like my second home now! I’ve made friends with people from all over the world, from Australia, the USA and Canada, to China, Germany, Finland, Netherlands, Austria, and Denmark. We were such an eclectic bunch of students but after 6 months together we’re like family and saying goodbye is going to be a very sad day for us all. Everyone here can recommend 100% doing an exchange in Sheffield, it’s changed our lives and we’ll remember our time here forever! So what are you waiting for? 
5 TOP TIPS:
1. Fancie cupcakes (a chain of cupcake stores in Sheffield) are the most amazing cupcakes you will ever taste in your life! Also, Gregg’s is a great chain of bakery stores around the UK that do really cheap meal deals and great sandwiches for lunch on the go.
2. At some stage, you will need gumboots and you’ll definitely need an umbrella! The weather isn’t all that bad though, you do adapt pretty quickly!
3. Go on as many of the student union give-it-a-go day trips as possible, every trip that I went on was amazing & took me to great places like York, Whitby, the Lake District, Liverpool and Stratford-upon-Avon. “Don’t be a Tourist” is another great company that takes students from Sheffield and Leeds on trips around the UK & even to Paris!
4. Skyscanner.com is the best website for finding cheap flights around Europe as it compares all the airlines for you, and we all used it for booking our spring break travels. Book as far in advance as possible for your flights, as the later you leave it the more expensive it gets!
5. The nearest big supermarket to the student village is too far away to do a big grocery shop and carry everything home again, so most of us ordered our groceries online. Tesco has a great online shopping website that does home delivery and has much cheaper food than the local convenience store.
