East Anglia (UEA), University of

(UEA)

Overall ranking: 16th out of 126 in the Complete University Guide for 2016.

History: A child of the 60s, East Anglia recently celebrated its 50th anniversary. Subject areas sit within four faculties: Science; Medicine & Health Sciences; Arts & Humanities; and Social Sciences.

Address: Sat in 200 hectares of rolling parkland two miles outside the historic cathedral city of Norwich, with easy access to city, countryside and coastal areas.

Ambience: A friendly and safe place to live, with everything located close together. The single-site campus will appeal to those in search of a community-driven ethos. Bold late 20th-century architecture boasts award-winning designs by Denys Lasdun, Lord Foster and Rick Mather. The “Golden Triangle region” between the University and the town has a buzzy student feel while Norwich is renowned as one of the UK's top ten shopping cities.

Who's the boss? Professor David Richardson is the vice-chancellor and a highly respected bacterial biochemist.

Prospectus: 01603 591 515 or request one here.

UCAS code: E14

What you need to know

Easy to get into? No- top qualifications are required for the most popular courses. Most subjects do not interview but Drama, Medicine, Natural Sciences, Nursing and Social Work are among those that do.

Vital statistics: A total of 14,602 are currently studying here, 10,035 of whom are undergrads. An emphasis on inter-disciplinary study means students can fashion their degrees to suit their interests. Access courses bring in undergraduates without traditional A-levels.

Added value: Has strong links with writers such as Rose Tremain, Doris Lessing, Graham Swift and Salman Rushdie and runs a Creative Writing postgrad course taught by a group of well-known writers including Andrew Cowan and Giles Foden and Trezza Azzopardi. The university is part of the Norwich Research Park, one of Europe's biggest collections of bio-technologists working in health and microbiological research. it has its own art gallery, the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, that is free to students and staff. The James Platt Centre for Language Learning offers students of all abilities the opportunity to learn another language while the campus has seen a £3.8m extension to the Sportspark.

Teaching: Outstanding- came 11th out of 126 in the Complete University Guide.

Graduate prospects: Ranked 48th with 70.1 per cent entering graduate level employment.

Any accommodation? University accommodation in halls ranges from £70.70 to £131.88 a week. You can choose from twin sharing rooms or en-suite.

Cheap to live there? Reasonable, with private rents from £80 a week.

Transport links: Two hours by road and rail to London (trains every half-hour taking just under two hours). Or take a 40-minute flight from Norwich Airport to Amsterdam and the world's your oyster. Stansted is reachable in 90 minutes. The annual Norwich bus pass is the cheapest of all UK cities.

Fees: Set at £9000 per year for full-time EU undergraduates. Students spending a year abroad or in industry only pay 15 per cent of their fees for that year. Overseas students pay more but costs vary with subject choice.

Bursaries: East Anglia offers a fee waiver of up to £2,000 per year for four years to undergraduates who are on low household incomes (up to £3,000 for care leavers). Students are automatically considered using information received from Student Finance England and will be contacted before their course starts. New students who achieve three As at A-level or equivalent are awarded a one-off payment of £1,500 in February. Close to 200 subject specific scholarships and excellence prizes are awarded across the academic spectrum.

The fun stuff

Nightlife: ustling both on and off campus. Two union venues, LCR on campus and Waterfront in the city, hold gig nights several times a week. Norwich has a pub for every night of the year and has been voted the best student music venue in the country by the music industry’s Live! magazine, with 50 big name bands performing each year. Past acts have included Professor Green, Example, Tom Odell, Bastille, Coldplay and Ed Sheeran. Voted top Student Union in the latest WhatUni Awards.

Price of a pint: The average pint in Norwich costs £3.

Sporting reputation: Could be worse- ranked 50th in the current BUCS league.

Notable societies: Wannabe DJs keen to follow in the foosteps of Greg James should try their hand at the student radio station Livewire 1350. Fans of all things scary can join the Horror Society with at least one trip per semester to a theme park's Hallowe'en event or a haunted house. Xtreme BBQ throw events in the most extreme of places while the Deviant Society unites students with a passion for alternative music.

Glittering alumni: Booker Prize winning writers Ian McEwan, Anne Enright and Kazuo Ishiguro; explorer Benedict Allen; meteorologist Penny Tranter; Nobel prize-winning cancer researcher Sir Paul Nurse; actors Jack Davenport and Matt Smith, film director Gurinder Chadha and Radio One DJ Greg James.

Alternative prospectus: Read a whole host of student comments on the university at Which? University here and What Uni? here.