A trip to Edinburgh University

To find out more about the University and the city of Edinburgh, on the 25 January we travelled up from Oxford by train, which took about four and a half hours. We left on Friday, which by complete coincidence was Scotland’s national day, or night. Burns’ night is celebrated in memory of Scotland’s most famous poet, Robert Burns, who wrote poems about all kinds of Scottish interests including haggis. That’s a traditional dish which we’re sure lots of people were eating that night, but not us. It’s made of sheep’s stomach stuffed with offcuts and barley.

On Saturday we explored the city before visiting the University. Edinburgh has really nice monuments, great cathedrals, and actually, the coolest part of all of it was that there is an old, inactive volcano just outside the city, called Arthur’s seat, after King Arthur. You can hike up it in about an hour, and have an amazing view of Edinburgh. We did that, and the wind up there was incredible – super, super cold. But the view was really beautiful. It’s definitely worth it. Afterwards, you might be interested in whisky bars, if old enough!

If you like hiking, and outdoor sport, Edinburgh is a university city you should consider, because it’s very easy to get out to the countryside. The city is also fun. It’s full of restaurants. We found that there is a newer and older part to the city, with Edinburgh castle, which looks really nice.

The University of Edinburgh is in the top five UK universities. It is one of the most applied for universities too, with only about 10% admissions. The university has some notable alumni, including Charles Darwin and Robert Louis-Stevenson. There are about 40,000 students, from all over the world. All sorts of sports clubs are available, and there is a busy student social life. The campus is spread out over the whole city, so we were only able to visit the science campus. We had one hour, which was just enough time. The library was huge, with four floors, and quiet study areas like we have here, and at Oxford Brookes. So for IB1s making applications, Edinburgh might be somewhere to consider. It’s definitely a very good university.

Written by IB1 students, Laurin Demmler and Bennett Thompson.

Think you’d be interested in applying to Edinburgh University? At EF Academy, we guide our students through every step of the admissions process.