I thought I'd start this little list of sites on the web useful to students and those applying to university. The idea is that i will add a link or two to a student based site or interesting news article related to students every few days.

Hopefully you'll find it useful, or if not useful at least mildly interesting. If you have any comments on the sites being reviewed, or want to add your own please do so. I'll kick off with the first post below.

*Stickied*

http://www.studentmix.com/freshers-guide.html

Studentmix is one of those sites offering discounts and free products to students. In reality most of the offers are open to anyone, and sadly most of them are also pretty rubbish: usually things like cash back on credit cards or online gambling and free samples of shampoo or tampons. However you might find something interesting if you keep looking aroud.

The interesting this is Studentmix also have a few student guides on their site, which is where the above link points to. This is a nice little guide which covers things like settling in, what to bring, budgeting and studying. Theres also a small forum, though it's not very busy yet but might liven up in the coming months.

http://www.cheapunibooks.co.uk

Cheapunibooks is a site with only one purpose, to find the cheapest online stockists of university textbooks on the internet. The site is very simple and easy to use, you type in the name and author (or just the ISBN) of the books on your book list, it tells you the cheapest place to buy the books from and how much money you can save off the retail price.

The only problem is it doesn’t seem search for the books very well. I tried it with a few sample book lists on the web and it never seemed to be able to match the books from just the title and the author often only matching one book from 5 or 6 on my list. It often worked better with just the title – though this isn’t very useful as many academic textbooks similar names. If you take the time to make sure it finds all your books it does exactly what is says.

If you do use this for looking for books remember you can often get a better deal at the student union-run second-hand bookshop which many unis have.

http://www.studenthealth.co.uk

Studenthealth is really just a general health site. It contains factsheets on various problems and diseases and sends out a weekly newsletter, but doesn’t have much which is really specific to students. It contains a list of the websites of the various health centres at universities around the UK, but apart from this and the problem page, most of the information is available from other sources.

The problem page is genuinely interesting. Though it mainly deals with sexual problems and disorders, it is probably of some use to most students or young adults and there’s also the option to submit problems if there’s something you’re worrying about.

Given all the advice on ***Filtered*** I’m surprised there’s very little material or ***Filtered*** or drugs – the two other stereotypical student pastimes…

http://neighbourhood.statistics.gov.uk

Not exactly aimed at students this one, but still a useful site. Run by the national statistics office it provides you a useful picture of the area around your university with statistics on healthcare, housing crime and a range of other statistics. All you need to do is type in a postcode and you’re provides with statistics for your postcode, the local area and the national average.

Most of the data is from the 2001 census, and so is fairly old, but it should still give you a reasonable idea of what to expect. There’s no facility to compare postcodes, but it’s easy enough to look at the differences between your home and university but it’s easy enough to crosscheck statistics manually. Just remember a few statistics won’t give you the full picture of your university, but it makes interesting reading all the same.

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr...alt.uk.law

alt.uk.law is a newsgroup rather than a website, so it can be read using a newsreader or a website like google groups. Though not created with students in mind this group is a pretty good place to start looking if you need some advice on the law. Common questions about things like housing, council tax and employment have often been already answered, but if you can’t find an answer to your question the group seem pretty helpful.

The only problem is there’s no way to tell whether the advice you’ve been offered is 100% correct, so should probably just be used for guidance. If you do have problems at university where you need to know exactly what the law says it’s best to go to the advice centre at your university or the Citizens Advice Bureau.

http://www.axeuk.com/aua/faq.txt

This is the frequently asked question list of the newsgroup alt.uk.a-levels. Though the newsgroup itself is often full of ether spam or general chit-chit, most of the important questions have been grouped neatly together in this useful text document.

In addition to covering A-levels, the faq also deals with questions about applying to university and Ucas, grades and exams, going to university and university life in general covering every subject from “I got rejected by Oxford - is my life over?” to “Some bastard keeps pinching my milk!”. The FAQ is constantly updated and rewritten, so if you have a general question about Ucas or university this should be your first point of call.

http://www.rupissed.com

If you’re following the stereotypical student life religiously, chances are you’ll spend a large proportion of your time at university either consuming ***Filtered*** or suffering the after effects. This is where R U Pissed comes in. The main part of the site is a blood ***Filtered*** level calculator, where you can tap in a few statistics about yourself and the things you’ve been drinking, and it will tell you how much ***Filtered*** you drunk, much is left in your blood and an estimate of your blood ***Filtered*** level in percent. Once you’ve found this out you can check your blood ***Filtered*** level against a list of clinical symptoms all the way from “Behaviour nearly normal” at 0.05% to “Death from respiratory arrest” at 0.45%.

There’s also interesting information about how breathalysers work and how hangovers are caused. Overall it’s more of a fun site than a useful information resource, though it might be useful to calculate your blood ***Filtered*** level after a few drunken nights in freshers week and see how much more (or less) drunk you are than you expected.

http://www.uk-learning.net/

UK-learning is probably the most active internet community of students in the UK, and certainly one of the best places for finding information quickly. It’s basically just an internet forum where anyone can post to ask for and offer advice, but the sheer number of members mean that you should have no problems finding information you are looking for related to education in the UK.

Along with the main forum for general chat, there are also specific forums for academic work, university, Oxbridge and Ucas personal statements. The Oxbridge and personal statements forums tend to be pretty dead at certain times of the year, though if you have any questions someone will be around to ask.

The majority of UK-Learning’s users are GCSE, A-level or university students, though there are many younger and older people who use the board. There is a strong community feel, which can make it difficult for new members to get involved, though does mean questions will get answered more quickly, as people will point you in the direction of prominent members with certain areas of expertise.

Recently the site has been plagued with huge server problems. Server busy messages now pop up every evening when the site gets busy and make it difficult to get around the site and read posts. For all its failings UK-Learning is probably the most active UK student community on the internet and should be your first stop for both general and specific university related questions.

http://www.busaresults.org.uk/overallpoints.asp

You probably already know about the Times and the Guardian university league tables, which rank universities by a whole bunch of statistics such as teaching quality, research, spending per student and more. The BUSA table works on slightly different principles – it ranks universities by their performance at various sports.

The link above takes you to a league table compiled from 40 different sports, but you can also see the top performing universities at individual sports if you have a particular interest in a single type. Topping thre overall league table by a long way is Loughborough, then come Bath, Birmingham, Nottingham, Cambridge, and Exeter.

You might find some of this useful if you excel at a particular sport, but remember it’s probably not a great guide to the quality of the sports facilities at any particular uni, so if you really want to know exactly what colour the water is in the swimming pool or how many miles you have to trek to the rugby pitch you should probably visit the place.