[Music] my name is Chimnaza, I'm a first year student on the digital media Computing course and I chose BCU as my firm choice and the university in London as my insurance. To decide what you need to put as your firm and insurance choices the most important thing you need to do is to research now that might sound really obvious but there's more specific things you need to do you should go to university open days you can even consider staying at the city for the weekend to get a feel for the city and the university itself should also look at University websites to see what facilities are available, what modules are covered on the courses and compare and contrast across the different unis and what they offer. Visit the top ones to know what ones you are most likely to enjoy both the university experience and the city itself, for instance I visited BCU on one of the open days and looked around the university as well as the city I also had a chance to speak with with members of staff who are currently my lecturers professors and tutors and that helped me make a more confident decision as to making BC you my firm Choice when deciding where to study it's important to go with your go as well as previous experiences for instance if you currently live in a city and do not like it very much you might consider going to uni in a more remote area. When going for open days you should also consider spending time in the city itself, visiting landmarks and popular areas to see if you would enjoy living in that place if there's a particular location you've always thought about it would be a good idea to research universities in that area as going to uni would be a good opportunity to fulfill that dream of yours you could also do research on the locations you're considering on social media such as Tik Tok as there are pages which give ideas on fun things to do at different locations. When you've gotten to the point where you have to choose between say three unis, it's really helpful to ride that out a list of pros and cons for each of them transport links in each location are a very important point to consider you should consider both connectivity within the city itself as well as going out of the city. Whether that's airports to go out of the country travelling back home for holidays or just going out with your friends out to other cities you should also consider how close you want to be to home. For instance, you might want to stay really close to home as you'd want to commute to University or you might want to enjoy the uni experience and be far away from home and only visit when you really want to. For instance I only go back home on major holidays like Christmas, Easter and summer and this is because I believed moving further away from home would allow me to live more independently and develop more skills on my own. So once you have all your list of pros and cons both the ones mentioned earlier and others that you might have thought of yourself you can then weigh them up to see what un need are more suited to your personality and goals while I knew that I wanted to live in the city having visited London a couple of times I thought it was too busy but coming to Birmingham it had the same city feel vibe and opportunities but more relaxed and suited to my personality. After doing research I also found that cost of living in Birmingham was much cheaper than in London so I decided that coming up to study in Birmingham would be more financially efficient than staying back in London. I decided to come study at BCU against my insurance choice for a number of reasons, first of all BCU has much better facilities for my course, for instance, there's a networks lab, there are studios for filming things and broadcasting and while researching I found that STEAMhouse, a new building dedicated to my faculty had just been unveiled at the uni and I believe this would be a great opportunity for me to make use of the facilities there. I also chose BCU because of the industry links. like I mentioned earlier I study digital media Computing there's bigger production companies like the BBC and there's also other smaller ones within and around Birmingham that will be beneficial for me to take advantage of during and after my study. I also decided to come study at BCU because I believe that they had more experience in my course as they had been running my course digital media Computing though under different names for over 10 years while my other uni had just introduced the course. Once you're down to your final few universities it is generally advisible to choose the university with higher entry requirements as your firm choice and the one with slightly lower requirements as your insurance as this gives you more leeway when results day comes around. However, if your favorite University which has better facilities has lower entry requirements you might consider placing that as your firm choice and another one with higher requirements as your insurance. At the end of the day, these decisions are down to you so make sure you think everything through and choose what's best for you.