St Mary’s University College

Well known locally, there’s only a limited number of courses on offer here. It is primarily known as the college where graduates go to be trained to become teachers. I’ve only been there on a few occasions to attend the odd conference type event but the university attracts quite a lot of visitors in late July and early August, as it’s a venue that hosts many lectures and exhibitions during the West Belfast Festival (see my review).

St Mary’s College is a college of Queen’s University of Belfast. It is where I spent three years getting myself a degree, but mainly where I spent three years hiding away from the real world. It is a small college that deals with both teaching degrees and the liberal arts degree. The fact that it is so small means that every student is well looked after, often with classes in third year never exceeding 30 students.
It has all its own facilities including a library, canteen, gym and lots of banks of computers, but students are also able to use all Queen’s facilities also, so I have to say I was really well catered for in those three enjoyable years.
The lecturers were great as well. They were really into what they taught. I have often heard horror stories from people who went to other universities including Queens, about lecturers who really could care less, or even some who could barely teach. This is not the case at St Mary’s College at all.

St Mary’s is the university I went to. In honesty, I didn’t really get involved very much with a lot of the nights out or activities they put on. It has a lot of students from the country and 99% of the time, their idea of a good night out, was my idea of a nightmare! But I still loved the place. It was my 2^nd attempt at university life and the small scale size of the place made it a lot easier to deal with. There is a real sense of community at St, Mary’s and due to it’s size, it was easy to get to know all the lecturers and staff which made resolving any problems a lot easier too! The staff are very attentive to the students and I was always well informed of all the things I needed to do to leave with a good degree. Even though, sometimes I complained about it a bit to much, I wouldn’t change my choice of university at all.

St Mary’s is a teaching college on the Falls Road, and acts as part of Queen’s University, Belfast. I have a girlfriend who went here and loved it, and a number of friends who go here and love it.
As I went to Queen’s, I cannot really compare the teaching quality of the college, but I have been a number of times and walking into the college creates a real sense of community. With around 1,300 pupils, the college is much smaller than Queen’s. It is almost like a school, where you have corridors of classrooms and a small number of students so everyone knows everyone else.
It is impressive to create a university which has such a togetherness as St. Mary’s. The only difficulty I would have is that it is situated so far away from the University Quarter of Belfast (i.e. Queen’s) so walking to and from can be a bit of a trek.
There is a strong influence of religion on the teaching in the school, which some may disagree with. To me this can make it seem too much like a school but if it makes teachers for the future, then I can’t complain