Why I chose Lancaster

By Agastya Narayanan, January 2025.

Living in Lancaster: The Perfect Balance of City and Countryside

To start, I’m not a big city person. Large cities can feel suffocating. It’s fast paced, people blitz through the streets looking like they need to urgently be somewhere. I’m not much of a countryside person either. Back home in Bali, whenever I go to my grandma’s place, it’s wet, muddy and there’s too many insects that behave like heat-seeking missiles that annoy you every minute of the day. There’s nothing much to do, and the wifi is pretty slow. Though, I love our beaches.

The UK countryside though is different. I have quite the limited experience since I’ve only been here a few months, but the times I’ve strolled up to the only 30 minutes away by bus/car Lake District right above Lancaster, I can only describe with one sentence: “I’d like to buy a cabin here”. It’s still wet and muddy, expected from UK weather. But when the sun decides to show itself, it’s quite beautiful. Living here has made me appreciate the sun a lot more – whenever it does show itself I drop everything and go outside.

Lancaster is a neat hybrid of ‘city’ and ‘countryside’. I think it's the perfect balance. The highlight of the city is this small castle with a modern cafe inside it (it’s really nice actually). But it’s not isolated either. You can easily book a train to other cities like Manchester for a day trip. The countryside part of Lancaster, the trees, grass and open space around campus keep my “urban-big-city-imposed-suffocation” at bay. Because of that, I am very happy to be studying here at Lancaster.

Lancaster’s reputation and rankings

During my initial research I also found that Lancaster had quite a high student satisfaction and happiness index out of most of the universities in the UK. Now that I live here, it’s quite obvious why. I think a lot of students probably felt the same ‘click’ I did when I came here, experiencing the city-countryside goldilocks zone.

There’s also a long array of societies – if you’re interested in something, there’s probably a society for it. And on-campus accommodation here is actually… good!

You’ve probably scrolled on TikTok and Instagram, seeing the horror of other university-managed accommodation. Unmanaged rooms, fire alarms, broken amenities, the entire mix. Here in Lancaster, the accommodation and service is very good. Any time I found something had broken and requested for a fix, they did it within 2 days.

To preface, I didn’t really look at the academic reputation of Lancaster University before coming here – My mind was set on the greenery. But Lancaster is high in the university league tables. Lancaster University is ranked 10th in the UK (Complete University Guide 2025) and 141st in the QS World University Rankings 2025. It’s a great privilege to be at a university where I am genuinely grateful and fulfilled to be studying at and have a very good reputation.

My course, Architecture, is ranked 7th in the UK which was also quite surprising. The architecture school here is relatively new, around 5 years as of writing this. Because of this, they’ve taken a different approach than what I’ve seen other universities do. The course is more focused on sustainability and more of a design-oriented approach (I’ve seen first years on social media do practically fine arts for the entirety of their first year).

We also have a very charming building which houses the second and third year studio (I am very excited to work there in the coming years), Bailrigg House, the very first building of Lancaster University.

Final thoughts

If you happen to stumble across this blog and are set on coming to the UK, I’d recommend putting Lancaster as one of your top choices if you’re like me and really value that city / countryside balance and also academic reputation.