University of Dundee
The University of Dundee is located south of Dundee city centre, and lies directly on the banks of the river Tay, Scotland's longest river. Dundee is Scotland's fourth largest city, after Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen, yet the river and the vast quantity of surrounding parkland offer a refuge of tranquillity from an otherwise busy, industrial city.
As well as its Scottish Premier League football team, Dundee is perhaps most famous for its three formerly thriving industries: Jute, Jam and Journalism. However, more recently the city has made a number of efforts to replace its industrial reputation with a more modern, cultural and cosmopolitan one, and with beautiful natural scenery and a wide range of museums, art galleries and theatres on offer, this target seems attainable. Helping this cause is the growth of the city’s largest university, the University of Dundee, which in recent years has enjoyed considerable success in terms of annual applicant numbers and independent student and teaching survey results.
Following a long period of rapid expansion during the late 1990s and early 2000s, the University of Dundee continues to attract a growing number of undergraduate applications each year. Currently there are almost eighteen thousand University of Dundee students living in Dundee, a city with a total population of only one hundred and forty-three thousand people.
This student community, when combined with student populations from other local universities and colleges, adds to the lively and cosmopolitan atmosphere that Dundee has long tried to develop. As a result, students at the university enjoy a vibrant, student-friendly city atmosphere, which does its best to cater for their needs. As well as numerous bars and clubs, the city offers a wide range of entertainment and leisure facilities including multi-screen cinemas, shopping centres and sports facilities.
The university itself has received several nominations for the 'Sunday Times University of the Year' prize in recent years, partly due to its continual commitment to upholding and further improving the quality of its already highly rated research and teaching standards. In recent years, this aim has been supported by a number of investments that have resulted in improvement and expansion of the teaching and student facilities at the university.
As of 2008, drop out rates at the university were below the national average, while less than 4.3% of graduates were unemployed for more than two years after completing their degree.
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