Why Westminster?

It’s the London Stock Exchange and the City, the Palace and Parliament, and every type of performance art imaginable. It’s the bustling shopping streets and the West End, the tranquil parks and squares, and centuries of study and culture in libraries and museums. It’s where tradition meets cutting edge, underground collides with mainstream, and it offers the ideal environment for living and learning. London is this and more, and as a Westminster student, it’s all your campus.

Whatever you want to be, wherever you want to go, you can start your journey at the University of Westminster. We know that career prospects and progression are a priority for many of you, which is why we make sure our courses are professionally relevant. We’ve built strong links with business and professionals across London, throughout the UK and around the world, and many of our courses offer placement years and internships that will help you to prepare for working life.

Studying at Westminster will be a life-changing experience. You will further your academic development, meet and make friends with other students from around the world, and have the chance to enjoy a whole new range of social, sporting and cultural activities.

Part of our job is to help you make the most of those opportunities. From the learning environment and academic facilities to a support network which includes our career development team, counselling and advice service, disability support and chaplaincy and interfaith advice, we are here to ensure that your student experience is an unbeatable one.

Akwaaba, bienvenue, witamy – and welcome in more than 150 different languages, to our students from around the world. Westminster has one of the largest and most diverse international student bodies of any university. To make sure you feel at home wherever you come from, we also have an international student adviser team, an international students’ welcome programme, and a wide range of additional courses (including international foundation and English language short courses) to help you study. To find out more, visit westminster.ac.uk/international

The University of Westminster has over 900 teaching staff, many of who are world-class specialists, and award-winning experts in their field. Our staff are supported by up to 900 visiting lecturers, so as a student you will be able to learn from both leading academics and professional practitioners. Our commitment to maintaining the highest possible academic standards has led to excellent Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) ratings in subjects as diverse as Arabic, building, communication and media (including music), integrated health, and tourism.

We're proud of our record of excellence in research that makes a difference – to academia, to the professions, to business, to industry – and much of the teaching you receive will be underpinned by our research work. Our research has also been highly rated in independent evaluations. In the most recent Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) in 2008, our Communications and Media Research was rated as the best in the UK, and we achieved world-leading and internationally excellent status for most of our work in Art and Design, and Architecture and the Built Environment. Almost 80 per cent of our submitted research across 20 subject areas was judged to be of international quality

Your degree is an important investment in your future, but funding your study can be difficult. Which is why the University of Westminster offers the largest scholarship programme of any UK university – more than £4 million last year – to UK, EU and international students. This includes cash awards for studying specific subjects, partial fee waivers which recognise academic excellence, achievement awards for students who perform particularly well on their courses, and even full international scholarships covering tuition fees, accommodation, living expenses and travel to London.

From Quintin Hogg and Sir George Cayley to The Feeling and Christopher Bailey, at the University of Westminster we have been associated with pioneers throughout our 170-year history. Our alumni have gone on to lead the way in science, architecture, politics, law, sport, media and business. Here are just a few of the notable names and dates in our history – and there’s many more to come.

You will be proud of the work that you do at Westminster – we’re certainly proud of our students. So to show the world just how good your work is, we have some of the best student exhibition and gallery space. From P3, the dramatic underground space dedicated to the creative industries at our Marylebone Campus, to the contemporary exhibition area of London Gallery West at our Harrow Campus, and the recently opened gallery space at the University’s headquarters on Regent Street, we can offer you a window onto the world for your work.

We are committed to creating the best learning environment, and providing the right equipment and facilities, to help you to achieve your potential during your studies. That includes all the IT and library facilities you would expect, and much more besides.

For example, our state-of-the-art film and television studios, computer technology, broadcast equipment and music studios at Harrow Campus are among the best media and creative arts educational facilities in Europe. We have recently completed a multi-million pound refurbishment of our Life Sciences laboratories at our Cavendish Campus, while the Financial Markets Suite (part of the Westminster Business School facilities at our Marylebone Campus) gives students, staff and researchers first-hand exposure to technology widely adopted in all the leading global investment banks.