City, University of London Reviews 8

In 2011, at the age of 19, I started my first job working in catering at City, University of London (now known as City, St George’s, University of London). I felt accepted and appreciated—something I had struggled with during my time at high school.

I worked at City University until I was almost 21. Looking back, I wish I had not been influenced into resigning, as I felt that two senior members of staff were not supportive or understanding and never checked on my wellbeing.

During my time at the university, I formed some wonderful friendships—some of the best I have ever had—and I also had a short relationship towards the end of my time there. I believe that, under more supportive circumstances, this relationship could have developed further.

We would often laugh and get on happily together, but at other times the atmosphere was very difficult and toxic. We had a sense of connection and support among ourselves.

At the beginning of my employment, we were given a book in which we were instructed to write the catering department contact number in. If I was unwell, I would refer to this book to find the number for the catering department office and call in. This was the only contact information I had for the workplace, and I found it unusual that I did not have my close colleagues’ numbers.
On my last day of employment when I got home water was spilled in my bag and the book was damaged, resulting in the loss of the only number I had.

I remember that on my last day at City University, I was given two cupcakes as a leaving gift made by one of the senior members of staff, who still works there now.
After eating them, I felt very unwell, similar to experiencing food poisoning for the first time, which was distressing.

I believe that my early career progression was affected. I did not receive a reference from my first role, and I felt misled into leaving without securing another position, which resulted in a prolonged period—nearly three years—before I found new employment.

A few years ago, I sent my CV to City, St George’s, University of London. One of the senior managers who was there when I worked there responded and signed his name.

He replied via text message, stating that he could not remember me. The message was written VERY slang and all informal and I found the overall content to be unprofessional and inappropriate, particularly given that it came from a university setting.

I had an awful experience with Martin Deal he was rude and unhelpful. Please do not do a business degree or short course with him.

City university is the WORST!!!! WORST UNIVERSITY EVERR!!!!! Please DO NOT ATTEND this university especially if your going to do Adult Nursing. This uni is a big SCAM they exploits students take there money and give nothing in return. When I say nothing, 2 whole years of cancelled lessons( and no this was not during covid). Whole 2 years and they taught me probably one lesson of how to do manual blood pressure. Countless cancelled lessons and clinical practice. Extremely unprofessional lecturers, No support from lecturers even when concerns are raised multiple times they brush it off and do not care about the students at all. Honestly been the most shocking experience ever. Not worth the money.

This University is the biggest scam amongst scams of London! They don’t care about you as human and even less as a student, once you paid, you get replies that starts with Unfortunately!!!
Not even a single department is worth wasting your time and money!! Don’t study here!!!!!!

Shockingly bad experiencing in the Health Sciences (Adult Nursing MSc) department!!!

I have completed one masters at City and had a great experience in Economics - I then decided to move into Nursing and decided to stay with City due to my previous good experience and I that was the worst mistake.

I am a member of Prolific who help researchers get data for Research they want done through surveys where the users get paid for their time depending on the lenght of the survey etc.. Recently I received an Invitation do a survey which was 15 minutes long for £5, about artificial intelligence being fair.

I did the survey which lasted longer than 15 minutes and at the end I was expecting a completion code, which did not materialise, so I clicked the complete study icon and it gave me a code which I then submitted. A bit later in the day I noticed that the submiossion had been "timed out". I contacted the researcher and explained that what had happened.

This is the reply I received "Dear Participant, Firstly, I really would like to THANK YOU if you have taken the time to complete our survey. We received a lot of good and high-quality data. THANK YOU!!! However, there has also been a technical issue with the completion time parameter setup, which caused most of you to be timed out. You may know that when a participant is timed-out, Prolific looks for new participants. As a result, we had more than 1300 responses, instead of 400. Our initial project allowance was for 400 participants, but as I said previously, we really value participants' effort and time in taking the survey, and we recognise that the issue was not on your side. So, we as a team worked hard in the past few days to figure out the problem, and see what we could do to pay back most of you. I manually checked all participants in timed-out and awaiting review status, and we raised our allowance as much as we could. As a result, 89% of the total submissions will be accepted despite your timed-out status. If you receive a rejection, please do not take it personally. The rejection is not related to the timed-out status per se, but to the criteria, we mentioned in our ad (e.g., multiple attention checks failed, survey completed too quickly, etc.). Further, Prolific recorded some submissions of which we haven't received any data, and so we are unable to verify and accept those submissions. I will reject or approve and pay participants who result in "awaiting review" status first, and I will move on to those in "timed-out" later. Please, consider that on our side we have to compute the new budget needed to cover the extra cost and make a new payment to Prolific. We will do it as quick as possible, but it may take a few days. Do not panic, if you don't receive your reward straightforward. I hope you can all appreciate our effort and work and this message clarifies how we have decided to proceed. Thank you again for taking part in the survey."

This is my reply "Thank you for your message. I'm not totally satisfied with your message. I know I spent a great deal of time doing the survey with all the checks correctly done. If I find a rejection then I will put it down to a bad experience and put my experience down in trust pilot. Your survey should have been tested before being issued."

The reply from the researcher is "The survey was tested, unfortunately, we cannot see the completion time when we test it, and so that issue was missed during the test. Timed-out submissions which will not be approved will not be penalised. I will leave them as timed-out. Without a rejection you will not be penalised.".

So basically the research team have not tested the survey properly and have data from more than 400 participants, 900 more to be precise, whose data they will use but not pay for their time. They should have limited the participants to 400 and not let it be overscribed as other surbeys on prolific do. Hopefully people will be aware of this university team and avoid completing surveys from them

Waste of time. Having sent off requests for an MA in Creative Writing through their online portal - received no response at all. Waited a few days then called the number on their website (020 70405060) which rang out no less than seven times! Amazingly poor service. I will now spend my £6000 at a university that gives a damn.

I applied to City, University of London via UCAS to start my full-time undergraduate degree in Law. When I received an unconditional offer I was so pleased and excited that I had been offered a place at such a prestige and recognised university.

What I didn't realise is that I would fall victim to a group of immature students who felt it was acceptable to target and bully me.

The way the University have dealt with my concerns has been one of fruitful at most. The University seemed disinterested and unable to do very much. I withdrew from my course via a long email to the City Law School detailing my concerns, evidence of the bullying behaviour and list of my concerns with supporting evidence all of which were completely ignored and all I received was an email to confirm that I was withdrawn from my course.

Due to my experiences I am not in a position to recommend this university especially to study Law. It is a real shame because I expected such a positive and great experience to be let down by the institution and its staff.

It seems universities nowadays simply want your money and feel they have to do nothing in return. Fortunately Student Finance England did not charge me for fees after hearing about this experience but I would strongly recommend that you research this university, its staff and ethics before confirming a place.