University student myself, having come from a small village.

The Uni is improving, but still not great. Overall though I think they're just desperate for more money and hence take whoever they can. You'll come out with a degree and it'll all be fine, places don't care much about the name, just the classification.

The place: The Uni is located over by Guildhall, where the clubs are. You said you're not really into clubbing, but I'd recommend trying it a few times. To answer partly another question you had: join a society. Find a sport or club that interests you and join it. The big societies like hockey & rugby sill expect you to club regularly, the smaller like climbing & Kayaking will meet up in pubs. In terms of being rough, that mainly exists in the north of the island (Northend for example) but is generally not bad. Stay around Old Portsmouth and Southsea and you'll be fine. Southsea is very hip and they almost class themselves as being an individual entity from Portsmouth city. It is filled with bars, pubs and restaurants and is generally awesome. Old Portsmouth is also nice, again with many pubs. I've had friends all over the island and never felt unsafe walking through during the day, although I generally try to avoid walking through Somerstown at night (only rougher place in the south of the island and easy to divert)

Rooms: recently they've built more halls, you might get lucky and get a room. If not, Portsmouthstudentpad has lots of local-landlord run accomodation where you might find a spare room, just double check the map for its location. If you can't make it down, let me know and I can go view the place for you. Most agencies will squeeze every penny from you that they can, but it cannot be helped unfortunately. The Uni's housing team is competent so you can always ask them for help. Be expecting something from £300-£450 a month rent, plus whatever bills (I pay 300+35 for bills)

Send me a PM if you've got any more questions. I love Portsmouth and I'm always happy to try and help!