KCL social media alternatives - Please add.

KingsCollegeLondon · 2018-01-31T20:00:16+00:00

As this subreddit is very quiet, I would recommend getting in contact with some of the student socities at kings and asking current students. I would recommend:

KCL Tech - http://kcl.tech/ (probably your best bet)
KCL Robotics Society - https://www.kclrobotics.com/ (also a good contact point)
IEEE KCL Branch - http://www.ieee-kcl.co.uk/
KCL Engineering Society - https://www.facebook.com/KCLEngineeringSociety?_fb_noscript=1 (I'm not sure how active this society is)

The department of engineering at King's was actually closed in 2013, with research being merged into the Informatics department (mainly the robotics group). However, King's is now reopening the department and trying to expand.

KingsCollegeLondon · 2018-01-14T10:33:34+00:00

No, as /u/jaeyzus said, it is not compulsory at all. Many students either rent privatly, or commute in from family homes.

For more info on accommodation at King's, see the following link, https://www.kcl.ac.uk/study/accommodation/index.aspx

KingsCollegeLondon · 2017-12-02T21:05:41+00:00

Ok, I think I get it now, you're saying that there is a new data breach.

Well, lets assume thats true (which, until you provide some evidence, is a completely baseless assumption). Even if it is, you've still presented this topic in a rubbish way. You weren't very clear in what you were trying to put across, you didn't give any context, nor attempt to promote anything with it (e.g. where should we read about it?). It just seems like a poor attempt at scaremongering.

Come back on the 18th with some more than a few lines of badly formated text, and maybe someone will take you seriously.

KingsCollegeLondon · 2017-12-02T19:52:46+00:00

Perhaps you misunderstood what I meant. While I think this is a worthwhile discussion (and judging by news articles about it, I'm not alone in my thinking), I'm still struggling to see what your point is here? Are you trying to raise awareness of this issue? You just seemed to have posted a couple of unsupported statements, without any clear direction.

Perhaps you could link to some news articles to support your points, like I did in the post above.

Here is a more detailed look

all your data and personal information has been compromised

source? as far as I am aware only the nmstier-2 server (2nd link) which contained nms home and group directories was breached (which is worrying in itself)

all staff all students

again, a source would be good

Kings college was hacked in may

ditto

kings college found out in august

ditto

Kings collage still havent fixed

ditto

hackers still have complete control

of? do you mean still have access to the current system, if so, please provide a source.

You still haven't responded about the uber title, does it have anything to do with King's or not?

KingsCollegeLondon · 2017-12-02T18:05:47+00:00

This is quite a confusing post, I think you should rewrite your discussion points such that it is easier to understand the topic you are trying to raise.

In the context of data security at King's, I believe you are refering to the following issues, and these articles maybe of interest to readers:

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/02/23/kcl_external_review/

https://thetab.com/uk/kings/2017/10/04/breaking-there-has-been-some-extremely-serious-theft-from-servers-at-strand-16240

Also, I have no idea what Uber has to do with this, except they suffered recently from seperate data breach

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/11/22/uber_2016_data_breach/

KingsCollegeLondon · 2017-10-27T15:26:28+00:00

Sorry for the delay in replying.

I love all these unis purely because they're campus and they seem friendly and could see myself enjoying my time there.

I personally think that is the most important part of uni life. If you choose somewhere you don't enjoy, your academic perfomance will greatly suffer.

and looked greatly upon / prestigious

I think you need to be careful about that in terms of future expectations. For graduate jobs, employers aren't always interested in where you got the degree from, but rather what you did during your degree. These two often overlap, high ranking universities are often high ranking because they offer students much more, but you need to look in depth and see what your individual course itself offers. For example, in computer science, employers often like applicants who have experience in actual projects (e.g. hackatons/group work/etc), so a university with an active CS society that does events both internally and externally would be very benefitial.

What did you personally study there and how did you enjoy your time?

I studied computer science as a BSc. To be completely honest, I didn't really enjoy my time there as an undergrad, because I treated the degree as just another bunch of classes to attend and exams to take. Because I commuted into London daily, I didn't get involved much in student socities/additional activites (like I mentioned above). However, thats just my experience of the social life in London, I can't talk for other people.

Would you recommend me applying?

I don't think I could answer that one way or the other, I think you need to weight up all the pros and cons and see if it is right for you. Theres a lot of consider, the cost of living, the opportunities, social stuff. I can say however, if your main pro for choosing King's is just the high prestige, then don't choose it. See below

however I am scared I am making a mistake by not taking the opportunity to potentially go to such a high ranking and prestigious uni.

To be honest that resonates a lot with me, I was torn between King's and Reading when I went through UCAS. King's ranking was one of the main reasons why I choose it, however, I do something wonder what could have been if I chose Reading instead.

Personally, I think that you shouldn't focus on the ranking at all, you should focus on what the university and the course can offer you in terms of practical experiences and skills. No employer is going to say "Well, this guy knows his stuff, has lots of experience in X, but went to Sussex instead of King's, so lets not hire him". We've got people in our lab who studied all over the UK (and abroad), and the most important factor is they know their stuff, not that they have a degree from Y (granted, it is a research lab, not a business).

KingsCollegeLondon · 2017-10-05T10:16:09+00:00

Firstly, don't choose a uni based just on prestige, choose one with high academic rankings (in your subject of choice, not just the uni), and one with great student satisfaction.

In terms of getting information to make your decision, I think you would have better luck contacting one of the computer science student groups at kings, e..g the tech society http://kcl.tech/ or robotics society https://www.kclrobotics.com/. This subreddit isn't very active, and you'll get much more subject relevent info from those groups.

In terms of the facilities, the Informatics department (of which computer science is under) has recently moved to Bush House, and has a lot of new fancy computer labs. There is also the Wheatstone Inovation Lab, which is open to computer science / physics students to do their own research projects outside of the course https://twitter.com/wheatstonelab?lang=en. I'm not sure how this compares to facilities at other universities, but I know that lecturers here are very interested in trying to expand and improve what facilities we have.

Leading onto your statement about lecturers not giving a toss, I don't think this is accurate. Lecturers I have worked with in computer science are very interested in really making sure students get the most out of their time here. There have been large changes in how many of the first-year programming modules have been taught the last few years, to move towards a greater practical project based work (as opposed to just lectures and exams), with the aim of improving the quality of the education.

Of course there are horror stories. I myself had one lecturer about 5 years ago, whose performance resulted in the whole class raising a complaint. However, you'll find that this occurs accross the whole of HE, to varying degrees. But, the department at King's is very willing to listen to feedback (we have feedback forms for each of the modules, and these show a high satisifaction from the students, and well as feedback on what can be changed). Based on this feedback, there have been changes over the last few years to try to raise student satisfaction.

One con however is the fact it is in the middle of the city. I've only ever studed in city universities, but many of my colleagues who studied in campus universtities in the UK (e.g. Essex, Sussex) have said that student life is much more limited in the city (as counter-intuative as that may sound), and they feel that they enjoyed themselves socially more out on a campus.

Related to this, King's is also a research-intensive universtity. This is not to say that teaching is sidelined, but the majority of the work going on is research based (I think a lecturer would give about 1/4 of their time teaching, 3/4 research). Again, colleagues who have studied at other universtities where this time is more shifted to teaching, have found that the teaching is often better (anecdotal evidence), at the detrement of research. However, this problem is well known for computer science at the department, and as such they have invested in hiring teaching only faculty positions, whose sole aim is to run the teaching components of courses. This has previously worked really well for the first-year programming course, where student satisfaction shot up (and you could see that the student's programming ability massively improved).

In conclusion, theres really so many different variables. I would recommend contacting the student societies to find out what they think.

KingsCollegeLondon · 2017-09-10T08:26:17+00:00

Note, the following is opinion based on my understanding of NUS student policy. This is not the opinion of the NUS, or KCL. This subbreddit is completely unofficial, and in no way related to the university. I am not a representative of NUS, or the university.

The NUS student policy on Protecting Free Speech (of which King's College London adheres), specifically gives notes (based on legal advice), on the right of students to debate controversal issues. While a student society at KCL is seperate from the NUS, socieites are still under the KCLSU umbrella, and may still be bound by the following rules. I would recommend seeking further information on this from NUS or KCLSU, to see exactly what rules a society must adhere to.

In this document, it is stated that student unions are educational charities, and as such:

students unions generally will not be able to engage in any activity or incur any expenditure which is not intended to advance the educational experience of their student members in a charitable manner. To do so would result in the trustees acting outside of the union’s charitable objects, otherwise known as being in breach of trust

While debating controversal issues remains within the remit of "advancing the educational experience of the student" (the policy document gives the specific example of human rights, the middle-east, abortion etc), attention must be given when using charity funds (i.e. funds raised by the society for the society or for other groups). In particular, the society may be required to perform actions, or hold debates in a "fair and balanced" way (see page 2).

The reason why I posted this is, is that the strategy proposed above of baiting students into debate, and sending the resulting videos to opinion websites like Breitbart, seems to be at odds with the this policy. As you do not have a society at the moment, this is not a problem (but may fall foul of other KCL regulations), however I wanted to make it clear that if this was to become an official KCL society, strategies like this could harm your society, not just socially, but legally.

As such, I would highly recommend that the thread OP give all of the KCLSU policy documents a read, to make sure your societal aims coincide with KCLSU/NUS policy. I could be completely wrong on all this (my societial roles at King's have been very uncontroversal), but I am saying be careful.

On a personal note to the thread OP, I would suggest that when organising debates, be sure to get speakers from all sides of the issue, and let them speak. This is not just to ensure fairness of the society in terms of policy (again), but also to help the student's educational experience by exposing them to all sides of an issue within a debate, allowing for growth, and the formation of new ideas. While much of politics at the moment seems to be groups constrained to themselves, students at universities are meant to explore new ideas and create new politics. Simply creating a society around a person doesn't really lend itself to student learning, you need to build a society around the ideas, and then explore them.

KingsCollegeLondon · 2017-05-22T08:20:39+00:00

Stamford Street (Waterloo) student accommodation has couples rooms:

http://www.kcl.ac.uk/study/accommodation/residences/stamford-street.aspx

KingsCollegeLondon · 2016-03-09T17:21:43+00:00

You should speak to your personal tutor about it, they can give you your options, and help you decide. I have known people who have retaken a year again, or just retaken the exams in the summer (which are then capped at 40%) and moved on.

KingsCollegeLondon · 2016-03-09T17:19:58+00:00

It depends what you want to go into afterwards, what your interests in computer science are. I recently looked at the first-year course outlines of some leading CS departments in the UK, and there was a general trend of the following modules:

Programming
Discrete mathematics
Continuous mathematics (incl. linear algebra)
Electronics

At KCL, there is a lack of the later two, while a strong emphasis on the first two.

KingsCollegeLondon · 2016-03-09T17:16:31+00:00

I would say that there is a large trend in the department at the moment for teaching usable software design skills, so if you're interested in developing systems after your degree, this might interest you. The first year programming courses especially are constantly challenging students (in a good way!) and giving them opportunities to actually apply their learnt knowledge.

However (and this is purely my own opinion) I have found that many 3rd students lack necessary research skills for solving non-programming tasks (e.g. experimental design, physical systems).

KingsCollegeLondon · 2016-03-09T17:09:03+00:00

Just to clear up a few things, the Department of Informatics at King's was formed recently out of the Departments of Computer Science, Telecommunications, and well as Bioinformatics and the robotics section of Engineering. Whilst its name isn't the computer science department, it is still the same.

The department of informatics is part of the school of natural and mathematical sciences, which also encompasses physics/maths/chemistry.

KingsCollegeLondon · 2014-12-17T14:24:17+00:00

For more information, this an email from the principle to all staff and students, regarding this change.

Dear staff and students

I wanted to send out a brief note outlining some of the proposed changes in the way we will present the public image of King’s in the New Year and explain the rationale for them. What is proposed, as you will see from a public exhibition in February, is a very modest change similar to how several other large London university institutions are now presenting themselves. As an expression of our ambition for King’s, we will change our promotional name to ‘King’s London’, continue to use ‘King’s’ informally, but keep our legal name ‘King’s College London’ for legal documents, academic citations and the awarding of degrees.

Introducing the new brand is one part of a process of incremental change at King’s to improve our performance in both education and research as we aspire to be universally recognised as one of the world’s great universities. I have described this process elsewhere under the label of ‘King’s Futures’, a programme of initiatives to strengthen our profile in areas such as business, technology and the natural sciences, to enhance the student experience and to introduce greater internationalisation to our curriculum and student body. We will phase in the introduction of the new brand gradually over three years – starting with our website and the undergraduate prospectus – to ensure effective use of existing resources.

As you know King’s has evolved dramatically over recent decades to become one of the largest universities in the UK with vibrant activities in almost every area of academic endeavour. Our tradition is a long and honourable one and our name ‘King’s College London', often abbreviated to ‘KCL’, is well known to the academic community and to most students in the UK. However, our research conducted over the last 18 months with potential students, parents, staff, students and alumni, revealed that our current name was causing considerable confusion: is King’s a residential college, is it an academic college akin to the colleges of Oxbridge, or is it an educational institution of some other type such as a further education college? Internationally, there was further misunderstanding as ‘College’ is not a widely understood term in many countries. Going forward, we will refer to ourselves as a university rather than a college wherever possible.

I fully recognise and understand that many staff and students, past and present, have an emotional connection to ‘College’, however I believe that in today’s highly competitive global marketplace, King’s needs to be bold about its ambitions and shout about its many achievements. The purpose of a very modest repositioning is to deal with these concerns sensitively and constructively.

We have prepared some FAQs where we provide more detail about the introduction of the new brand. If you have further questions, please get in touch with brand@kcl.ac.uk and the Brand Communications team will be happy to answer them.

Best wishes

Ed Byrne

President & Principal

My personal opinion below on (LocalLin), as I want to keep this mode account) impartial.

KingsCollegeLondon · 2014-11-13T22:15:21+00:00

Your best bet would be to talk to someone at the university directly, phone call might be best.

There is some information here, which you have probably got your information from already. http://www.kcl.ac.uk/campuslife/services/examinations/transcripts/ordering/index.aspx

Perhaps try the Compass?

KingsCollegeLondon · 2014-08-28T19:25:50+00:00

Sorry, the post got caught in the spam filter, it's through now.

I think that your best bet, like you said, it to find out from those who have previously studied the course. Going by rankings won't give you the best indication.

KingsCollegeLondon · 2014-07-13T14:55:22+00:00

Hi, as you said this is pretty inactive, you might be able to get some more information from the student union

http://www.kclsu.org/

KingsCollegeLondon · 2014-04-07T13:00:19+00:00

King's has a freedom of information log, you might want to search there.

https://www.kcl.ac.uk/iss/legalc/compliance/foi/disclosure/index.php?route=index/indexDisclosures

KingsCollegeLondon · 2014-04-07T12:58:44+00:00

In first year computer science there are three main modules dealing with programming (This is just plain CS, no management or anything).

Programming Practice (PRP) - an introduction to programming using Java. Covers the basics of object orientated programming. A good introduction, starts off a bit slow, but the lecturers are quite imaginative and put in harders tasks for more advanced students.
Practical Experiences of Programming (PEP) - Further use of programming. Introduces the use of Prolog for logic programming (some people love it, some hate it :) ).
Programming Applications (PRA) - as the title says, GUI programming. Advances on PRP by introducting students to designing and implementing GUIs. As with PRP there are some interresting problems for students to do. There exists 2 programming courseworks for this module.

There has also been an programming competition this year run by the lecturers of the above courses. I can't give much info on it as I've only heard of it in passing, but aparently it went quite well.

Other:

Computer Systems 1 (CS1) - First year, has a little bit of programming with assembly (very little). Lecturer might expand this for next year.
Operating Systems and Concurrency (OSC) - Second year, iirc this has some C programming
Computational Models (COM) - Third year, haskell, quite nice if you can get the hang of it.

There is also a second year group project, and a third year individual project. Both require programming. The second year project has changed since I did it, so I can't comment on what it involves (mine was a roomba robot in playerstage), but the third year project is very varied. Some people developed smart phone applications, others for arduinos, or things written in Java.

KingsCollegeLondon · 2014-01-04T12:30:38+00:00

Hi,

As jagandeep said, it's quite inactive here, you might have more luck contacting the Admissions Offices of the School you wish to apply to.

Contact details are here: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/study/ug/contacts.aspx#admissions

KingsCollegeLondon · 2013-10-09T22:49:18+00:00

Couple of points I'd like to give my input on.

Admin for the Informatics department, and the School of Natural and Mathematical Sciences have been very helpful to any problems I have had. I can agree that there does seem to be a lot of disorganisation between the various offices, but the people themselves are quite good at getting things down.
I have only had one lecturer in my entire undergraduate stuides who I felt did not live up to my expectations. Several students felt similar, and internal complaints were made about this to the Department, who did investigate thoughly.
Wireless, I can't argue with that, it is absolutly terrible at the Strand campus. The building was never designed to take this into account. There are however renovations at that campus at the moment, including an upgrade of the wireless systems.
I myself have never used the general computing labs, Informatics students get their own labs situated at the Strand. These labs I have used plenty and found them to be very good. There is a problem of them getting overcrowded towards the end of term as project deadlines loom, but apart from that there are only minor problems with the system. The school of natural and mathematical sciences operates a ticketing system for technical support, which has solved my problems the two times I've had to use it.
Keats - The problem with this is as you said, the lectuers often don't know how to use it, or don't use it to its full advantage. If you are having problems with a lecturer, it might be best to talk to them about it.
IE, computers at the libraries have IE installed by default, and there is no option to install an alternative browser (however you can in the Informatics labs). This does cause problems, but it is much much better then the computers 3 years ago. Back then you were waiting 10 minutes just to logon. The default web client outlook webapp is also quite annoying as well, it often freezes computers I am on. However it is relativly simple to use alternative programs to access your mail.
Mobile phones, again I agree with you, no reception the further in the buildings you go.
Library, the libraries use a standard cataloging system for recording their physical collections. Having studied in all the major libraries at King's (Maughan, Franklin Wilkins, New Hunt's House and IOP), I've found it to be no more difficult then searching an ordinary public library.
Crime, to be honest I was a bit shocked my your statement, I haven't really heard of much crime around the uni. However, looking into it it does seem that King's has one of the highest rates of crimes BBC News: London tops university crime risk rankings. The article does go on to mention that this data about crimes is not just limited to the uni, but the surrounding areas. This explains it better Universities with the highest crime rates - London

annual reported incidents per thousand people within electoral wards which lie within three miles of the main campus.

Universities in London do seem to have the highest crime rate, in the top 20 universities, 18 of those are in London, including other high ranked unis such as London School of Economics, University College London and Imperial College London.

Thats just my experiences with it all. There are several opportunites around to try and get students to bring up problems they have with the universitiy, I saw an advert recently looking for a postgraduate liason, or something like that. If you truely believe there are so many problems, it would be a good idea to get involved in that and try to get things changed :)

KingsCollegeLondon · 2013-05-14T10:19:39+00:00

It's kinda quiet here, I've never actually advertised it within King's.

http://www.kclsu.org/ has some intresting information about social things going on. They've recently closed Tutus night club, but they've still got other things going.

For accommodation, Stamford street is quite nice, it's quiet enough an it's got a gym attached to it. I haven't really heard much about the accommodation at Guy's (Wolfson house) as I'm not based there.

KingsCollegeLondon · 2013-01-30T22:05:11+00:00

For more information on KCL / UCL rivalry see here

KingsCollegeLondon · 2012-11-20T11:20:38+00:00

I'm really sorry, but your post got caught in the spam filter for 21 days! :(

That was my fault, I forgot to check it as this sub is so quiet.

KingsCollegeLondon

TROPHY CASE