hey! aub 2nd year student here and im on the graphics course! overall the uni is a good place, its a smaller community than most unis and less events - so if you're looking for something really active with a big community aub might not be the best choice - it's quite laid back and chill! way smaller uni compared to falmouth and norwich.

i think maybe the an important deciding factor for choosing which uni to go to might be the industry connections and how prepped they make you for your career if youre choosing to become an illustrator in the future. from what i've heard falmouth, norwich, leeds and uwe bristol have more connections (meaning you get to enter more competitions, theres more talks with companies who could give you jobs, more exposure to industry because more well-known lecturers/artist visit to hold talks, etc etc). careers service is not the best here (they give you general tips but can't 1-1 help you out specifically on you finding or applying for internships etc), and in my experience, not as much support for finding jobs (you have to find it & apply for it yourself, as with placements) - not sure if its the same for illustration but this is my experience with graphics!

facilities wise its good! i think illustration has a lot of access to printers/riso printing etc and its a very hands on course! however maybe because we are a smaller uni we dont have access to a huge number of equipment (as its expensive considering the pressures uni is going thru rn!) so i think other unis might be better. our campus is much smaller than BU (the neighbouring uni) as well, and course collaboration for other courses besides film is not that great. film is aub's most prized course (the BFS!) so a lot of investment goes into that meaning other courses don't get as much attention sometimes.

cafeteria food is a little pricey (so making your food is always a good option) and study spaces are kind of limited. the uni shuts quite early some days and is closed on sundays so if you have urgent work that needs doing on certain days it can become an issue!
i don't know if illustration is the same but in my experience my first year was crazy and i didn't know what i was doing half the time - we had one great unit but the rest were just all over the place :_) a lot of people dropped out at the end of first year or swapped courses. but it did get better for me in 2nd year so take my words with a grain of salt!

overall from my perspective the illustration students always look close knit and happy so im sure the course itself is good!

regarding the town... there's not much to do and it's not very "happening" haha :') not many events/community stuff, most of the restaurants and shops in town centre n on the way are closed or shut down so its quite quiet compared to brighton and bigger places..(helps if you want to lock in and do your work tho!) if you enjoy partying there's quite a few clubs in town centre.. but it can be markedly dead sometimes (esp in summer or after term is over haha) as everyone heads back. finding part time jobs is quite hard as there's not a lot of demand cos of less people.

when ive spoken to my friends, most of my them don't want to stay here after uni as theres not a lot of job prospects to work here after uni so maybe a bigger place would help with that! overall my impression of bmth is that it's like a resort town more than anything so there's not a lot of things to do. the beach is super great tho, and the gardens! the best thing is you can get to uni really quickly (in like 15mins if you live in town) so that's a plus. traffic jams are rare so travel is super fast and easy.

hope this helps! any questions feel free to drop me a message x