Staying at Collegelands has been the best halls experience I could have expected! Have met some amazing people here and hopefully friends who will last a lifetime! Collegelands is like one big family and its a lovely community to live in, I'd very happily stay here again. Great facilities, I currently live in a corner flat so we have a huge kitchen ( the sizes do vary though, some are pretty small for 5 people), which was immaculate when we moved in! The bedrooms are small, but of great quality and having a small double is fab considering it is student accommodation. It does have a little bit of a clinical/hotel feel, but that doesnt bother me, and it can still be made homely. The ensuite is great and the shower pressure is amazing! There are 4 communal areas, 2 rooms with TV's and tables and sofas (the larger one has a pool table). There is also a study room and a games room which has a ping pong table and air hockey. These are open 24 hours (as long as youre not so noisy you get a complaint). The one facility that really lets collegelands down is the laundry facilities, which are run by circuit laundry. There washing machines are not only really expensive but often leave your clothes smelling damp and not being fully dried. They have also worn out my clothes. I have brought this up with the president of collegelands however nothing has been done about it. In terms of services there is unfortunately no cleaning service which i know some halls do provide. The office staff are lovely and there is staff 24 hours so if you need to pick up a parcel or borrow a hoover at 4am there will always be someone there to help you. The night time/weekend security guards are lovely, always there if you have a problem or fancy a chat or if you've got too drunk and you need someone to make sure youre okay. i will defo miss them when im not living here next year! Overall Collegelands is pricier but I would say its definitely worth it :)
Collegelands is what you make it, you can throw parties in the common room like any other student halls and use the study room facilities to you benefit. You'll meet friends that will last a lifetime from all parts of the world as you progress through your studies. I would recommend staying in Halls of Residence. Socialising at University is a great attraction. Despite this I would advise everyone to avoid Collegelands at all costs because the management are con men. Positives: The location is excellent, bang in the centre of Glasgow, local shops, pubs, nightclubs, five minutes walk to the University and City College. It takes ten minutes to walk to George Square. There is CCTV everywhere, you are made to feel safe, and the Security Staff are pleasant when you stagger in from a night out, you are well looked after! The shower is comfortable, and high powered, with enough space for two people. The double bed is comfortable and the rooms are well soundproofed with thick walls. This lets you socialise and have gatherings in the kitchen without disturbing your flatmates. Depending on luck you're either going to get excellent views over Glasgow, or you'll have a dim lit view of an 8 story car park – these rooms are claustrophobic and dark. Negatives: Having seen other student halls, the kitchens is Collegelands is tiny and uncomfortable. The chairs are cheap and were broken from the first day we walked in – proving to us that the management ignored last years dissatisfied residents. I can't express to you how poor for money this place is. Another negative point would be the desk in your room has little space for your legs and you can't open your windows. The design of the building is such that there is nowhere to shelter you from the wind and rain if you choose to go outside. The solution would be to build an outdoor shelter to stop the fire alarm going off with people always smoking in their rooms, something I complained about with management. Of course the management of Fresh Student Living didn't have the courtesy to respond to my email or share with me the discussions at their infrequent meetings. They completely ignored a residential petition over Facebook to have an outdoor shelter constructed. The common sense solution would have been to build a smoker shelter, open the windows, and the fire alarm wouldn’t have going off. Additonally the Circut Management Laundry and are responsible for destroying your clothes - The entire building has been dissatisfied about the laundry service and it's taken a month for them to respond and nothing has been done about it. I don’t have any faith in the management addressing these issues, I can reassure you they have ignored everyone who stays there for so I’m taking my money elsewhere. Ignore Fresh Student Living. You could arrange to stay in a West End Flat for the price they're conning you with.
I loved staying in Collegelands. The rooms were good quality, had plenty of storage space. The staff were always friendly. They took packages at the front desk for us. Made great friends.
It was the best year ever, the flats were lovely and modern, the staff were great (especially when I locked myself out my room numerous times!) such happy memories, and met some really great friends
Location was the main selling point especially for Strathclyde Uni, and not too far from Caledonian either. However very pricey for what you get and kitchens in the 5 man flat can become cramped and easily untidy in a small space when everyone trying to make dinner or socialise. Annoying automatic fan and light in bathroom that only turns off on a 20 minute timer. Bedrooms are fairly small but enough storage given the size, however one and a half bed NOT a double (I was not aware before moving in). Rooms also become dusty very quickly after cleaning due to building work outside and the inability to air out rooms due to locked windows. (Windows only open at the top when tilted, never fully - also makes it hard to dry laundry). Laundry run by company called Circuit Laundry which is overpriced. At times needing to do two washes and one dry costs £7! Couches in kitchen very uncomfortable if you sit for more than 10 mins and automatic light in kitchen can also be an inconvenience. Overall the location made everything bareable as 20 mins walk maximum from Collegelands to furthest building on campus however would not like to pay that amount of rent again unless I was getting a lot more space in bedroom, bathroom and kitchen.
I was thrown into Collegelands by the accommodation team at Strathclyde (they rent a massive number of rooms from Collegelands every year) on a 39 week contract at £125p/week. Having stayed in Halls before, I had a rough idea of what to expect from standard student halls, but went along a few weeks before moving in any way to check the place out. On arrival at reception, I was told by a rather condescending member of staff that I wasn't able to view my room and it would be 'inappropriate' to see any of the other rooms (all 600 odd of them), as there were contractors in the building at the time. After a brief tour of the downstairs facilities (common room, laundry etc.) by the receptionist, I was sent on my way. So, I moved in blind, with only the pictures on the Fresh Student Living website to go from as an indicator as to what my room may look like. No matter, I thought, how bad can it be? Well as it turned out, first impressions weren’t great. On arrival in the flat, it looked and smelled like someone had a party a long time ago and hadn’t returned since. The Hallway smelled disgusting, the kitchen was messy, and the fridges were dirty. A quick dive down to reception, and they sent a cleaner up to sort it out. Interestingly enough, that was the only time in my stay here that I actually saw a cleaner in a flat. Now that was dealt with, I stepped into my phone box (read: room). Squeezing myself through the (less than 30 inch) space between the wardrobe and the head of the bed, I was met with what appeared to be the smallest desk it could have been humanly possible to find. Firing my monitor and keyboard on the desk, I quickly realised that it was damn near impossible to sit anything else on it , definitely not enough space even for an open ring binder - Disappointing. There’s no way around the fact that the rooms, at least the en-suite room I’d been put in, are cramped. Sitting at the desk, I (6 foot tall) can’t extend my legs with the chair pushed back against the bed as far as it would go - Definitely not good for comfort, or more importantly, for studying. As far as standing space is concerned, it’s not a winner there either. Open the large wardrobe doors and I’m afraid you’re not going anywhere until you’ve closed them again. At its widest point, the space between the desk and the bed is about 2 and a half feet. Admittedly the bathroom was pretty standard. Standard student halls pre-fab plastic bathroom pod, the shower was alright, and the water was hot. One thing to note is that the lights and extractor fans in the bathrooms are on a sensor – once they’re on, you’re not getting them off for at least another twenty minutes. A blessing, you might end up saying, as it’s possibly the only way to get some ventilation into the room. The window, on arrival, seemed to be locked to open vertically only, to less than 10 degrees, leaving about a 10cm gap for ventilation at the top. I could see that the window was able to swing open, but had been locked to open from the top. Time to see reception again, hopefully someone could give me a key. No Chance. Accommodation manager cited ‘the health and safety law’ stating that the windows had to be restricted or, heaven forbid, we might fall out! It was suggested that I might buy a fan, but I was reluctant to spend any more money on supplies for the flat. It’s worth noting that the ‘bare essentials’ as you may consider are not included in the rent. Previous halls I’ve stayed in provided simple things such as a kettle, toaster, vacuum cleaner, mop and bucket, iron and ironing board. None of these are included at Collegelands. It’s only with the good will of my flatmate that had a kettle and toaster from the previous year that I was able to make a cup of tea. Hoovers can be borrowed from reception, but they’ll hold your student card to ransom until you give it back, and good luck getting a hold of one of these around inspection time, at one point I was trying for a fortnight! The kitchens in the flat are about the only spacious thing in the place, each person has 2 cupboards (one above your head and one under the counter) and a drawer. There’s a fridge freezer and a smaller fridge – which can be a bit tight when everyone’s buying frozen food. There’s usually two rock hard ‘couches’ and a coffee table as well. Some people brought Xboxes and PS4’s with them, only to find out that the wi-fi in the building doesn’t support them connecting, so that’s woth noting as well if you’re a FIFA or whatever fan, as you’re not getting any online play unless you plug it into the Ethernet ports (1 per room, none in the kitchen) The location isn’t dreadful. If you’re at Strathclyde, you can be at the Graham Hills building in 5 minutes and at the Thomas Graham on Cathedral Street in less than 15. High Street train station is just across the car park and is less than 5 minutes’ walk. I was on the north side of the building, with a beautifully picturesque view over Duke Street multi-story car park, which is a lovely sight. It might be worth noting that the Collegelands area is under continuous construction, there’s a new building under proposal to the east of the current building at the time of writing (mid 2015) so you may find yourself living next to a building site for the duration of your stay. The atmosphere in the place largely depends on what flat you’re in and what your flatmates are like. I was lucky to end up with a good bunch of guys, and got on well with them. The place was fairly decent during freshers’ and quietened down a little over the year. The standard student halls practice (at least for the first few weeks) of keeping your door open isn’t possible here, as every door’s a fire door and you’ll struggle to jam them open, so we didn’t necessarily meet as many people around us as it would’ve been nice to. ‘Staying in is the new going out’ is a phrase pinned up with the other advertising on the front of the building, and doesn’t necessarily hold true here. You can have a flat party, but you’ll struggle to have people stay and sleep on the couch afterwards, as the kitchen lights are on a sensor, and you can’t turn them off. A minor niggle, but it was bloody annoying, we bought a projector for the living room but couldn’t see the thing. If you did ever have a problem, the management staff were largely unhelpful in my experience. Being fobbed off and told to buy a fan for a swelteringly hot room wasn’t acceptable, and they seemed to spend an awful lot of time organising ‘free pizza’ and ‘come decorate your [insert holiday here] cookies’ over actually addressing issues like these. Overall, I don’t think the place is great for studying in. I’ve stayed in halls before and paid the same for more space and I could open the windows and turn on and off the lights. I’d honestly look elsewhere for a decent experience, have a look at the UNITE places before thinking about booking here. If you’re desperate, Barlinnie is just up the road, and I think they do free food at her majesty’s expense, you might have to open a Collegelands window to qualify to get in there though.
We were shown a flat when we came to viee the place that was around twice the size of ours and was generally better. When we moved in we learned we could barely all fit in the "suitable living area" with the five of us who stayed here. The building fluctuates between being unbarably hot and freezing cold. The walls are marked which you'll be charged for. They said they deliver parcels to the flat however I got a parcel in time for someones birthday at reception, they never told me it was there so I ended up buying them a new present and found out a month later I'd had a parcel sitting for a month. I absolutely detest this building, the only thing that made it barable was my flat mates. God bless the guys. F**k ask4, f**k circuit and f**k collegelands.
