University of East London guide: Rankings, open days, fees and accommodation
Overview
The University of East London (UEL) has partnered with more than 2,500 employers to help students learn employability skills while studying one of its job-focused degrees. While graduate salaries are high, the numbers in high-skilled employment are disappointing, but UEL works hard to set its diverse student population on the road to career success. It runs a funded internship scheme targeting students from under-represented backgrounds, and its professional mentoring programme pairs students with industry experts so they can gain career insights. Pastoral and academic support structures are exemplary and reflected in the outstanding scores awarded to the university by its students in the annual National Student Survey (NSS). Recent NSS outcomes have done much to help lift UEL away from the foot of rankings such as ours and better reflect its excellent provision for students. The university is headquartered on an architecturally striking waterside campus in the historic Royal Docks district. There are further sites at University Square Stratford - home to UEL's Centre for Performing Arts Development and many of the courses that place so highly in our subject rankings - and a new health campus is taking shape on an older site in Stratford.
Paying the bills
More than one in four UEL students received some form of financial support in 2023-24, with £2.6m distributed in bursaries and scholarships and a further £986,000 spent on hardship support. The maximum hardship bursary payment is £3,000, with 1,271 awards made in 2023-24 at an average of £776 per award. Engagement bursaries were paid to 553 students. These also have a cap of £3,000 and are designed to help with the costs of childcare, commuting from outside London, computer costs for those in receipt of Disabled Students' Allowance, and to support students who are unable to work over the summer. The average value of each award was just over £1,000 last year. The most eye-catching of the small number of merit-based scholarships offered are the Vice Chancellor's scholarships, which offer full tuition-fee remission or the £28,605 cash equivalent to students who demonstrate academic excellence, financial need and a commitment to UEL's values. Students admitted from local partner schools can be nominated for a scholarship of £1,000 payable in the first year only, while those progressing to UEL from the London Design and Engineering University Technical College qualify for a £1,500 standard scholarship in their first year (with the possibility of up to £2,500 for a Platinum award). Sports scholarships, meanwhile, can be worth up to £6,000 per year. When it comes to accommodation, the recently refurbished East and West halls in the Royal Docks offer 1,160 residential places priced between £6,675 for a 38-week contract in a West Halls standard room and £8,811 for the most expensive studio in the East Halls.
What's new?
The upgrade of UEL's clinical education building, with its hospital and primary care training hub, will be completed in time for the arrival of the new intake of students in September 2025. New multipurpose rooms will feature mock wards, podiatry and physiotherapy spaces and private consultation rooms, and the existing operating theatre will have pre-operation, scrub-up and recovery rooms added to it. Elsewhere, an open-plan eating area known as The Green Room will be created in the Arthur Edwards building, sitting alongside a new Students' Union space. UEL's successful bid to become the new cultural operator of the Stratford Youth Zone - a public-facing theatre venue now known as The Source - will provide students and young people in the wider community with the chance to explore the arts. The Source has seen upgrades to IT, lighting and sound equipment since the UEL takeover. Elsewhere, the masterplan for a new health campus at UEL's Stratford site involves creating a hub for education, research and community health services to help address health inequalities in East London. It will include a £10m simulated training hub equipped with virtual-reality rooms and mock wards. A new BSc paramedic science degree is planned for September 2026, offered with or without a foundation year, and the university is awaiting approval from the Nursing and Midwifery Council for three new nursing programmes: mental health nursing, children's nursing, and an adult nursing BSc gained via a registered nurse degree apprenticeship pathway.
Admissions, teaching and student support
When your intake is among the most diverse in British higher education, you need excellent academic and pastoral support structures in place. UEL was one of the first five universities to gain the Student Minds University Mental Health Charter Award in 2022. 'We take a proactive approach to supporting our students,' the university told us, 'designing all that we do, from careers advice to sports activities to social events, through a wellbeing lens.' Every course includes modules on skills development and building personal capacity and capability. All students have an academic adviser who can signpost support services, and all staff are trained to identify and support students in distress. Appointments are available with wellbeing support officers, mental health practitioners, counsellors and therapists, too. The university's TMF (Track My Future) app is used to direct students to relevant services, and the Spectrum.Life app provides a 24/7 student assistance programme. The university does not make contextual offers but accepts a wide range of non-Ucas-tariffed and professional qualifications. It also takes into account significant and relevant work experience. A wide range of foundation courses are available for students who lack the qualifications or experience needed to progress directly on to the first year of a degree programme. A suite of pre-entry courses, including New Beginnings and Get Into Nursing, also widen access for those without formal qualifications. UEL runs multiple outreach programmes in communities, schools and colleges close to its East London headquarters.