Aastha Sethi

Hi everyone, this is Aastha from India. 🙂

I am in my second year of studying Aeronautical and Aerospace Engineering here at the University of Leeds. I chose University of Leeds, as the Mechanical Engineering School of University of Leeds comes within the top 5 in the country and Leeds looked like a beautiful city to me. The world-class education facilities are designed to help you to think independently and try to come up with new and creative ideas.

I have made friends from different cultural backgrounds and eaten so many different cuisines of food.

In the Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences especially, there is a lot of practical learning to help you get used to real-life working environments. The University also holds annual career fairs through which you can connect with people from big global companies (in my case it was with companies like Airbus, and Collins Aerospace) and ask them how their experience has been at the company and get to know a bit more about the interview process. The University's Careers Centre also provides support on how to prepare for these fairs and further help in preparing your CVs and holds practice interviews to help you obtain your desired internships and placements.

"Leeds is a extremely multi-cultural city because of the wide range of students that come here from all across the world."

So far, I've had a wonderful experience here at Leeds, full of ups and downs but I've enjoyed every bit of it. Coming to university here has helped me open myself to new experiences by forcing me to step outside of my comfort zone. Over the past year, I have made friends from different cultural backgrounds and eaten so many different cuisines of food. This is because, Leeds is a extremely multi-cultural city because of the wide range of students that come here from all across the world, and because of the huge student population it is also one of the safest. There are so many activities you can do here in Leeds with friends like bowling at tenpin, escape rooms and junkyard golf.

I also enjoy a little bit of travelling and hiking and my favorite thing about Leeds has to be its location because its only a couple hours away from beautiful places like the Yorkshire Dales and the Lake District. The university also has clubs like GOGA that arrange weekend walks to places like these if you might enjoy a relaxing walk in nature, but if you want to give hiking a shot the Leeds University Hiking Society is the one for you.

The Leeds University Union (LUU) has over 300 societies ranging from one where you can just relax and stich to the skydiving society. Through these you can meet like minded people with similar hobbies or interests or similar cultural backgrounds as well. My favorite is the first week of university when all of these societies hold Give It a Go'"s where you can go and try out one class for free before you commit to any. This year I tried out almost all the dance societies and it was a blast!

This year I am living at The Plaza. It is a private student accommodation by unite students. I like its location as it is very close to the city center and about a 10 minute walk from university. Its got many different facilities as well like the gym, a study room and really good and fast maintenance service.

"There are so many activities you can do here in Leeds with friends like bowling at tenpin, escape rooms and junkyard golf."

All in all, being here in Leeds has been a great experience for me in both academics and personal life. Its opened so many doors for me and helped me meet so many great friends, professors and tutors who've enables me to grow as a person.

If you have any questions, or just want to have a chat to find out more about the university or Leeds, feel free to message me on Unibuddy or by email at aastha-link@leeds.ac.uk. Looking forward to hearing from you 🙂