Mature students

Any college or university is very likely to have quite a few mature students. If university, there is likely to also be a mature students society where you can particularly get together with other mature students, and there may be other societies where there would be a higher ratio of mature students too (e.g. my uni had a real ale society that had a lot of mature students, since it mostly involved drinking beer in old-man pubs!). Universities also have lots of post grads who will all be 20s+, although often the postgrad/undergrad environments can be pretty separate.

I know a lot of people think there is not much difference between 18 year olds and someone in their early twenties, and that it shouldn't make any difference. But in my experience (I started uni at nearly 23) there is a big difference, I think a lot of people grow up considerably in their very late teens. Plus, I don't know about you, but I've never really got on well with people my own age (I'm now 30 and my best socialising is still when I go home to my parents house and hang out with their friends who are still 10-30 years older than me!) so that also did not help. If you wanted to stay in university accommodation, you might want to keep in mind that universities I think tend to see early twenties as not being that much older, and assume that you wouldn't want to be with older students. When I did my undergraduate degree, I ended up with a bunch of 19 year olds (they had all taken gap years, so there was obviously some method in how they grouped people in accommodation), I didn't get on with them at all, and generally had a miserable time (not exclusively just because I was older though, it's worth pointing out our flat was particularly bad, and one of the other women-one of the 19 year olds-also had problems with the noise and mess). So if that was something you were considering-staying in university accommodation-you might want to consider specifically requesting that you'd rather be with older students.

Any college or university is very likely to have quite a few mature students. If university, there is likely to also be a mature students society where you can particularly get together with other mature students, and there may be other societies where there would be a higher ratio of mature students too (e.g. my uni had a real ale society that had a lot of mature students, since it mostly involved drinking beer in old-man pubs!). Universities also have lots of post grads who will all be 20s+, although often the postgrad/undergrad environments can be pretty separate.

I know a lot of people think there is not much difference between 18 year olds and someone in their early twenties, and that it shouldn't make any difference. But in my experience (I started uni at nearly 23) there is a big difference, I think a lot of people grow up considerably in their very late teens. Plus, I don't know about you, but I've never really got on well with people my own age (I'm now 30 and my best socialising is still when I go home to my parents house and hang out with their friends who are still 10-30 years older than me!) so that also did not help. If you wanted to stay in university accommodation, you might want to keep in mind that universities I think tend to see early twenties as not being that much older, and assume that you wouldn't want to be with older students. When I did my undergraduate degree, I ended up with a bunch of 19 year olds (they had all taken gap years, so there was obviously some method in how they grouped people in accommodation), I didn't get on with them at all, and generally had a miserable time (not exclusively just because I was older though, it's worth pointing out our flat was particularly bad, and one of the other women-one of the 19 year olds-also had problems with the noise and mess). So if that was something you were considering-staying in university accommodation-you might want to consider specifically requesting that you'd rather be with older students.