Which college

[m.kenning]

I have heard that if my interview goes well they will ask which college I would prefer to go to if I had the choice and I was wondering if anyone has any information on which would be best for a deck cadetship. Thanks for any help.

[Bulman]

Warsash! Sure some deckies will elaborate more, but it sounds like their on the ball with training and courses, especially for deck!

[EH75]

Depends on the company whether or not they will let you choose. Some will, some won't.

I did my cadetship at Glasgow and would not recommend it to anyone. The quality of teaching and general set up is dire. Think Warsash is supposed to be pretty good from what I have read on here and is currently my first choice establishment for when I go to do my mates ticket in the future.

[CallumA]

I did my cadetship at Glasgow and would not recommend it to anyone. The quality of teaching and general set up is dire

What did you find so bad EH? I've just started my deck cadetship at Glasgow and so far I have found it to be fine.

[m.kenning]

Thanks for the help. I know I may not get a choice I just want to be prepared i case I get asked

[EH75]

What did you find so bad EH? I've just started my deck cadetship at Glasgow and so far I have found it to be fine.

Just going to copy and paste a post I made a few weeks ago which summarises some of the issues which I experienced. This is not exhaustive and there are quite a few other things wrong with the place but these were the first things which came to mind at the time:


- Lecturers being late or not turning up at all. This would happen several times a week. When they did bother to turn up they were often poorly prepared or would just tell us stories about their time at sea rather than teaching the subject at hand. Stories are ok on occasion but not when they are taking up a significant amount of the lecture time a few weeks before orals. Many of the lecturers clearly have little teaching experience and are consequently not particularly good at it. As has been mentioned some of them do not have a great level of English either. There is an alarmingly high level of staff turnover which results in lecturers being unfamiliar with the way the college is set up and with what they should be teaching us. This also results in the lecturers being overworked which impacts on their teaching.

- Timetables (inexplicably) being issued on a weekly basis as opposed to for the whole term. This means that from week to week you don't know what order your lessons will be in or what classroom you will be in. Said timetables were frequently issued late which caused confusion for everyone involved.

- The general structure of the course was bizarre and resulted in having multiple exams in a short space of time contributing to a lot of people failing several of them. I'm taking about having an exam (sometimes more than one) almost every day for a two to three week period.

- The above issues and many others which I'm not going to go into in detail were raised with management on multiple occasions. This usually resulted in management becoming confrontational, speaking to us like we were children and coming up with excuses. I don't recall ever being offered an apology for any of the many failings which we experienced.

Having said all that there were a few good lecturers, but these were far outweighed by the many negative issues including those outlined above. I know a number of people who are considering a merchant navy career and I have advised all of them to go elsewhere for their training. I certainly have no intention of returning when I do my mates.

[CallumA]

Actually.... I would have to agree with most of those. However, books from Kelvin Hughs have already helped me A LOT. Most lecturers seem to copy and paste from them.

[Masterinthemaking]

Go to fleetwood! Brand new modern college, lecturers show that they care about the training, accommodation is top notch, we have our own room unlike warsash and th food is nothing to complain about!

The college looks after us well and there is plenty to do out of class time, the timetables are well worked out and the resources we have are also really great!

I would fully recommend the college!

[soopaspud123]

Warsash all the way. Not had a single problem with them! I love this place!

[m.kenning]

I'm starting to think I was right to be undecided between warsash and fleetwood it seems they are the top 2. Thanks guys

[RJShields32]

Fleetwood is definitely the place to be, superb facilities, excellent lecturers, all round good college and also been told that pass rates are highest of all colleges currently

[ekebergt]

Fleetwood is by far my best choice all the lectures know everything. we got a lesson stability in 1 hour we had over 12 to learn it but I can still remember it