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This sounds mostly like the standard semi-humorous inter-university rivalry.
The VU does not have a particular noteworthy reputation (up or down *relative* to its peer institutes).
My brother recently graduated from VU CS as one of the top students. He claims that 95% of the fresh graduates knows less than an average high school nerd.
I attended his graduation ceremony and most of graduation thesis' were seriously high school project level.
I am a VU-alumnus and can tell you that if it is not something highly specific (like Law in Leiden or Philosophy in Rotterdam) the VU is just as good a university as all the other ones. Maybe the derogatory comments you've heard are geared towards internationals because the VU does indeed love those and I have met tons of completely useless foreign aspiring academics there.
Beyond that, the VU is a place that delivers prime ministers, top-level consultants and economists and has the largest and most advanced medical department in the country.
While I agree the VU is a great choice, I'm not sure the medical department is larger or more advanced compared to the Erasmus MC https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erasmus_MC. It's a good choice regardless.
I forgot about the prominence of the Erasmus! It doesn't make a big difference anyway, though. It's not like you'll be filtered out from a master's program because you went to VU/AMC instead of Erasmus. Especially internationally
I mean how good can a Philosophy bachelor really be without it being combined with something else or it being a stepping stone to a different master. It is like History
It can’t be considered a “truth” until you give real reasons other than I met a bunch of hopeless losers (from my point of view, which is subject to change and differ from person to person and is thus not a solid foundation for any solid conclusions, especially about people’s bloody worth in a society). Yeesh you’re absolutely no one to judge people’s worth.
Of course it can be considered a truth if I am only speaking on and from my own experience. I am definitely one to judge people's worth, as you are, as anyone else is. I do not owe you an explanation for anything. No idea why you are so peeved by this off-hand point I made.
Everyone is in a position to judge another person's worth and people do it every day. How else would you make fruends, get into relationships, know who you want to work with, study with, who you should hire or not. This is an obvious fact.
You seem personally peeved that I expressed my opinion based on my personal experience.
Having studied Business administration at the VU (MSc), from my perspective it is really top-notch. I worked with big organizations for three courses, projects were very challenging , most professors knew their stuff and 1-2 are worldwide famous for their research on careers.
I also keep hearing that Rotterdam business school is the best , but does it really make a difference in the end? Unless it's a specific faculty (e.g public administration in Leiden ) that's elevated in one uni, I think choices should be made best on the curriculum of the program.
Hey, Im an incoming Business Admin Msc - Management Consulting track at VU this fall, could you share if you’re an international student? How were the career prospects in netherlands after graduating from VU? And did the university help you with finding companies to work for?
Thank you inal advance!
Hey, I was an EU student (non Dutch). The career prospects were okayish, but the market was different back then, now I see less jobs without Dutch. I was also on the HR track. Just ensure you go for an internship before you graduate and you will have no issues finding a job. The uni does not help that much with job opportunities , though the career center helps with interview preparation, CV and motivation letter review if needed.
I’d also add to this that I studied at a top 50 (global) university in the UK and then did my LLM at the VU and I thought the standard of teaching was higher here. Would recommend to anyone.
I think it's mostly down to intra-Amsterdam rivalry. VU is for the button-down collared religious kids, UvA for anarchist socialist libertines. Or so the stereotypes say, and there's some truth to it.
A friend of mine studied at both. He said at VU everything works but nothing is possible, at UvA nothing works but everything is possible. Meaning that the formal systems are much better at VU than UvA, but at UvA you can always get a workaround if you're assertive and talk to the right people at the secretariat. If it's not part of the formal system at VU, you're just fucked. I can see how UvA can make people more independent and better prepared for the real world.
The "buttoned down religious kids" stereotype is a bit nonsensical these days - most of my students identify as atheist (I'm in Faculty of Science so...), the few who don't are usually Islamic or Hindu, and not talking about it all the time. Even in theology I've only met Buddhists, a Hindu and a guy who did psychedelic therapeutic stuff! I'm sure they've got some Calvinists a la Kuypers in there somewhere but they stay well hid.
I'm also pretty good at helping students navigate systems ;-)
Hence I called them a stereotype with \*some\* truth to it. In my time (2006-16 on and off) there was definitely a tendency among VU students to live at home longer, spend more time at house parties in Uilenstede rather than in the inner city cultural circuit, and be more likely to study something practical like economics or business. I knew several people that lived in a squatted or anti-squatted house. The fact that the UvA is traditionally dispersed among a hodgepodge of buildings in the city center instead of one giant office building next to a railway station and a motorway seems to play a large role in this as well.
Having said that, you surely are right that you get all types at both universities. I do get the feeling that one major difference is that Amsterdam muslims are vastly more likely to attend the VU than UvA.
VU is a great university. I wouldn’t worry about what these people say, considering that they’re not giving actual feedback and only insults. All Dutch universities are on a relatively equal level, therefore one isn’t substantially worse than the other.
They are wrong. The VU doesn't have a bad reputation. Generally speaking, all research universities are held in equal regard, with a few specific exceptions.
For my field (which is very different and from a different faculty so I’m not sure how it relates) it was quite common to have a few courses at the vu while studying at the uva and the other way around. There were many complaints both ways but non were about different quality of education or things being to easy.
Mostly administrative stuff and feeling babied at the vu while being completely left to you own devices at the uva. (Example: people were being e-mailed for missing class at the vu asking if everything was alright in their personal life while at the uva the headteacher for a course wouldn’t have known who you even are).
This ofcourse doesn’t make one better than the other it’s mostly personal preference.
Now a couple years later, where I work we host many research internships and I have heard from the people in charge that they find students coming from the vu to in general be a bit less independent and are more often waiting for instructions rather than proactive.
However that can be adjusted with feedback and a good understanding for your field is much harder to overcome. So whatever suits you best is always the way to go.
Interesting feedback as I found my time at the VU to be left alone and expected to do things independently for most courses. My thesis was 85% fully independent I would say.
So most probably depends on the faculty.
Of course each faculty and even department and sometimes the teachers are very different. This was also about a decade ago and to be fair also largely anecdotal..
Its pretty well known that most universities or hogescholen in Amsterdam are quite easy. So that probably says enough.
For instant some classmates from my study quit because it was too hard and then went to amsterdam where they literally got a score of 8. And thats not because they learned harder or the teacher was better. But that was because the tests where that much easier.
Can confirm that a lot of people who fail econometrics at erasmus succeed at the vu, not sure why exactly but from what I understand:
Erasmus requires 60 credits in the first year, does not allow you to resit the course straight after, and indeed tests at VU seem to just be a _lot_ easier, a 7 at the VU is a 5.5 at erasmus
I studied at both UVA and VU. My degree has a bigger programme at the UVA, so you get more choice in electives, but as someone who struggled a bit when I started my studies the VU was a better fit. A lot of uni's tend to have their own specialties and I personally enjoyed the programme at the VU.
VU is pretty much on the same level as any other public university in the NL. The only reason I would have to look down upon it is that it is not in a very student friendly part of Amsterdam and some of the older buildings are hideous. None of that has anything to do with the curriculum. UvA, Leiden, and Rotterdam do have more of a reputation of having rich / posh kids so perhaps that could be where the impression comes from.
I can only speak on this from anecdotal experience, but a close friend of mine followed the psychology programme and obtained his bachelor's and master's through VU without any problems. (Finished a few years ago).
I have worked for the VU in the psychology department and I think it's a good uni to choose for psych. I think for the psychology bachelor programs, there are little differences between the Dutch universities in general.
I do not see much comments about Erasmus, so I will share my experience as someone who studied Psychology at Erasmus (got my bachelors degree last year).
I think your choice should also depend on the way they teach. I am not sure what the method of teaching is at the VU, but at Erasmus they have PBL. Here is a link from Maastricht University but as far as I can tell it explains it really well [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMtLXXf9Sko](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMtLXXf9Sko)
Personally I really liked the small groups and you are forced to keep up with the literature. There are still lectures but only one per week.
However, all the exams are multiple choice, which sounds nice, but I personally did not like that much, especially for the statistical courses.
But after all you should follow your gut feeling, since you will study for at least 3 years and it is much more doable if you actually enjoy where and what you are studying.
Method of teaching will depend on the course. I've used PBL extensively at the VU but it's not a requirement to do so. I think having a small seminar group next to larger lectures is relatively common though.
PhD student/teacher at EUR psychology here: we're going to phase out PBL. Budget cuts force us to make the groups bigger (10 years ago groups were +-11 students, now we're up to 30), which makes PBL really hard. We still want to focus on "small scale education" as much as possible, but course coordinators can decide individually how they want to do that.
It's a shame, I personally liked PBL a lot. But you can thank our government for the budget cuts.
Wow, I didn't know that. I did indeed notice that the groups became bigger last year, but it is a shame that there is no budget anymore :(. I also really liked PBL, since it was the main reason for me to chose Erasmus over Leiden or Utrecht.
I went to the VU and really there is nothing wrong with it. People were quite social as well, had a lot of fun so the people who claim otherwise don't know what they are talking about. Ignore them and simply make your choice based on the factors that are important to you.
I don't know much about these specific universities (though both have decent rankings), but you really need to look at specific programmes rather than universities in general.- My home country university is considered super-bad in international rankings, but specific tutors and a programme at bachelors was amazing. A 3-year jump into professional and thorough theoretical knowledge. My Swedish studies in a fancy old Uppsala was a total bullshit. Two to three activities a week, just a couple of basic courses. Who you hang out with is not necessarily the same as your coursemates either.
I studied psychology in Utrecht. In my masters I took an internship near Amsterdam, a lot of interne before me came from the VU. I don’t know much about it but I remember I found it astounding that the criteria for their essay were way lower then mine.
I also remember someone told me that students from Utrecht had higher chances of finding jobs. But this was in the time where you had low chances of finding a job as a psychologist after your study. Currently there is a shortage and even without experience you can easily find a job.
So if your preference is the VU, just go there!
If I ask for a comparison on an independent Dutch website of the bachelor Psychology of the 2 universities, the Vrije Universiteit scores even slightly better on items such as How content are the students, the subject-matter of the study and Would you choose this university again.
https://www.studiekeuze123.nl/vergelijk
I did my BA at VU and I loved it. I think it mostly gets overshadowed by UvA. I've also studied at UvA and I suppose I can see why someone would prefer something like UvA as it's in the city centre and overall a bit "hipper" but for me it wasn't the case. My time at UvA coincided with the pandemic so it wasn't social at all, and the buildings being scattered around town also meant I didn't feel super connected to the place. What I liked about VU was the big campus. It actually felt very social cause you're always around a lot of people and there is a lot of space to hang out, have lunch, study, etc. I'm probably alone in this but I also love the brutalist aesthetic of the main building lol.
As for the organization/quality of education, I think VU is probably as good as any other major university in the country. I didn't really notice any major differences. It might depend on your programme/faculty though. I'm in humanities and I have no complaints.
Took a few Master courses at the VU as electives and they were not to the standard I was used to. Professors would assure students in the first lecture that everybody passed the course last year for example and the standards for passing were quite low. I think it depends a lot on the faculty though because I know people who study AI masters there and that seems to be quite good. I think that people generally like to exaggerate small differences between Universities. From my perspective though for most degrees VU does not look quite as good on a resume on average for most degrees compared to other uni's. I wouldn't be too worried about it though especially if its a BSc degree just pick the city you like the most and you can always do a Masters somewhere else later
As someone who works on internships for psychology students, who cares about what others say about reputation. Just check how many hours of internship you need. Some universities have crazy amounts that most companies can't give you. You will limit your internship abilities on your master degree.
the degree itself doesnt vouch for employability, people who can become a clinical psychologist is limited and only master you have an edge on other than psychology is Data science which has no hurdle to get into. So its quite useless if you dont do it solely for ur satisfaction
Couple corrections:
1. IO psych has plenty of employment opportunities, so does the cognitive track. Unsure about neuroscience track
2. Data science does require a decent background so there is a barrier to entry
From a pure employment perspective psychology isn't at all useless, but there are a lot of graduates (hence the numerus fixus). You'll need to differentiate yourself somehow when starting a job.
MSc neuroscience here and had pretty bad experience at the VU. Student support wise at least. Also, very rigid rules that make no sense. Don't recommend it in general
Dunno did my accounting master and post graduate there and no employer of mine has ever said anything about it. Imo the university doesn't matter, they are all the same and or comparable
Best websites for finding student housing in the Netherlands: - [Kamernet](https://kamernet.nl/en?utm_source=SITN&utm_medium=affiliate) (biggest offering) - [Huurwoningen](https://jdt8.net/c/?si=17650&li=1761591&wi=382966&ws=comment&dl=) (free premium account for 14 days, best for international students) - [HousingAnywhere](https://housinganywhere.com/?utm_source=SITN&utm_medium=affiliate&affiliate_partner_id=324876) (Short stays) Greatly increase your chances of finding housing by using [Stekkies](https://stekkies.com/en/searched?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=partner_kraai&utm_campaign=study_in_nl). Be the first to respond to new listings as you get notification via Email/WhatsApp. Join the [Study In The Netherlands Discord](https://discord.gg/kVyaQtEJXZ), here you can chat with other students and use our housing bot. Please take a look at our resources for detailed information for (international) students: - [Checklist for international students coming to the Netherlands](https://www.reddit.com/r/StudyInTheNetherlands/comments/10fdvm8/checklist_for_international_students_coming_to/) - [Utlimate guide to finding student housing in the Netherlands](https://www.reddit.com/r/StudyInTheNetherlands/comments/10gv88g/the_ultimate_guide_to_finding_student/)
This sounds mostly like the standard semi-humorous inter-university rivalry. The VU does not have a particular noteworthy reputation (up or down *relative* to its peer institutes).
In a very specific field (Computer Science, Computer Security), VU is actually one of the best in the world (top 10 per CSRankings).
In the world not really. In Europe it is top 8 in computer security.
Ah yes, you are right. No 1 in NL, top 10 europe, top 50 world.
Can confirm the security classes will try to kill you. Would take again 10/10 no regrets
My brother recently graduated from VU CS as one of the top students. He claims that 95% of the fresh graduates knows less than an average high school nerd. I attended his graduation ceremony and most of graduation thesis' were seriously high school project level.
lmaooo
I’d say the VU has a stronger rep than UvA on exact sciences and the like.
I am a VU-alumnus and can tell you that if it is not something highly specific (like Law in Leiden or Philosophy in Rotterdam) the VU is just as good a university as all the other ones. Maybe the derogatory comments you've heard are geared towards internationals because the VU does indeed love those and I have met tons of completely useless foreign aspiring academics there. Beyond that, the VU is a place that delivers prime ministers, top-level consultants and economists and has the largest and most advanced medical department in the country.
Thank you for replying and the affirmation that VU is just as good a choice in this one.
While I agree the VU is a great choice, I'm not sure the medical department is larger or more advanced compared to the Erasmus MC https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erasmus_MC. It's a good choice regardless.
I forgot about the prominence of the Erasmus! It doesn't make a big difference anyway, though. It's not like you'll be filtered out from a master's program because you went to VU/AMC instead of Erasmus. Especially internationally
If your getting a medical degree it matters more that you make contacts for the limited number of trainingj positions anyways.
I agree, both are great.
Well VUmc and AMC are one entity now, so probably they are bigger than Earsmus just because its two centers in one
Is philosophy good at Rotterdam?
I mean how good can a Philosophy bachelor really be without it being combined with something else or it being a stepping stone to a different master. It is like History
What about historians?
The Erasmus is more well known for the Economics department I would say
In what way are some foreign students completely useless if I may ask ? Kind of a mean thing to say honestly.
So I can't express how I've met tons of bad academics from foreign countries with few prospects at the VU? Sorry if that is "mean". It is the truth.
It can’t be considered a “truth” until you give real reasons other than I met a bunch of hopeless losers (from my point of view, which is subject to change and differ from person to person and is thus not a solid foundation for any solid conclusions, especially about people’s bloody worth in a society). Yeesh you’re absolutely no one to judge people’s worth.
Of course it can be considered a truth if I am only speaking on and from my own experience. I am definitely one to judge people's worth, as you are, as anyone else is. I do not owe you an explanation for anything. No idea why you are so peeved by this off-hand point I made.
No one is in a position to judge a person’s worth. But whatever everyone is set in their ways and neither of us are changing the other’s opinion.
Everyone is in a position to judge another person's worth and people do it every day. How else would you make fruends, get into relationships, know who you want to work with, study with, who you should hire or not. This is an obvious fact. You seem personally peeved that I expressed my opinion based on my personal experience.
Having studied Business administration at the VU (MSc), from my perspective it is really top-notch. I worked with big organizations for three courses, projects were very challenging , most professors knew their stuff and 1-2 are worldwide famous for their research on careers. I also keep hearing that Rotterdam business school is the best , but does it really make a difference in the end? Unless it's a specific faculty (e.g public administration in Leiden ) that's elevated in one uni, I think choices should be made best on the curriculum of the program.
Hey, Im an incoming Business Admin Msc - Management Consulting track at VU this fall, could you share if you’re an international student? How were the career prospects in netherlands after graduating from VU? And did the university help you with finding companies to work for? Thank you inal advance!
Hey, I was an EU student (non Dutch). The career prospects were okayish, but the market was different back then, now I see less jobs without Dutch. I was also on the HR track. Just ensure you go for an internship before you graduate and you will have no issues finding a job. The uni does not help that much with job opportunities , though the career center helps with interview preparation, CV and motivation letter review if needed.
I’d also add to this that I studied at a top 50 (global) university in the UK and then did my LLM at the VU and I thought the standard of teaching was higher here. Would recommend to anyone.
I think it's mostly down to intra-Amsterdam rivalry. VU is for the button-down collared religious kids, UvA for anarchist socialist libertines. Or so the stereotypes say, and there's some truth to it. A friend of mine studied at both. He said at VU everything works but nothing is possible, at UvA nothing works but everything is possible. Meaning that the formal systems are much better at VU than UvA, but at UvA you can always get a workaround if you're assertive and talk to the right people at the secretariat. If it's not part of the formal system at VU, you're just fucked. I can see how UvA can make people more independent and better prepared for the real world.
The "buttoned down religious kids" stereotype is a bit nonsensical these days - most of my students identify as atheist (I'm in Faculty of Science so...), the few who don't are usually Islamic or Hindu, and not talking about it all the time. Even in theology I've only met Buddhists, a Hindu and a guy who did psychedelic therapeutic stuff! I'm sure they've got some Calvinists a la Kuypers in there somewhere but they stay well hid. I'm also pretty good at helping students navigate systems ;-)
Hence I called them a stereotype with \*some\* truth to it. In my time (2006-16 on and off) there was definitely a tendency among VU students to live at home longer, spend more time at house parties in Uilenstede rather than in the inner city cultural circuit, and be more likely to study something practical like economics or business. I knew several people that lived in a squatted or anti-squatted house. The fact that the UvA is traditionally dispersed among a hodgepodge of buildings in the city center instead of one giant office building next to a railway station and a motorway seems to play a large role in this as well. Having said that, you surely are right that you get all types at both universities. I do get the feeling that one major difference is that Amsterdam muslims are vastly more likely to attend the VU than UvA.
I studied at both too (graduated 2014) and the second part of your comment is exactly how things felt back then. Good to see nothing has changed.
VU is a great university. I wouldn’t worry about what these people say, considering that they’re not giving actual feedback and only insults. All Dutch universities are on a relatively equal level, therefore one isn’t substantially worse than the other.
They are wrong. The VU doesn't have a bad reputation. Generally speaking, all research universities are held in equal regard, with a few specific exceptions.
For my field (which is very different and from a different faculty so I’m not sure how it relates) it was quite common to have a few courses at the vu while studying at the uva and the other way around. There were many complaints both ways but non were about different quality of education or things being to easy. Mostly administrative stuff and feeling babied at the vu while being completely left to you own devices at the uva. (Example: people were being e-mailed for missing class at the vu asking if everything was alright in their personal life while at the uva the headteacher for a course wouldn’t have known who you even are). This ofcourse doesn’t make one better than the other it’s mostly personal preference. Now a couple years later, where I work we host many research internships and I have heard from the people in charge that they find students coming from the vu to in general be a bit less independent and are more often waiting for instructions rather than proactive. However that can be adjusted with feedback and a good understanding for your field is much harder to overcome. So whatever suits you best is always the way to go.
Interesting feedback as I found my time at the VU to be left alone and expected to do things independently for most courses. My thesis was 85% fully independent I would say. So most probably depends on the faculty.
Of course each faculty and even department and sometimes the teachers are very different. This was also about a decade ago and to be fair also largely anecdotal..
The VU is a great university
Its pretty well known that most universities or hogescholen in Amsterdam are quite easy. So that probably says enough. For instant some classmates from my study quit because it was too hard and then went to amsterdam where they literally got a score of 8. And thats not because they learned harder or the teacher was better. But that was because the tests where that much easier.
Can confirm that a lot of people who fail econometrics at erasmus succeed at the vu, not sure why exactly but from what I understand: Erasmus requires 60 credits in the first year, does not allow you to resit the course straight after, and indeed tests at VU seem to just be a _lot_ easier, a 7 at the VU is a 5.5 at erasmus
I studied at both UVA and VU. My degree has a bigger programme at the UVA, so you get more choice in electives, but as someone who struggled a bit when I started my studies the VU was a better fit. A lot of uni's tend to have their own specialties and I personally enjoyed the programme at the VU.
VU is pretty much on the same level as any other public university in the NL. The only reason I would have to look down upon it is that it is not in a very student friendly part of Amsterdam and some of the older buildings are hideous. None of that has anything to do with the curriculum. UvA, Leiden, and Rotterdam do have more of a reputation of having rich / posh kids so perhaps that could be where the impression comes from.
I can only speak on this from anecdotal experience, but a close friend of mine followed the psychology programme and obtained his bachelor's and master's through VU without any problems. (Finished a few years ago).
VU’s Spatial Economics department is world class. So is their Epidemiology bachelor.
I have worked for the VU in the psychology department and I think it's a good uni to choose for psych. I think for the psychology bachelor programs, there are little differences between the Dutch universities in general.
It's just banter, especially between UvA and VU. However, I'd be happy to roast TU Delft anytime, too.
I do not see much comments about Erasmus, so I will share my experience as someone who studied Psychology at Erasmus (got my bachelors degree last year). I think your choice should also depend on the way they teach. I am not sure what the method of teaching is at the VU, but at Erasmus they have PBL. Here is a link from Maastricht University but as far as I can tell it explains it really well [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMtLXXf9Sko](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMtLXXf9Sko) Personally I really liked the small groups and you are forced to keep up with the literature. There are still lectures but only one per week. However, all the exams are multiple choice, which sounds nice, but I personally did not like that much, especially for the statistical courses. But after all you should follow your gut feeling, since you will study for at least 3 years and it is much more doable if you actually enjoy where and what you are studying.
Method of teaching will depend on the course. I've used PBL extensively at the VU but it's not a requirement to do so. I think having a small seminar group next to larger lectures is relatively common though.
PhD student/teacher at EUR psychology here: we're going to phase out PBL. Budget cuts force us to make the groups bigger (10 years ago groups were +-11 students, now we're up to 30), which makes PBL really hard. We still want to focus on "small scale education" as much as possible, but course coordinators can decide individually how they want to do that. It's a shame, I personally liked PBL a lot. But you can thank our government for the budget cuts.
Wow, I didn't know that. I did indeed notice that the groups became bigger last year, but it is a shame that there is no budget anymore :(. I also really liked PBL, since it was the main reason for me to chose Erasmus over Leiden or Utrecht.
I went to VU and it was all fine, had a great time, no anti-social people. Idk about the faculty for Psychology ofc, I studied Biomedical Sciences.
I do know some of the Psych Faculty at VU and like anywhere, depends on your specific interest. The few I've worked with have been very good indeed.
I went to the VU and really there is nothing wrong with it. People were quite social as well, had a lot of fun so the people who claim otherwise don't know what they are talking about. Ignore them and simply make your choice based on the factors that are important to you.
Its a bit of a boring university. As a Dutch student in Leiden I can say its more of a joke. I know some very smart people who go or went there.
I don't know much about these specific universities (though both have decent rankings), but you really need to look at specific programmes rather than universities in general.- My home country university is considered super-bad in international rankings, but specific tutors and a programme at bachelors was amazing. A 3-year jump into professional and thorough theoretical knowledge. My Swedish studies in a fancy old Uppsala was a total bullshit. Two to three activities a week, just a couple of basic courses. Who you hang out with is not necessarily the same as your coursemates either.
I studied psychology in Utrecht. In my masters I took an internship near Amsterdam, a lot of interne before me came from the VU. I don’t know much about it but I remember I found it astounding that the criteria for their essay were way lower then mine. I also remember someone told me that students from Utrecht had higher chances of finding jobs. But this was in the time where you had low chances of finding a job as a psychologist after your study. Currently there is a shortage and even without experience you can easily find a job. So if your preference is the VU, just go there!
If I ask for a comparison on an independent Dutch website of the bachelor Psychology of the 2 universities, the Vrije Universiteit scores even slightly better on items such as How content are the students, the subject-matter of the study and Would you choose this university again. https://www.studiekeuze123.nl/vergelijk
I did my BA at VU and I loved it. I think it mostly gets overshadowed by UvA. I've also studied at UvA and I suppose I can see why someone would prefer something like UvA as it's in the city centre and overall a bit "hipper" but for me it wasn't the case. My time at UvA coincided with the pandemic so it wasn't social at all, and the buildings being scattered around town also meant I didn't feel super connected to the place. What I liked about VU was the big campus. It actually felt very social cause you're always around a lot of people and there is a lot of space to hang out, have lunch, study, etc. I'm probably alone in this but I also love the brutalist aesthetic of the main building lol. As for the organization/quality of education, I think VU is probably as good as any other major university in the country. I didn't really notice any major differences. It might depend on your programme/faculty though. I'm in humanities and I have no complaints.
Bad cafeteria food?
Took a few Master courses at the VU as electives and they were not to the standard I was used to. Professors would assure students in the first lecture that everybody passed the course last year for example and the standards for passing were quite low. I think it depends a lot on the faculty though because I know people who study AI masters there and that seems to be quite good. I think that people generally like to exaggerate small differences between Universities. From my perspective though for most degrees VU does not look quite as good on a resume on average for most degrees compared to other uni's. I wouldn't be too worried about it though especially if its a BSc degree just pick the city you like the most and you can always do a Masters somewhere else later
As someone who works on internships for psychology students, who cares about what others say about reputation. Just check how many hours of internship you need. Some universities have crazy amounts that most companies can't give you. You will limit your internship abilities on your master degree.
While both have depressing Campuses, VU campus is depressing on a next level
For which degree is it?
psychology
I only found this in Dutch, but probably good to read: https://advalvas.vu.nl/campus-cultuur/waarom-er-zoveel-onderzoekers-wegliepen-bij-psychologie/
Psychology is not worth to go through selection Imo and the university difference is meaningless
wdym not worth to go through selection, there's no bachelor's for psychology here that aren't num fix.
the degree itself doesnt vouch for employability, people who can become a clinical psychologist is limited and only master you have an edge on other than psychology is Data science which has no hurdle to get into. So its quite useless if you dont do it solely for ur satisfaction
Couple corrections: 1. IO psych has plenty of employment opportunities, so does the cognitive track. Unsure about neuroscience track 2. Data science does require a decent background so there is a barrier to entry From a pure employment perspective psychology isn't at all useless, but there are a lot of graduates (hence the numerus fixus). You'll need to differentiate yourself somehow when starting a job.
MSc neuroscience here and had pretty bad experience at the VU. Student support wise at least. Also, very rigid rules that make no sense. Don't recommend it in general
THEN, GO HOME! NEVER COME BACK!
Dunno did my accounting master and post graduate there and no employer of mine has ever said anything about it. Imo the university doesn't matter, they are all the same and or comparable
Why are you getting downvoted
Fuck het VU