Look up from the books and you’ll see the sea at Swansea, which has two campuses at either end of the city’s waterfront in south Wales. At the £450 million Bay campus, which opened in 2015, the lecture halls are a stone’s throw from the sand. But our Welsh University of the Year 2025 is more than the sum of its coastal charms. Swansea offers many of its degrees as four-year courses with a year spent in industry or abroad.
Academic life falls within three faculties: medicine, health and life science; humanities and social sciences; and science and engineering. It’s not all work, work, work, though — Swansea has been investing in the broader experience too, opening the Cove nightclub on Singleton campus just for students in 2024 and adding multi-use sports areas and outdoor gym trails.
Conveniently located along the M4 corridor, Swansea has similar numbers of applications and enrolments from both sides of the Severn Bridge. A four-place improvement in our league table year-on-year narrows the gap with Cardiff and edges Swansea closer to its previous top-30 form: it was the highest-ranked university in Wales in 2019 and 2020.
What is Swansea University’s reputation?
The university was founded in 1920 to serve the needs of local industry — a tradition still evident in its 500 partnerships across 53 countries with businesses including Rolls-Royce, Fujitsu, NHS Wales, Ospreys Rugby, Admiral and Tata Steel. More than 40 companies run operations across both campuses and the university aims to make its links with industry count to give students a head start to build professional networks ready for graduation.
In the latest Research Excellence Framework (REF 2021), 86 per cent of the university’s work was rated world-leading or internationally excellent, with some of the best results produced by medicine and life science subjects; mathematics; and geography. Swansea has been climbing the QS World University Rankings too with a leap of 118 places in 2024. In the latest (2025) listings it has broken into the top 300 at 298=.
Rates of student satisfaction are improving at Swansea. In our analysis of the latest National Student Survey the university ranks 76= for positive feedback on teaching quality (up eight places year-on-year) and 64= (up 15 places) on the wider undergraduate experience. Its efforts on sustainability are first-rate too, earning Swansea eighth place in the latest People & Planet University League (2023-24), which ranks institutions on their environmental and ethical performance.
What degree courses have been discontinued and what new courses are available?
Swansea has rationalised its course portfolio, refocusing some subjects, changing course names and withdrawing a number of joint honours options. Courses are no longer offered in medieval studies; war and society; and German and Welsh. New options for 2024 entry are: finance (sustainability or fintech); business management (operations or modern languages); law in practice; business law in practice; and combined honours.
What are Swansea University’s entry requirements – and my chances of getting in?
Entry requirements range from BCC and rise to AAB at A-level. Under Swansea’s guaranteed offer policy, there is flexibility in terms of the grades achieved for applicants who have firmly accepted a conditional offer from the university.
What are the graduate prospects?
More than four in five graduates (81 per cent) were in high-skilled jobs or further study 15 months on from receiving their degrees, ranking Swansea 35= for graduate prospects — the same as last year, reflecting a consistent focus on career-building. The Swansea Employability Academy helps students to secure paid internships and co-ordinates programmes for career development. At the last count, more than 1,400 organisations were advertising 55,000 jobs and offering networking opportunities to Swansea alumni.
What is Swansea University campus like?
The 65-acre Bay campus doubled the size of the university. It has accommodation for 2,000 — with direct access to the five-mile beach — and hosts the £33 million Computational Foundry, as well as the School of Management and the Great Hall.
Research facilities are being developed all the time and Swansea is proud of creating an inspiring and imaginative environment for centres of excellence across Stem subjects and the humanities. The university hosts the Morgan Advanced Studies Institute, which opened in 2021, to promote transformative interdisciplinary research.
A 20-minute bus trip takes students to the Singleton Park campus, where King George V laid the university's foundation stone. It has facilities for social sciences; health and social care; medicine; geography; and physics, and is the base for the Hillary Rodham Clinton School of Law, which features a courtroom and law clinic. The former US secretary of state and presidential candidate received an honorary doctorate from Swansea University in 2017 in recognition of her work promoting the rights of families and children around the world.
Everything you need to know about Swansea University’s student life and wellbeing support
Swansea’s lively social scene includes the popular pubs and bars of Wind Street (learning to pronounce it correctly — "Wine Street" — is lesson No 1). There are more than 150 societies and the Mumbles seaside resort is nearby, famed for its mile of pubs and ice cream wars. While the local beaches are lovely, the Gower Peninsula, further west, has some of the UK’s finest.
The £20 million Sports Park, beside the original Singleton campus, has an indoor athletics and hockey centre as well as an outdoor athletics track, grass and all-weather pitches, tennis courts and an 80-station gym. In addition, there are 50m and 25m swimming pools at the Wales National Pool on site. Taking pride of place at the Bay Campus is a new floodlit World Rugby and Fifa-quality 3G pitch, which joins a sports hall, a gym and outdoor multi-use areas. As well as its partnership with the Ospreys, Swansea has links with the Scarlets professional rugby team. Its own university teams compete successfully in the British Universities and Colleges Sport (Bucs), where Swansea ranks 22nd in the latest overall points table.
Wide-ranging welfare services include the SafeZone app, which gives students immediate access to the security team. Residence Life co-ordinators and faculty-based student experience officers are also on hand to ease the transition to student life. Help offered through the wellbeing and disability service includes cognitive behavioural therapy and emotional freedom techniques, and a 24/7 digital mental health service with trained clinicians. Students diagnosed with autism can access specialist assistance.
What do the students say?
“Swansea’s supportive learning environment has helped me throughout my degree. The employability hub — where students find work and tailor their CVs — has been useful as have the career fairs. Moreover, the city itself is right by the beach with natural beauty spots such as the Gower and Rhossili Bay close by.”
Sophia Thomas, media and communications student
What about student accommodation at Swansea University?
The university has more than 3,700 residential spaces — enough to guarantee accommodation to all first-years who apply by the deadline.
How diverse and inclusive is Swansea University?
In 77th place overall in our social inclusion index for England and Wales, Swansea is in the top 25 for its recruitment of white working-class boys (7 per cent), the most underrepresented group in higher education. It is not among the most diverse universities, drawing less than a fifth (17.2 per cent) of the intake from ethnic minorities (82nd). However, the degree awarding gap between black and white students (minus 14.5 per cent) ranks Swansea 26th. More than nine out of ten students went to non-selective state schools.
Everything you need to know about scholarships and bursaries at Swansea University
Swansea scholarships reward academic, musical and sporting merit and are not means-tested. The Excellence scholarships of £3,000 paid over three years are awarded automatically to all UK students who achieve AAA at A-level, or equivalent results. Merit scholarships of £2,000 are awarded to entrants with AAB grades, or equivalent. Students studying in the Welsh language also qualify for funding.
