Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design - London

Rocco Gimondi

Praise CSM, amen.

Megas Stargazer

-My time there as a student was good.
It was during the biggest students strikes regarding tuition fees so before the university taxes went up and before BREXIT.
I was quite pleased with the level of teaching.
I had good teachers, and awesome colleagues. Also the projects we did were very interesting, the practical aspects of the course were dubbed by a comprehensive theoretical approach.
Nevertheless you should not expect that after graduating this university you will automatically find a job in the field you are studying. It seems companies now value more the experience than the university you have graduated. And from what I have seen, they prefer to work with architects and mechanical engineers rather than with industrial designers when it comes to industrial design jobs. Besides, it is not the job of the university to find you a job.
For me I can say that it took me more than 3 and a half years after graduating from an MA degree at this university before I got a job that gave me a certain stability.
-Most of my colleagues left London after graduating.
-3 of my colleagues did not get their degree as their final projects were not considered to deserve a pass. So if you get in does not mean that you will as well finish.
-Some courses are quite obscure such as “Textile futures” or the “Creative spaces for narrative environments”.
-When I was a student, there were 100 design students graduating from the BA programme and around 30 from the MA. So 130 design graduates per year only from this university. Imagine how many design graduate from the design universities in London or in the entire UK. There are probably thousands of design graduates every year from UK alone. And of course there are the ones graduating from other universities in Europe. It feels like the market is flooded with design professionals therefore it looks like there are not enough opportunities for this kind of profession.
Every time I see a design job on Linkedin there are hundreds of applicants. The same happens with websites that deal with freelance design work like Upwork. For a task there are even 500 designers competing for one project.
-LGBT propaganda - more now than then, this is pushed as it happens in many western universities. My opinion is that teaching institutions should concentrate on offering teaching, not promoting ideologies. In short, students come to an art and design university for being teached art and design and not to be intoxicated with propaganda.
-The student accomodations are quite expensive for what they offer.
-London: overall a pleasant city but expensive and dangerous. If I remember well it has surpassed New York regarding the criminality index. There are quite many knife crimes, theft and robberies, and as of late it is a watch theft pandemic. One of my professors was robbed in Holborn while he was withdrawing some money from the ATM, and two teenagers tried to rob one of my friends in Elephant and Castle, they ripped his shirt into pieces.

The experience at CSM was great, i took a star out due to the lack of opportunities after graduation and due to the city that has become increasingly more dangerous and expensive.

-Overall I think you should analyse very well the university’s courses, the expenses, the criminality in the city, have a reality check and see what kind of opportunities are on the market in your field of study and decide for yourselves if it is worth it to study here.

Yè

Beautiful and prestigious college / university in the heart of central London, close to many amenities and iconic places. You'll meet wonderful people (mostly students) from around the world and if you are lucky, get taught by some of the industry's finest and get some sort of exposure to catalyze a career in the Arts. However, I recommend reading through the other reviews carefully before making your decision to study here.

YEO

We hope CSM can control the dancers. This is not a stage! It is a university and students are staying whole day! CSM's indifference to the dancers' noise mess makes students leave uni

Phuong Krystine Nguyen

Beautiful building, creating an inspiring environment for aspiring artists and designers

David Ash

Loved my short visit here. Kings Cross is a very different area from 20 years ago but this is a great example of a regeneration space.
The Canopy Market is only open Thurs to Sunday but some nice food stall here

Richard Ng

An opportunity to visit the University of Arts London, Central Saint Martin's today. Very impressed with the architectural buildings. This institution seems very lively, buzzing and thoroughly feel very comfortable here.

Lean Lui

I’m a graduated student from CSM MA.

Best marketing school and worst art school.

Regard student as ATM especially for international student, we have only one teacher in our class, it’s dictatorship. He don’t spend time on us cause he have his part time job outside, teaching student to do portfolio in a China Company.

Our class focused on philosophy but over half percentages of student can’t speak and understand English well, it’s nonsense.

Many student only showed up in degree show because they just want to buy a degree and a CSM brand name, they took photo every time when they went to school and posted to the social media but never dear to show their work.

Disgusting experience.

The degree show is so messy and bad.