Campus Facilities
UCD has the largest university campus in all of Ireland, and often the first comment when people first visit is, ‘wow, it’s so big’.
All the different faculties (or schools, as referred to in UCD) are spread out across different buildings on campus, almost each having their own dedicated library and cafe. Medical students are mainly based in the Health Sciences building, including for lectures, tutorials, dissection labs, clinical skills rooms and computer labs. Occasionally, some lectures may also take place in the Science building.
Of course, if you’re ever tired of the environment in the Health Sciences buildings, or want to try a different cafe or library, there’s no restriction to hanging out in any other building. This is especially true nearing exam season, when libraries begin filling up and students rush to hunt for empty seats. The James Joyce library, which is the largest and main library in UCD, ranges up to 4 levels and sits right in front of the main lake – on lucky days, you may even be able to land a seat in James Joyce with a gorgeous view of the lake.
During sunny days, don’t be surprised to see a myriad of students unwinding all around the lake with books, food and friends. What’s even better is that this isn’t the only lake around – in fact, UCD has up to 3 lakes and many walking trails around campus. An app was even recently developed for UCD’s walking trails.
UCD also boasts a huge sports centre. Owing to the variety of facilities, Malaysian sports tournaments have always been hosted in UCD. The sports centre houses a 50m Olympic-sized swimming pool, a wall-climbing range, several sports halls, 3 modern gyms, an abundance of fitness classes as well as numerous indoor and outdoor courts and fields for all sorts of sports. These aren’t only for the use of UCD students and staff, but are also open to members of the public for classes and for paid use.
The best part of all is that UCD also harbours student accommodation on campus – which means that you can live in the very same place alongside all these facilities. Campus accommodation is especially prioritised for first year students, so that freshers need fret over commuting and housing when first settling into Dublin.