You can’t work all the time. In fact, having a good time is an essential ingredient in student life. If you don’t, not only have you missed a blinding opportunity, but it’s just like over-revving an engine — by driving yourself too hard, you don’t actually get any further any faster.

You know what they say about ‘all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy’? Well, believe us, it’s true. Push met Jack once — he’s better than a pound of Nytol if you’re having trouble sleeping.

You can pretty much take any group of 8,000 people of above average intelligence, mostly between 18 and 25, and leave them to it to have fun. For the most part, they will succeed. However, throw in some facilities, a few appropriate events and entertainments, plus a load of beer — now you’ve got a far more reliable recipe for enjoyment.

But when it comes to the exact ingredients, different people like different things in their cocktail. Different universities offer a whole set of different mixers and shakers. One may be the equivalent of Tequila and overproof rum, while another is more your dry sherry and Pimms.

How you decide to mix what’s available, in what quantity and in what balance, is up to you, but what’s available in the first place depends on your choice of university.

If you’re into gigs and clubs, you may not want the same uni as a student whose idea of fun is balls and ceilidhs.

Either way, there follows a guide to whatever puts the ents in students — but first, we need to understand that strange beast they call a students’ union.

Most student entertainments — the facilities and the events — are run by students themselves.

That doesn’t mean there’s little more than parties and amateur band nights (although, sadly, at some universities and colleges that’s true). From gigs by the biggest bands to club nights that make Ibiza look limp, students run their own entertainments — collectively.

Students’ unions (or SUs to those who like acronyms) are the organisations that students form as a group to lay on these goodies — everything from cafés to cabaret, bars to buses home afterwards. That doesn’t mean that students necessarily do all the jobs themselves but that, collectively, an organisation they run can employ professionals to do it for them.

Every university in the country has a students’ union; some are more active than uranium and others are less lively than lettuce.

An active union is like a shot in the arm for the students’ social scene, but every union has different priorities. The good thing is that it’s the students themselves, because they run the union, who decide those priorities. It’s all very democratic blah, blah, blah, but for most students, what’s important is that the job gets done.

As a rule, students are automatically members of the union from day one as a student. They get a card to prove it and proving it can be very useful because students get discounts on everything from CDs to clothes, from newspapers to trains and from mobile phones to videos.

When people talk about the students’ union, or often simply ‘The Union’, they’re referring not only to the organisation, but also to the building or centre from which it runs its services.

Typically it will house offices, of course, but also a few student amenities. And the list can be quite impressive.

Take for example, the building at Birmingham Uni (not the best equipped in the country, but one helluva way from the worst) which has, among other things: three bars, a couple of cafeterias, a sandwich bar, mini-supermarket, CD shop, advice centre, student travel agency, photo shop, box office, media centre, Waterstones bookshop, opticians, hairdressers, greengrocers, IT shop, Endsleigh Insurance office, car and minibus hire, meeting rooms, a debating chamber, a customised nightclub venue, HSBC, Halifax and Co-op banks, Blockbuster video rental machine, juke box and vending and games machines.

Multi-site universities usually need union facilities on more than one site and sometimes that means that services on some or all of the sites suffer.

The union is often the place that students go during the day for coffee and a chat or a bite to eat and where they come back to at night for events or just to hang out in the bar. But not everywhere, though. As we said, some SUs are higher profile than others.

Another word of warning: at some universities, the students’ union set-up is weird as woodlice. Some have more than one union in competition with each other. Glasgow University has five separate unions: two competing on ents and services, another one dealing with sports, another to represent students and one that’s just for postgrads.

At some places the students’ union is called the Students’ Guild, the Students’ Association, the Students’ Representative Council, even the Junior Common Room for chrissakes (what’s that about?), but basically they’re all pretty similar.

What’s important is the set-up and the level of activity, as they can have a knock-on effect on how effectively the SU operates, for better or worse.

If you get poor service from your students’ union and the gap isn’t filled by university-run amenities, the college (in a collegiate university), or local facilities (if you can afford them), then life holds fewer opportunities for students who want more than just a degree from their time at university.

Bars and pubs
The bar, or more probably, the many bars are usually the gravitational centres of the university — which explains why so many people are lying on the floor. (A physics gag — alright, forget it.)

Contrary to popular belief, beer in student bars is not subsidised. However, it is cheap. Sometimes it’s as little as a £1.40 a pint — even cheaper if there’s a promo. Other drinks are up to a third cheaper than local pubs too.

‘How do they manage it?’ we hear you gasp thirstily. The answer lies in the fact that, after the country’s largest pub and hotel chain, students collectively are the UK’s second largest consumers of beer. The fact that they buy collectively means they get competitive prices and, because most student bars are run by the students’ unions, they don’t keep the prices high just to rack up the profits. Pretty much the same applies to anything you buy from the SU — from pencils to Polos — although the savings are rarely as big as on booze.

Some bars are better than others and have longer opening hours. Many host ents ranging from gigs to karaoke. In style they vary from nightmare airport lounges to crypt-like cellars, from cool palaces of kitsch to huge venue-only thirst quenchers. Some SUs even own their own pubs.

Of course, if you don’t live near the university, the bars may be out of reach. In which case, you’re going to be reliant on local fare — whatever that may be. This is when town/gown relations really come to a head — when students try to find a cheap and friendly watering hole.

Some universities (or SUs) have their own cinema, but more usually they show movies in a lecture theatre at quality levels varying from ‘fully pro’ to ‘dodgy TV sets’. Most universities have a film club which, depending on how professionally it’s run, may show several recent releases every week at rock bottom prices or may only run to renting a video once in a while and showing it in the bar.

Most towns of any size have a cinema, but you may not warm to the constant stream of hyped-up dumbed-down blockbusters. Real

movie buffs may want to ensure there’s an arthouse outlet.

Professional theatre isn’t a luxury that students can afford every night, but most theatres offer serious discounts on student tickets if the house isn’t full.

In London, this can mean students get into West End shows at the last minute for under a tenner.

Elsewhere... well, many towns have theatres showing nothing but summer specials and Xmas pantos (starring former soap actors and other D-list celebs) with nothing but Alan Ayckbourn plays in between.

On the other hand, companies like the RSC, Cheek-by-Jowl and Shared Experience take superb shows on tour in what used to be a tokenistic, but is now a genuine, effort to get the arts out of the capital and into the regions.

Meanwhile, in rooms above pubs and community workshops, there’s a wealth of talent to be discovered very cheaply. (As well as a wealth of crap.)

Although they’re outside term-time, a mention must go to the Edinburgh Festivals — the world’s biggest arts jamboree, where every nook and cranny becomes a theatre. It’s a great place for students to watch (or star in) drama and comedy, not to mention find work.

But often some of the best theatres in town are at the universities themselves, with top-flight stages and wings, lighting rigs and backstage facilities. They attract not only a regular round of visits from touring companies, but plenty of student productions too.

Student drama is often every bit as good as professional work done on bigger budgets and charging a lot more at the box office. After all, there are plenty of drama students out there and a lot of actors first catch the stage bug at university.

On the other hand, some student productions are an embarrassment to everyone involved and the university ‘theatres’ that host them are sometimes barely worthy of the name.

London, Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield, Newcastle, Brighton and a few of the UK’s other top student cities are also the top spots for hardcore clubbing. And it’s not just local nightclubs that earn them the reputation. Often it’s the SU’s own groove spot — with all the lights, the chest-pummelling sounds and yet much lower prices — that provide the ground-level cred with club nights as often as five times a week.

Not everywhere, however, is so luvved up. Plenty of students have no better choice than between university ‘bops’ (which can be fun in their own school disco kind of way) and local stiletto and handbag joints.

If your heart is in the groove and the groove is in your heart, make sure you choose a university that offers truly cardiovascular sounds.

Check out a tour poster for any band and you’ll see the same venues listed time and again. Unless they’re supergroups who only do binocular gigs, many of those venues will be universities and SUs.

Take Manchester University, for instance, where a list of gigs from the past couple of years reads like a pretty decent compilation album: Sugababes, Jurassic 5, Jill Scott, Nickleback, Roni Size, The Strokes, White Stripes, Coldplay, Moloko and many, many more.

But big gigs may not be your preferred route to going deaf.

In which case, you’ll appreciate some of the other universities. The ones that just don’t have a venue big enough or perhaps where they’re just not interested. The focus there is more on local bands, jazz nights, the students’ own bands or on trying to discover little-known talent (and failing).

Then, of course, there’s classical music. Recitals, concerts, opera,

choirs — at some universities melodies seem to seep from the stonework. At the Royal College of Music, students regularly burst into spontaneous performances — a bit like the Kids from Fame.

If a university can’t offer your preferred strains of strings or bumping

bass, there are always the local venues. The story’s the same, though — not everywhere has Birmingham’s NEC for megagigs, but nor do they all have the buskers on the beach at Brighton or the folk bands in the (real) Irish pubs of Belfast.

Just as bands do the rounds of university gigs, so do the stand-ups. More so, even, because the venue size is more appropriate and the acts are cheaper to book. What’s more, students like that funny stuff.

It’s not just comics. If it weren’t for students, they’d be a glut of hypnotists trying to mesmerise people into giving them other jobs. Other popular acts of recent years included a guy who ate razors and watches, and then brought them back up, while another shoved fireworks up his bum and lit them. Now, you’d be willing to pay to see that, wouldn’t you?

Meanwhile, there are some funny students out there. The Monty Python team, the Young Ones team, Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, Ben Elton, Harry Hill, Al Murray (aka the Pub Landlord) and many (if not most) others started off being gagsters at their universities.

Cambridge Footlights — a regular revue team — is famous for having been funny a long time ago, but still has such a good reputation that its students go on to get jobs with the BBC almost regardless of talent. Meanwhile, comedy teams at some other universities outshine them regularly.

And balls to you too.

We’re talking black-tie and posh frocks here. Many universities have a bash at a ball from time to time, but in a ’70s pre-stressed concrete venue the event can lack the charm imparted by the backdrop of an Oxbridge or Durham college, the stone buildings of Exeter or Airthrey Castle at Stirling.

Which might be why certain universities go for balls in a big way (lavish and expensive affairs, many times a year, with entertainments to rival bigger venues) while others hold them just often enough for students to get the photos.

Students can’t afford cordon bleu, but once in a while they might hope to do better than BSE in a bap. If the students at a university all favour the same local scoff-shops, that tells you that they’re either damn fine value or that there’s not much choice.

Quality without expense is worth hunting out. The Indian restaurants of Bradford and Leicester are as good as anything you’d find in Delhi — and cheaper, too. if you bear the travel costs in mind.

University food, meanwhile, is rarely exciting — although it can have

its moments. Sometimes there are culinary surprises in halls or campus cafeterias and sometimes the surprise is just the price (which over a three-year course can be a significant factor in your costs). Any opportunity to try-before-you-buy, as it were, by going to an open day, has to be a good idea.

And when the party’s over. What do you do then?

If you’re the nocturnal sort, you’ll want to find a city that never sleeps, not one that puts the cat out and turns in after Newsnight.

Will your post-club food choice be limited to a killer kebab? Of course, often that’s exactly what you want — but will even that be available?

And how do you get home in the small hours? Do you have to double the cost of a night out by grabbing a cab or does the students’ union lay on free transport back to halls after events? Or perhaps the town’s small enough to walk home?

Finally, what else is there to do for fun?

Bournemouth has the sea. Bangor has the hills and sheep. York has the Jorvik Viking Museum. And Teesside er, Teesside has a regular train to Newcastle.

But more to the point, how do students have fun at the universities you’re considering?

Are they a constantly up-for-it crowd where, when it comes to fun, the bigger the better?

Or are they more into late night chats about the meaning of life and why, since the end biscuit in the packet is always broken, they don’t just leave it out?

Most importantly of all, what type are you?

• What do you do for entertainments and which universities will offer you the same but better?
• What entertainments will be available in the university?
• What entertainments will be available locally?