Employers are impressed by graduates simply because they have a degree, but what makes them begin to salivate is a candidate with a degree and a CV full of other interests and experiences.

But the best part of it is that gathering CV points isn’t a chore. These extra-curricular activities are as much a part of student life as falling asleep in lectures or discovering that Baileys and cider don’t mix.

Most universities offer a gob-smacking variety of opportunities to pursue interests — new or old. But, and we think we may have said this before, not all universities are the same.

If you’re into karate, you may find yourself breaking bricks on your own some places. Or if politics ticks your box, you may find yourself somewhere where, even if there were an apathy party, none of the students would be bothered to vote for it.

While some are stronger or weaker across the board, every university has its extra-curricular strengths and weaknesses. Standards swing from the profoundly professional to the amazingly amateur.

During the course of your student life, you’ll almost certainly find yourself involved in activities that you thought you’d only ever do under the influence of mind-altering substances — but you can probably already think of a few things that you‘d like to try (or be able to continue).

When choosing a university, check out what students can get up to apart from study and drink. If you have a particular interest, make sure it’s catered for. If you haven’t, see what else is on offer and whether there’s anything that stirs your cup of tea.

Below is a breakdown of some of the things students get up to. At some universities, some of them are obsessions. At others, they’re not even on the radar.

Students’ unions are often the social centre of a university, not least because SUs usually run at least one, if not all, the student bars, as well as a veritable panoply of other facilities, services and amenities.

Sometimes the students’ union is little more than a social club, but sometimes unions meet almost all the daily needs of students (often the students don’t realise how many). In part, it depends on the students who run it.

These students who actually run the students’ unions on a day-to-day basis are elected to do so by other students.

Imagine that: up and down the country there are multi-million pound businesses, employing sometimes over a hundred staff, all run by students who are usually only a couple of years out of school. You want CV points? Try that on for size.

This matter of being run by students for students is part of students’ unions’ other main role — often just as important as providing services, indeed at some universities, even more so.

SUs are the representative voice of the students. In theory, at least — how representative they are in practice is another thing that varies from university to university.

Apart from electing the students to run the show, SUs try to get their student members to vote in ballots and at meetings on all sorts of matters — everything from political campaigns to whether to boycott Smarties from the union shop.

SUs have more elections than a man on Viagra in a Chinese takeaway, but at many the turn-out is so low they almost make Florida look democratic. But they (almost) all have complex proportional representation voting systems and some could teach the Government a thing or two about accountability.

At most universities, a few elected students are allowed to give up their studies for a year (often they take office just after finishing their degree) and are therefore called sabbaticals or ‘sabbs’. The sabbaticals are even paid to do their jobs (never more than a few thousand — much lower wages than any of the non-student staff).

Unions also have plenty of unpaid student officers who don’t get the year off, but who do it out of commitment, ambition or just for fun.

Traditionally, these elected jobs are political — like a students’ mini government — but increasingly, at many universities, students don’t even think of standing for election on a political party ticket. More often it’s a bring-a-bottle party ticket.

Political or not, as well as ultimately running the commercial business of the union, the officers (the sabbs especially) are on university committees voicing the opinions of the student body to the authorities on all manner of subjects. Anything from library opening hours to the level of rent in student housing, from giving honorary degrees to dodgy former dictators (such as Baroness Thatcher), to taking part in the job interviews when the university needs to appoint a new vice-chancellor.

The amount of say that students get in the running of their university varies from place to place and depends not only on whether the SU officers are involved in such committees, but on how seriously their views are taken.

Meanwhile, SUs represent students in other ways — to the outside world through campaigns and the media (usually only local papers and radio are interested) and to students up and down the country through the National Union of Students (NUS).

NUS is like the union of students’ unions. Just like individual students’ unions, it has a services arm (through which is organised a lot of the collective buying that provides cheap beer) and a representative role.

Every year there are huge NUS conferences which students from universities all over the country are elected to attend and where they vote on future campaigns.

Like students’ unions, NUS is also run by sabbatical students and they also get to go to a lot of dull committee meetings — only theirs tend to be with Government ministers rather than university bureaucrats.

NUS also organises many of the student demonstrations that march through the streets waving placards, chanting slogans and being ignored by almost everyone. Which is why they don’t do that so often any more.

Individual students don’t join NUS — in fact, most of the time, they don’t even have to join their own university’s students’ union, because they’re automatically members. Instead, it’s the students’ unions that join (or affiliate to) NUS.

Not every SU is affiliated and that can either mean poorer services for students or, quite often, it means theirs were so good in the first place that there was no further benefit in being a member of the national organisation. (Better check which, though.)

Many leading politicos and pundits started off as student ‘hacks’ (as anyone actively involved in SU politics is known). Stephen Twigg MP, who beat Michael Portillo in the 1997 election and who is now an education minister, was once NUS President, as were at least four other MPs including, most senior of them all, ex-Foreign Secretary Jack Straw.

Indeed, carefully inspect the CVs of many people in the public eye and a sordid history in student hackery will be revealed.

Student politics used to lean heavily to the left. NUS was notable for a constant struggle between the centre left and the far left.

That has all changed. The NUS President is no longer a Labour Party candidate (although she is a left-winger) and most sabbaticals at most universities are independent. Opinions on particular issues tend to count more than colours on rosettes. And, as often as not, the issues that count are the price of beer at the student bar.

However, there are still universities where the students’ union and indeed the whole student body swing to the left — or in a couple of cases, to the right.

We’re not quite finished talking about SUs. Most do two other things apart from providing services and representation which students would sorely miss.

The first is to run clubs and societies and, often, sports facilities and teams.

The second is to get involved in students’ welfare, whether directly by providing counselling services and an accommodation office or indirectly through campaigns and initiatives like late-night minibuses and free attack alarms for women.

As always, it all depends on where you go. So choose your university — and the students’ union that comes with it — with care.

There are few times in anyone’s life that they get quite such a good opportunity to become involved with activities other than work, families and DIY as when they’re at university. Either they’re too busy, they don’t have access to the facilities, they’re too expensive, or they don’t know anyone else who’s interested.

As a student, none of these excuses is valid.

And, while this is true for just about anything, it’s perhaps truest of all for sport.

Student sports are some of the best in the world.

Every four years the World Student Games come around. Britain usually does pretty well (better than in most international sporting competitions) and many of the competitors are the same as those who turn up at the following Olympics.

UK universities, meanwhile, compete against each other every year in competitions and leagues in every sport imaginable.

Many of our greatest sporting heroes competed at university level before going on to greater fame. To name but a few: Harold Abrahams, Steve Backley, Sebastian Coe, Ted Dexter, Phil de Glanville, Tanni Grey, Gavin Hastings, Nasser Hussein, David Moorcroft, Victor Obogu, Matthew Pinsent, Steve Redgrave and David Weatherall.

And it’s not as if they only became good once they’d completed their studies. Will Carling, for instance, went straight from captaining his university rugby team to historic success captaining England’s.

Out there now are tomorrow’s gold medallists and, as a student, you get to play alongside them or perhaps against them or, even, be them.

The Varsity Boat Race is a highlight of the national sporting calendar and it is genuine students tugging at those oars.

These levels of achievement are pretty ordinary in many of the UK’s universities.

But what if you’re no champion?

These very high standards are no more than the tip of an iceberg of health and fitness, with some of the submerged parts being more used to sit-downs than sit-ups.

At most universities even the worst athlete, the most feeble wimp, can participate just for fun.

Different universities have different policies — sometimes it’s not even a matter of policy, it just turns out that way — but as often as not the emphasis is on sport for all rather than on sport for the bionic.

Sports are not necessarily a blokey thing either. Sure, there are the rugger buggers and the oarsmen oafs, but women’s sport is taken as seriously and played as competitively as anything the boys get up to with their funny shaped balls or when they shove their oars in.

What makes students so good?

Apart from the fact that there are so many of them (nearly a million students in the UK) and many of them are at an age of peak performance, it’s largely down to opportunity.

Many universities have vast tracts of land rolled, mowed and painted all in the name of sport. They have sports halls like airplane hangars and athletics tracks that would be the envy of most sizeable towns.

Loughborough University — renowned for its sporting prowess, not to mention its sports-based courses — has five-star facilities that include four sports centres, two gyms, a dance studio, two swimming pools, seven squash courts, two floodlit all-weather pitches, an all-weather athletics stadium, acres of playing fields, the Dan Maskell tennis centre, multigyms, a martial arts dojo, badminton courts, plus equipment and playing areas for table-tennis, basketball, netball and many, many more. Locally, there are also opportunities for everything from watersports to pot-holing, riding to rambling. And all of them are absurdly cheap.

Loughborough’s facilities are among the best, but it’s far from the only university with enough sporting muscle to snatch, clean, and jerk even the laziest couch potato into activity. And often there’s no charge at all.

For every sport, there’s a club or a team of like-minded enthusiasts ready to rumble. But you can’t play every sport at every university.

If you’re goofy for golf, for instance, don’t apply to City University, where the facilities in general aren’t bad — but being based in Central London, they’ve not been able to provide access to a golf course.

You’d be better off at St Andrew’s, which not only has a cheap course for students, but you’re within putting distance of the Royal & Ancient Club and where golfing glory can even earn you a scholarship.

Although there are the likes of Loughborough and Sheffield, whose amenities put the fun into funding, there are also places like Bath Spa University College where the tennis courts were turned into a car park, and Abertay Dundee with only a fitness room to call its own, and where students otherwise have to rely on what the town can offer.

If you’re the sporty sort or, indeed, if you’re ever motivated to move a muscle, the huge difference in levels of sports facilities should play a part in bringing your favourite university to the top of your personal league.

MUSIC
It’s not only wandering minstrels that provide the music menu at universities. Many students — and not just music students — can knock out a tune or two for themselves.

In fact, that’s how some of the best bands started — from Blur (Goldsmiths College) to Underworld (Cardiff Uni).

It’s not just a chance to meet a bassist and drummer (who’re also into your favoured mix of indie folk and garage) to complete your innovative new group. Universities (or more usually students’ unions) also provide the rooms and the opportunity to rehearse and the platform for your first (and maybe last) gig. Not everywhere offers the same opportunities though.

Of course, music’s not all about bands. Many universities have an orchestra, a choir, string quartets, even an opera group.

But as with bands, it’s not simply a matter of the other people, but the facilities, the rehearsal space and the potential audience.

And again, tastes and facilities are not the same everywhere, so if music is your food of love, play on by picking the right university.

Inevitably, extra-curricular music tends to have more tempo where there’s an up-beat academic music department.

Most universities have a student newspaper and many of them have been around for years — longer even than many of the nationals.

They’re populated with eager student reporters desperate to get relevant experience so they can break into the profession when they graduate, alongside others, just as eager, doing it for the wheeze. But they don’t just need journos — people are needed to handle ad sales, distribution, design and so on, so there are opportunities galore.

The styles of student papers vary as much as they do in Fleet Street — there are tabloidy gutter dwellers and high fallutin’ papers of record, propaganda sheets for the union or the university and independent bastions of integrity. Some universities, such as York, even have competing newspapers and many have not only newspapers, but arts magazines, creative writing magazines and even wood-wasters for individual clubs and societies.

Thanks to desktop publishing and colour printing, the standards reach professional heights (as the annual awards ceremonies show — yes, even student journos have their own Oscars), but also depths so low that the only place appropriate for some student papers is the toilet — although, fortunately, that’s a great place for them to get read. Captive audience, you see. (Gossip and what’s-on flyers tacked to the backs of loo cubicle doors are quite common and are known, inevitably, as bogsheets.)

But the press don’t have a media monopoly.

Many universities have their own radio stations. Sometimes they have FM licences and broadcast locally as well as on campus. But at other places, it’s a couple of guys playing their own records and transmitting a signal so weak that it barely makes it out of hearing range. Still, it’s better than nothing for trying out your fabadozie pop-picker DJ stylie.

There’s even student TV and, even though they usually broadcast on a closed circuit and with a budget that even Channel 5 would consider tight, the conditions have forced some university stations to get pretty inventive.

Not only are student media great fun to make — you have to wonder whether the readers, listeners and viewers enjoy it as much as the writers, editors and producers — they can be a big help in landing a job in the media. As often as not, rather than do a degree in media studies, you’d do better to study something totally different and throw your heart into the university newspaper, radio or TV station.

If you’re thinking along these lines, be careful you don’t get landed working for a paper that’s still produced with a John Bull printing set and which reads like a school magazine where everyone played truant. Choose a university with facilities and a reputation in media.

If you see a bunch of people dressed as tarts, vicars, nurses and Frankenstein’s monster pushing a hospital bed down a street, waving and rattling tins, there’s a good chance they’re students.

If you see someone walking along being apparently followed by a gnome, there’s a good chance they’re both students.

And if you see naked parachutists with water pistols, there’s a good chance they’re students, too.

This isn’t only because students are weird. It’s often all in the dubious name of charity or ‘rag’, as most universities call the student organisation that arranges these and many similar stunts in an effort to raise funds for good causes.

And it’s no mean feat. Some individual student rags — through sponsored events, sales of merchandise and rag mags (usually cheaply produced and stuffed with highly un-PC jokes) and other fund-raising activities which regularly push the boundaries of legality — raise over two-hundred thousand quid a year.

It’s only the best — such as Loughborough — that hit that kind of target. Most do well to get into the tens of thousands but, given how poor students are, that’s not bad. Students’ own poverty has, however, seen a few rags dwindle and die.

Much to the relief of lecturers, university authorities, the local population and the police, often the effort is focused on a single week (rag week) of mayhem and disruptive antics.

By the way, if any of this sounds familiar, the tame-by-comparison Comic Relief was inspired by student rags (with a bit of Band Aid thrown in).

Rags may be fun with the excuse of doing good, but at many universities the students do good with the excuse that it’s also fun.

Some community action organisations in universities involve hundreds, even thousands of students in projects that help the elderly, the sick, kids, people with disabilities, the homeless and deprived, prisoners, environmental projects or the local community. They’re run by students (working with community groups) and often there’s a student sabbatical to oversee them.

Hull University and Leeds are especially lively, while at some universities there’s no such programme at all and, all too often, the town-gown relationship suffers as a result.

Universities often have certain cliques. There are the political hacks, the sporty yahoos and there are the thesps.

Not every university has them, but those that do are often quite pleased about it because they often provide high standard entertainment, producing and acting in plays, musicals, light opera, dance, comedy revues and stand-up.

Where there’s a drama course, there’s usually a glut of thesps — or luvvies, if you prefer — not least because there’s usually a well-equipped theatre and rehearsal rooms.

But thesps don’t need theatres — they’ll find anywhere to perform, from halls to lecture rooms, or even outside. However, a theatre’s usually a good starting point to prick theatrical sensibilities and get the star-struck strutting their stuff upon whatever makeshift stage they can find. Some universities, especially if they don’t have a theatre, never manage to lure the thesps into the limelight.

The highlight of the theatrical year for students is usually the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, where there is a proud tradition of performing student productions to average audiences of three American tourists and a dog.

Student theatre is often a lot more professional than your regular am dram and it’s a classic example of an opportunity for those with a little talent (or sometimes a lot) to have a go at something they’d never risk professionally — although many, in fact, do. That doesn’t just go for the actors, but for the directors, designers, lighting technicians and other backstage boys and girls too.

Universities are a slice of life and in every slice you have your fruits, your nuts and your cherries. Push doesn’t mean to imply anything by that other than that all the variety of life — including a range of religions — is represented in UK universities.

Some, such as Durham (with its huge cathedral and historical Anglican ties) have a strong Christian presence (especially at St John’s College). Others, for some reason, attract large populations of Jews (Manchester and Leeds, especially), Muslims (the School of Pharmacy, for instance), Hindus and every other flavour of faith you can imagine.

Most universities have at least one chaplain, usually an Anglican to start with, then perhaps adding others such as Roman Catholics, ecumenical, interdenominational, Methodists, Presbyterians, Orthodox and Reform Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains and so on as necessary.

Some universities have a chapel, too, and often a mosque or a prayer room — and, of course, there may be other worship shops locally.

Depending on whether there are enough god-squadders, there may well be religious clubs of every hue. In fact, you sometimes need to watch out for religious groups on campus — sects and cults have been known to target students.

Religion may be something you can carry with you, but if the trappings of a particular place to pray and fellow believers to do it with are important to you, you may want to rule out anywhere that doesn’t meet your creed needs.

DEBATING

For some students, seminars and SU meetings provide more than enough argumentative chit chat, but some universities also have a talk-shop that’s more than your regular club or society.

There are, for example, the Oxbridge debating unions — not to be confused with their students’ unions — where formal debates take place (often in black tie) before the audience votes on who won and then goes home and forgets about it. There’s often a fairly right-wing flavour to it all.

Oxford Union, in particular, has attracted some pretty awesome names either to debate or just to give talks, including, for instance, Bill Clinton, Nelson Mandela and Kermit the Frog. Many former Union Presidents — such as Ted Heath and Benazir Bhutto — have gone on to be as famous as the guests.

These debating unions don’t only debate. They have headquarters like smaller but posher versions of most SUs, with a bar, library and a few social facilities. They charge for membership (none too cheap) and some students find them quite elitist (and not in a good way).

A few other universities, especially the Oxbridge reject universities, have similar cosy arrangements (the Durham Union Society, for instance). Other universities, however, have debating clubs (or ‘mooting’ societies, as they’re sometimes known) that are more down-to-earth, such as Aberdeen University’s ‘Debater’.

Every university has clubs and societies, set up by the students, run by the student members and doing whatever the students want. They’re almost always part-funded by small membership fees, less small contributions from the students’ union (who also tend to lay down a few rules and guidelines such as that any student can join and that there be no financial corruption, no racism — nothing too onerous).

Some universities — such as Birkbeck, Buckingham, the Courtauld and London Institutes — only have a handful. Others — such as Birmingham, Bristol, Edinburgh, Hull, Lancaster, Manchester and Oxbridge — have a hundred or more.

They split into various kinds:

• The sports clubs, which often field the university’s teams.
• The academic clubs, which are usually course-related and are often run by a brown-noser in the department.
• The bog-standard hobby and interest clubs that most universities have, including everything from sci-fi to film, photography to animal rights, Amnesty to the orchestra.
• The political clubs — usually party-related and often fielding candidates for SU elections.
• The religious clubs.
• The international and cultural societies, which often provide a meeting place and a forum for particular ethnic groups (such as Afro-Caribbeans) and overseas students from a certain country.
• The welfare groups, which, like the international and cultural societies exist to support minorities and special interest groups such as postgrads, mature students, students with families, and lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender students.
• The off-the-wall and wacky clubs.

In the last category, it’s hard to believe that some of them actually do anything and weren’t set up just because someone though of an amusing name. For example, there are the various Odd Socs around the country (if they got together surely they could make some pairs), Bristol’s Flat Caps & Ferrets Society and Sunderland’s Hat Society.

But many are disturbingly serious (or seriously disturbing). To name but a few: Rocky Horror (Essex); Sword & Sorcery (Keele); Chill-Out Society (Edinburgh); Home Brewing (Cambridge); Chocolate Appreciation (Bristol); Blackadder Appreciation (Oxford); Cheerleaders (Glamorgan); Curry Society (Warwick); James Bond Appreciation (Royal Holloway); Laugh Out Loud (Manchester) and assorted Monty Python, Douglas Adams or Terry Pratchett Appreciation Societies all over the place.

If you have your own freakish fascination, you can bet there are other students out there somewhere who share your fetish and who may be only too keen to share it. Indeed, chances are they’ve already set up a club at some university to cater for your obsession. If it’s important to you, it may be a clincher when it comes to picking a university.

However, if you find yourself sadly unique in your devotion to an unusual pastime, never fear. If you can persuade enough other students at your university to join your strange society, so long as it’s (more or less) legal, you may be able to start your own. Of course, it’s easier if it’s already there.

It’s not just clubs and societies that you can set up. Universities weren’t born with radio stations and theatre groups. Some student started them up once upon a time (usually with SU funding) and others kept them going.

Whatever your interest, the right university for you is a stimulating environment in which to get your act together.

Every university has a unique set of clubs, groups, and organisations supporting students’ interests as diverse as dogs and dandelions.

What is more, these activities don’t exist in a vacuum. They affect the atmosphere of the place, define it even. Somewhere with active Christian groups feels different from somewhere without them and somewhere with thesps in every nook feels different from somewhere where the nooks are occupied by hacks or rugger buggers or business students.

Choose a university where your interests are catered for and you’ll usually find the atmosphere slots right into place too.

• What are your interests?
• Will you be able to pursue them at university?
• What might you get interested in?
• What facilities and organisations will there be?