Leeds College Of Music

I was impressed when seeing their amazing facilities, ensemble rooms, practice booths, etc. However, I have to say, I am really really extremely gutted when I started my course here. It was a huge disappointment. I decided to move to Leeds for the BA in Popular Music course at LCM, having come from a music college in London. First of all, offering no class in music theory and harmony is rather an odd thing for a specialist music institution. My first guitar workshop was held in the basement of a pub across the street?! And that workshop, for 1^st year students, were to teach us how to recognise notes on the fretboards while they were expected to have at least grade 8 in their playing skill, but can’t recognise what notes they’re playing on the fretboard!!! I had 3 days of school per week, only 3 hours out of those 20, I get to use my guitar at school. For the first couple of weeks, the task for the weekly band practice session was just to come up with random riffs which the supervisors don’t even care, and then go home without even remembering a bit of it. Tutors are inexperienced. One of the guys I had didn’t seem to know much more than I do. 1-​to-​1 lessons are completely directionless with no specific curriculum. To make it short, I did not get what I expected, I did not get to learn any theory and harmony, I didn’t get to improve my sight reading skill, I didn’t get to practically learn to play the guitar, I didn’t get to improve my aural & transcribing skills, etc. All you’d get there is endless boring lecture about different songs, how to analyse songs by listening to them, and how to successfully make money in the music industry, which the assignments are all about. Nothing is specifically designed for your chosen instrument except for the workshop and the 1-​to-​1 lesson which takes up no more than 15% of the hours each week.
So I ended up quitting within the first 3 weeks. I have heard disturbing rumours that they had seriously dire money problems, and I could clearly see for myself, upon enrolment, that they had certain policies that are set up to rip students off. It’s a common thing for universities in the UK to charge non-​EU students a higher tuition fee than that EU students have to pay. So when filling out my personal details on the enrolment form, I told them that I was holding dual citizenship, and then they insisted on the fact that I have to pay higher tuition fee because one of the citizenships I was holding is non-​EU, despite the fact that I do have British citizenship and grew up here. I ended up having to pay almost two grants more than the EU fee. And for my case, being considered an «international student», the school had a policy for such students that they are required to pay 75% of one-​year tuition fee before enrolment and there would be a no-​refund policy applied if they decided to withdraw. With that no-​refund policy, they obviously want to rip you off by demanding that much money before enrolling you just to make sure they could still keep a large amount of money and wouldn’t lose a lot if you decided to withdraw. I was so determined and certain that it was definitely the right uni for me, so I decided to pay the fee in full upon enrolment instead of just 75% as required.
So they wouldn’t give me a refund for those stupid reasons. They made that decision of not giving me a refund a couple of days after I handed in the withdrawal form. I was so angry and frustrated. I thought I had no choice but have to continue with the course, so I asked them to disregard the withdrawal request but then they said they’d just enroll someone on their waiting list so they had no more space for me to come back then, wtf!!!
At the end, I tried to negotiate and only managed to get back 50% of what I’d paid, and they called that «a gesture of goodwill»!!! What really pissed me off was that the head of school even said to me that it was a very «unfortunate» thing that I paid the full tuition fee upon enrolment while I was only required to pay 75% so that’s why I would lose the entire amount. So does that mean THEY are the ones who’re in the «fortunate» situation?! Yeah, that’s right, I lost over 5000 pounds to them for nothing!
Their money problem can be easily seen by looking at the way they try to cramp too many students in this school. All the seminar-​type classes I was in never had enough chairs.
Again, to make it short, I would not recommend this school at all, absolutely not! I can’t speak for the entire school, but at least for the BA course in Popular Music, just don’t!!! It’s completely crap, just stay home and spend about 1 to 2 hours of practice by yourself every day then after 3 years you’d be way more better than those graduates from LCM. And I mean it, I seriously mean it, it’s not an exaggeration. If you go there for 3 years, all you’d get will be a shoddy degree with a trashy piece of paper that says you can play an instrument, and that you mainly do classical/​jazz/​or pop

This place is like heaven for techies and instrumentalists alike, with countless practise rooms and a recently installed £250,000 mixing desk in one of the studios. The lecturers really know what they’re talking about, and the students are really friendly. The only bad thing is that the in house bar/​restaurant stop serving breakfast at 11am!

I took a couple of part-​time guitar instruction classes at Leeds College of Music a while back. The teaching was of a high standard, well organised and requiring good attendance and quite a lot of homework on the part of the pupils. The teacher was pretty demanding and would pull us up if we clearly hadn’t done the required work — which I think is a good thing!
To be honest I didn’t make the progress I would have liked with the classes, but that was entirely my fault. If I’d done all the work I needed to put in, then I would have got a lot better than I did. The teaching itself was not the problem — it was excellent, and in a rather attractive building with good facilities too.