Cairncross House

UofG first-year students can find a lot of useful facilities here: car parking, kitchens on every floor, bathrooms including accessible ones, a student hall, and a study room. The university is within walking distance. There are shops nearby too, including Sainsbury, Lidl, Tesco, and Greggs, so there's pretty much everything around. A Gurudwara, church, and park are also close by.

The one real plus is being close to the school and the fun places in the west end. The security staff are nice too. Otherwise, I really wouldn't recommend living here. For the hefty price, you'd expect basic sanitation and working facilities, but this place is the opposite. Rooms have almost no ventilation because the windows barely open, and they get steaming hot. There's a bright light right over the bed that gives off heat as well, so the building gets musty quickly and the hallways stink. The bathrooms often don't work properly. Toilets clog, showers flood, and the bathrooms aren't cleaned daily, so they get filthy with everyone on the floor using them several times a day. There's also a mouse infestation, and management doesn't seem to care. Basically, it's disgusting everywhere. If you're a first-year or on exchange, look somewhere else unless you want to be miserable in Glasgow. DO NOT LIVE HERE.

As a resident and someone on the student support team, my experience was that the university treats this building like a financial investment. Repairs and pest control seem to happen only when absolutely necessary. The staff, who work for an outsourced management company, are probably overworked and underpaid, so I don't expect much when raising complaints. The building's condition can make your living environment range from fairly decent to downright disgusting, depending on where you end up. Flooding, mould, and air that seems to stick to your skin are common. Hallways have no ventilation, and some kitchens have no windows, so the air quality is terrible. For first years, be aware it's laid out hostel-style: long corridors with shared kitchens every ten rooms or so, instead of individual flats. That can be social, but it's noisy and chaotic too. Anyone in the building can use your kitchen and bathrooms, or throw up in them. The location is excellent, in a lovely part of Glasgow, very close to the university and with lots of amenities to explore in first year. The building and management, though, are shockingly bad.

The layout is dormitory-style across four floors, with long corridors and hardly any windows in communal areas beyond the stairways, entrance, and a few kitchens. The stale air can get so thick it regularly made my friends and me gag. My kitchen had no window, and smells clung to our clothes. The walls are paper-thin, and lots of door catches don't work, so doors slam around the clock. If you're neurodiverse, that can be really overstimulating. Damp, mould, leaks, and pests are all around the building. A bathroom ceiling in our area caved in, then was left neglected by santuary students for months. My flatmates and I repeatedly asked maintenance about the smell and better air extraction, but we were blamed for being unclean instead. Blaming students instead of taking responsibility and spending needed money seemed to be a pattern with Sanctuary Students. The place desperately needs serious TLC. UofG is seriously mis-selling it because the reality is nothing like the adverts. The whole building feels abhorrent, like one of the worst fever dreams imaginable. UofG and Santuary Students need to sort it out. Better student wellbeing means better university standards and performance.