here's what the people at goodguides.com.au say about each university. there's a lot of reading though.
USYD:
The main campus, Sydneys home since 1860, is on the edge of the CBD, at Camperdown. Sweeping lawns and neo-Gothic facades set a classy tone which continues as you enter the famous quadrangle. Behind is a jumble of architectural styles and piecemeal development, but the university has undertaken a major campus renewal program. The main and Mallett Street campuses enjoy the great advantage of being right in the thick of the urban action, with restaurants, pubs, theatres, gardens and the wonderful harbour nearby. A new sports and aquatic centre gives students the chance to get away from the daily grind. The university has restored Manning House (centre of student life for generations) to its 1917 grandeur as a food and entertainment venue. The high-profile Sydney Conservatorium of Music's splendid site not far from the famous Opera House is being redeveloped, and the Sydney College of the Arts is in handsome quarters in Rozelle, next door to trendy Balmain. It has a faculty of rural management at Orange, in the mid-west of NSW. The faculty of health sciences is at Lidcombe in the western suburbs and the law school is in the CBD.
UTS:
UTS is a distinctive institution with unusually big numbers of part-timers and adult students. Most are preparing for entry to professions ranging from business, engineering and teaching to computing, law and journalism. A third come from non-English speaking backgrounds. UTS has claimed to excel in cooperative education (combined work and study), problem-based learning, teaching students as adult learners and the professional formation of its graduates.
It is a multi-campus institution, but the City campus dominates. With over 21 000 students, it is in the midst of the greatest concentration of tertiary institutions in the country and next door to Sydneys Chinatown and Darling Harbour. It is set in an area of rapid urban development including streetscaping, a major bus, train and pedestrian traffic interchange, big student housing projects, the wonderful Powerhouse Museum and dozens of pubs and eateries. You couldnt wish for a spunkier setting for study. On the other hand, most of the campus is an unpleasant-looking 28-storey tower. The buildings in the adjacent Ultimo and Haymarket, the only Australian higher education facilities serviced by a monorail, are much better. The St Leonards campus, a few kilometres across the Sydney Harbour Bridge and close by the Royal North Shore Hospital, offers biomedical, health and environmental science courses. The Kuring-gai campus at Lindfield, a few more kilometres up the Pacific Highway, is in the middle of a giant bushland park, itself in the middle of the vast suburbs of Sydneys North Shore. (The environment is too conservative and needs livening up, as one of our student correspondents put it.)
UTS doesnt have the cachet of Sydney nor the research base of UNSW but it has an enviable reputation for professional/vocational preparation, innovation and links with industry. UTS must have the highest number of co-op courses in the country. Many students alternate between full-time study and on-the-job experience. In fact, the majority of courses provide work placements of between a few weeks and a year. The print library resources are not strong, but UTS has upgraded its computer facilities and electronic learning resources. UTS has a strong track record in graduate employment and salaries, but less so in graduate evaluation of courses. Studentstaff ratios have sometimes been a problem and student services have been subject to complaint.
UNSW:
UNSW is one of the heavyweights of Australian higher education. Big, very tough to get into, courses ranging from jewellery and dance to law, medicine and engineering, a major research institution, an exceptionally cosmopolitan student body, it offers (as one student correspondent put it) 'an intense tertiary experience'.
The main campus is in Kensington, an inner south eastern suburb of Sydney. It is dominated by brutalist architecture of the 1950s, '60s and '70s, but new buildings, more eating and casual study spots, and extensive landscaping have made it much more livable. The Paddington campus in Australia's trendiest inner suburb is one of the biggest art schools in NSW. Other friends and relatives include the Australian Defence Force Academy (see separate profile) in Canberra, a college of UNSW; the high-prestige Australian Graduate School of Management, a faculty of the university; and the prominent National Institute of Dramatic Arts (NIDA, see separate profile), on the main campus but a separate institution.
Many UNSW students come from overseas and more than one in three of those who are Australian born have non-English speaking backgrounds. Study abroad and student-exchange programs are large by Australian standards. UNSW was, with RMIT, runner-up to Monash for the 1994 Good Universities Guides University of the Year Award for internationalising undergraduate education, and topped that as the 1996 University of the Year for the richness of the undergraduate experience it offers. UNSW began life 50 years ago as a technological institution and still has a somewhat 'applied' image. It has by far the biggest engineering program in the country, its law school was (with Monash) the first to give law students real legal training, and it has been a leader in developing co-op programs which give students industry experience as part of the course. Employers know and like UNSW qualifications. But most UNSW courses are nearer the conventionally academic in character.
UNSW was one of the first universities to get students to evaluate their courses, and has added a survey aimed at getting regular feedback on 'the whole UNSW experience'. UNSW is at or near the top of student and academic status hierarchies, and competes hard with its much older rival, Sydney University, for students, research honours, and international standing.
more on architecture later....