Find your course

This website is created by the people who wish they'd had access to student opinions before they'd made their own choice about where to study. Have you heard of www.tripadvisor.com, the online travel brochure with independent reviews of hotels written by their guests? Hotcourses is to education what Tripadvisor is to travel.

If you're studying now or have graduated, you can help future students by telling them what it's really like at your college or university. It doesn't matter if you are really enjoying yourself or can't wait to leave, your opinion is really important and future students will want to know what you have to say.

If you are a student thinking about where to study, we hope you find these reviews a useful resource to use alongside the database of 400,000 (and growing every day) courses and programs from over 3000 universities and colleges in the USA, UK, Australia and Singapore.

Hotcourses has a simple mission: to produce guides and websites that make it easy for people to find the right school, college or university to pursue educational opportunities for themselves or their families. We believe in the fundamental importance of education as a way to expand opportunities and help people grow as human beings. We want to be the best in the world at helping people find the program or course that is right for them, whatever stage they are in life.

With offices in the UK, India, Australia and the USA, Hotcourses employs over 200 staff globally.

Watch a video all about Hotcourses

Mike Elms, Founder and CEO, Hotcourses inc.

Mike Elms is joint chief executive and co-founder of Hotcourses since its inception in 1996. He has day to day responsibility for all operational aspects of running the company and is acknowledged as an education expert. He is currently based in the USA and is involved in developing the company's international roll out strategy, developing new products in overseas markets. In addition to Hotcourses, he is on the Advisory Board of the London School of Commerce. Prior to founding Hotcourses, Mike founded an IT specialist PR and marketing company which grew to become one of the top 25 PR companies in the UK. He sold it in 1996.

Mark O'Donoghue, Managing Director, Hotcourses Education Media

Mark O'Donoghue runs the division of the company that contains all of the Hotcourses and British Council branded publications and websites across schools, further education and higher education. He is responsible for directing the operations of the advertising sales, marketing, editorial, production and development departments across Hotcourses printed titles and the web, and is tasked with developing new business including strategic alliances and potential acquisitions.

Neil Pearson, Chief Technology Officer

Neil Pearson is Head of new media at Hotcourses. In addition to spearheading our stated strategy to become the number one course website worldwide, he is also responsible for all technical aspects of the company.

Nigel Watts-Morgan, Managing Director Hotcourses Solutions

Nigel heads up Hotcourses' Solutions division and is responsible for all operational and financial areas of the business. He has worked for Hotcourses since 2005, initially as Finance Director prior to his current role. Nigel is a qualified chartered accountant with over 20 years commercial experience within the media and IT sectors. He has worked for a variety of high profile organisations including KPMG, Reed Elsevier and Phaidon Press, the world's leading illustrated art book publisher, where he spent eight years as Group Finance and IT Director.

Priyatham Rajagopalan - Chief Operating Officer, Hotcourses India

Priyatham has responsibility for running the team of technologists involved in the research and development of the Hotcourses branded products and implementing the very latest technology. He also has responsibility for the Hotcourses data teams which collect and manage approximately one million course records every year and the customer care team which delivers advertising content across our international portfolio of websites.

Andrew Wharton, General Manager, Hotcourses Australasia

Previously Sales Director based in London HQ, Andrew launched the Sydney, Australia branch of Hotcourses in January 2008 and is responsible for Hotcourses operations in Australasian markets

Professor Michael Arthur, Vice Chancellor of the University of Leeds

Professor Michael Arthur, Vice Chancellor of the University of Leeds, is internationally renowned for his contribution to education and medical research. He studied Medicine at Southampton, becoming a research fellow and a lecturer in medicine. He was appointed to the Chair of Medicine and was later appointed as Dean of Southampton's Faculty of Medicine, Health and Life Sciences. Professor Arthur's expertise in liver research is internationally acknowledged.

Since his appointment at Leeds in 2004, he has galvanised Leeds with the vision of a place in the world's top 50 universities by 2015. Professor Arthur has a significant national profile. He chairs the steering group for the National Student Survey and has been advising on the wider 14-19 education reform programme for the UK Government.

He has been appointed to the board of the Regional Development Agency Yorkshire Forward and has spearheaded a new artistic and academic collaboration between the University and Opera North. He is Chair of the Worldwide Universities Network and Chair of Yorkshire Universities. He has recently been appointed as a member of the board of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority as well as becoming a US/UK Fulbright Commissioner.

Dr. David Ward, Past President of the American Council on Education and Chancellor Emeritus (or Former Chancellor), University of Wisconsin-Madison.

A leading spokesperson for American higher education, David Ward was the 11th president of the American Council on Education from 2001 to 2008. Ward is chancellor emeritus of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he received his doctorate in 1963. Prior to becoming chancellor at UW-Madison, Ward also served as associate dean of the graduate school from 1980 to 1987 and as vice chancellor for academic affairs and provost from 1989 to 1993. Ward was born in Manchester, England and received his BA and MA at the University of Leeds before coming to the United States in 1960 as a Fulbright scholar.

Ward's service to higher education includes the chairmanship of the Board of Trustees of the University Corporation for Advanced Internet Development, a nonprofit group that spearheaded the development of Internet 2. He also has chaired the Government Relations Council of the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges, and served on the Committee on Undergraduate Education of the Association of American Universities, the Science Coalition, and the Kellogg Commission on the Future of State and Land-Grant Universities.

Under Ward's leadership, ACE has developed a strategic plan that has strengthened the Council's role as the major coordinating agent for higher education. Implementation of the plan has led to a sharpened programmatic focus on equity and diversity, internationalization, lifelong learning, and institutional effectiveness. While President of ACE, he has been appointed to the Council of the United Nations University and was the sole dissenting member of the Commission on the Future of Higher Education, convened by Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings.

During his four years as provost of UW-Madison, Ward led the development of a strategic plan that improved the quality of undergraduate education there; added to campus research facilities; enhanced the connections among the university, the city, the business community, and the state; and creatively combined public and private support for the institution. These changes gave new expression to the Wisconsin Idea, the venerable philosophical framework for the university's role in public service and knowledge transfer.

Ward also held the Andrew Hill Clark Professorship of Geography at the university, served as chair of the geography department from 1974 to 1977, and was president of the Association of American Geographers in 1989. As an urban geographer, he pioneered research on English and American cities during their rapid industrialization in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and held visiting appointments at University College London; The Australian National University, Canberra; Hebrew University, Jerusalem; and at his undergraduate alma mater, the University of Leeds.

Baroness Estelle Morris of Yardley

Former Secretary of State for Education and Schools Minister Estelle Morris has joined the Advisory Board of educational publisher Hotcourses. One of her roles will be to help Hotcourses develop its online schools product in to the UK's most comprehensive web resource available for parents looking to choose the right school for their children. She will also be involved in the national roll-out of the floodlight website, so that more of the UK's major cities and regions can benefit from a local guide to courses online. For school-leavers, she will be helping Hotcourses with its portfolio of magazines and online sites that reach out to school children in a way that engages them to think more about further and higher education.