Please help me choose where to study for a Psychology Degree

Psychobot

Another question!

Just say I go to Westminster and end up with a 2:1, would it in any way be thought of as less worthy than a Goldsmiths' degree when it comes to approaching unis for MSc courses? Would they discriminate in some way.

Also, the Westminster course actually has a 1 term long 'psychology in the workplace' option in year 3 where I would have to do voluntary/ paid work in a mental health setting and write up and submit a report based on the experience. Is this a good idea to do?

pboae

Officially the answer would be no, in practice it probably will make a difference, depending on what the person doing the selection thinks of the two courses.

In The Guardian rankings, Goldsmiths has a slightly higher score, but neither do particularly well, they both have 4/10 for job prospects.

Work experience can't hurt, but it doesn't seem to have helped their ratings much.

surfsister

just to say I would recommend a Cambridge degree over any other (except Oxford) but it is very hard to get in. My daughter just got in (not Goldsmith) and you need 3 A grades minimum and 2 difficult interviews but this may not apply if you go through clearing.
I advise you to contact the admissions office at Cambridge as they are very helpful and explain your situation -they helped us tremendously. Good luck.
Having said this a friend just graduated from Hertford uni with a first class honours degree in psychology and got a job immediately as a probation officer which was just what they wanted to do so don't lose heart if you don't get in.

[Deleted User]

I know it's very far out from central London, but my brother did psychology at York uni. It's a very highly commended course and ranks very highly, up with Oxford and Cambs.

He's a little psychology swot though, he did BSc Phsyc, followed by a year working in the NHS as a RA, then MRes at Birmingham, now he's doing a Clinical Doctorate at Oxford (that's a paid course also)

He has quite good psychology job prospects i hope

Here's some university rankings for psychology: http://extras.timesonline.co.uk/gooduniversityguide2005/20psychology.pdf

Psychobot

Thanks for your advice but I really can't afford to move away from home win London. I'm petrified of accumulating tonnes of debt!

melancholly

surfsister wrote: »

just to say I would recommend a Cambridge degree over any other (except Oxford) but it is very hard to get in. My daughter just got in (not Goldsmith) and you need 3 A grades minimum and 2 difficult interviews but this may not apply if you go through clearing.
I advise you to contact the admissions office at Cambridge as they are very helpful and explain your situation -they helped us tremendously. Good luck.

to my knowledge, cambridge has not entered clearing in recent memory, so it may not be all that useful to the OP. i have a cambridge degree, and while it is undoubtably helpful, you also get a lot of companies that avoid oxbridge students like the plague. for sciences, it's also worth remembering that everyone enters natural sciences, so students have to do a very broad first year (potentially an advantage, but not for everyone!). there is also very little coursework and the degree is entirely weighted on your final year - so one week of exams essentially decides your grade. this will not suit everyone!

for psychology, i would put york, cardiff and nottingham up there as being just as good - it can be very dangerous to view a cambridge degree as being so much more useful in the long term. i've seen plenty of people think that it will be a golden ticket to a job when it really isn't. it's a fantastic place, i think it's a great place to learn, but these days it really isn't head and shoulders above other unis any more.

surfsister

sorry melancholly didn't realise Cambridge don't do clearing! no-one else from my family has ever been to uni!

melancholly

surfsister wrote: »

sorry melancholly didn't realise Cambridge don't do clearing! no-one else from my family has ever been to uni!

my parents didn't do degrees either - it was a very steep learning curve for us all!!! i'm sure your daughter will have an amazing there - i loved it, but i know it has good and bad sides too (much more good than bad though!)

Voyager2002

It is a fact of life that most high-status universities do not take part in clearing. They don't need to, since they recruit good students during the first round of applications.

However, as a mature student you are not bound by the usual application deadlines. Try to make contact with a 'Russell Group' university, and see if you can be considered at this stage. With your grades, you should be setting your sights a good deal higher than the likes of Westminster.

The quality of your first degree, and the quality of the university where you do it, will have an impact for at least the next ten years. So, if delaying for a year could enable you to study at one of the best institutes in London, I think that would be a price worth paying.

Psychobot

To be honest I don't think it would make THAT much of a difference if I went to UCL or Goldsmiths'. Perhaps at UCL I'd receive even less attention from lecturers who I'm sure place most of their time into their own research projects as a few of my UCL attending friends have told me.

I'm beginning to feel less bothered about the 'prestige factor' of attending Westminster. I'm now more curious about the facilities and the other people I would be on the course with if I were to study here.

I would love the opportunity to learn about psych with neuroscience, but it has to mean that my university experience at Westminster would fulfilling, in that I could walk away assured that I have been able to cross-link ideas from both fields. I'm also wondering whether having a 50% biological lab component to the course would mean that if I fail miserably in the hereafter world of psychology (as I've been told many a time, there is SO much competition post BSc), then perhaps I could go down the pharmacology/ research route.

I wish I knew someone on the course who I could interrogate!