Primrose Kitten

Max has A-Levels in Economics (C), French (D) and PE (D).

When choosing a course to study, I took the advice of my sister, who is a third year student and is very content with her course choice. Her advice was to collect prospectuses from as many universities as I could. I picked up a bunch from college and ordered more online. With an unbelievable amount of prospectuses in front of me, I admit I was feeling over-whelmed. My sister advised me to keep it simple and go through each prospectus and jot down on a list the courses that really stood out for me. This would be my long-list, which I would then shortlist.

I realised that there are many different types of courses to study at university. There are Bachelor’s degrees, Diplomas of Higher Education, NVQs, amongst many others. After reading about the differences between each type, I was certain that I wanted to complete a Bachelor’s degree. This narrowed down my list quite significantly.

I sifted through the module and course content of each course on the list. This was to see whether I would enjoy studying the course content. One discovery I made whilst doing this was that, unlike A-Levels where course content is usually identical no matter where you study, undergraduate degrees vary a whole lot. Two separate universities that have a course of the same name do not necessarily share the same course content. This was an important discovery as it could potentially mean I would enjoy one course of the same name in one university but not in another.

Once I had my shortlist, I looked back on all the courses I had studied so farm, which included my GCSEs, a BTEC I had completed, and currently my A-Levels. I wanted to see if the courses I had particularly enjoyed so far shared similarities with the courses on my short-list, as a few did I paid more attention to these.

Another aspect that really helped to choose a course was the end-line. Would this course help me to achieve the career I wanted in the future? I’m one of those people who isn’t completely settled on one career choice. I had a few in mind and they were pretty similar. Luckily a few courses were very flexible in that they would allow me to work towards the different careers I could see for myself. This would take the pressure off of me having to make a career decision right away.

To help me further narrow down my search to five courses (this is the maximum number of courses you can apply to), I used online course statistics. These websites are great for telling you about other peoples’ general experience and opinion of each course. I was able to look at the rate of student satisfaction, academic resources given, and even things like how much of a voice students are able to express whilst completing the course. These methods in choosing a course have helped me to find a course I’m beyond happy with!