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I am trying to decide whether to do an MA I want to do full time or part time, can anybody give me some ideas how much study is involved? Is full time 40 hours a week?

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Do you mean a Masters? Dh did a part time Msc a couple of years ago, it was just one day a week at Uni. There was a hell of a lot of study outside of this and tbh it was tough with 2 young children! Around the time if his dissertation we literally didn't see him. He did get a distinction in the end! Not sure if unanswered your question though!!

Thank you for answering. Yes I mean a Masters.

It's an MA in Translation.

Have you had a look at course/module guides? There should be a notional number of hours on those.

Mine was 1 day a fortnight part time, one day a week full time contact time. Contact hours on it now have doubled though. I worked full time and did it part time. Got the contact days off, then all the rest was evenings/weekends. Perfectly doable. There were some on the course who quit their jobs to do it full time and ended up getting jobs again as they had the time.

Of course depends on Uni, course, person.

It just says about credits, but not hours.

For my full time MA we were expected to spend 37 hours a week on it. And to be honest I think I did. It was full-time!!

I did a full time MA. We had lectures or seminars four days a week 9-4. I needed to spend two or three evenings (say, 8-11pm) and usually a good half a day at the weekend on studying. More than that when I started my dissertation.

I was also volunteering ne day per week and had a baby and reception age child. It was intense, but do-able. Go for it!

Sorry for hijack OP, but this is something DS is interested in doing. Obviously it's costly, and he was wondering about living at home (where for some reason it's free!!!), and travelling to the uni which is one hours drive away when necessary. Would this be feasible?

Thanks for all the replies. I'm not sure how feasible it is, I was planning to do a distance learning course. The cost is an issue!

Dh was fortunately that he did it just before the hike in fees. His company paid for it but then he left a few months after and so has had to pay back a chunk of the fees! I'm not sure if he was self funding that he would have done it tbh. I guess it's important to take the long term goal into account. Good luck

If I only I had a way of finding out whether the investment would be worthwhile...

Yes, 40 hours.

I don't know many people who didn't do a bit more towards the end of the course, because there's pressure on a dissertation (and I mean people in a pretty wide variety of subjects so hopefully it's representative). But then that is balanced out by the fact that you get to manage your own time to some extent and work spread out over 7 days. One person reckoned she did about 25 hours a week and she failed.

aj - can he not ask the university what they think? And work out when taught classes would be? Lots of masters courses I've seen have a couple of contact hours a week, so it'd be easy to do it from an hour's drive so long as you were organized about getting books from the library and working at home. But it wouldn't work if he constantly needed to be in and out of classes.

I'm doing a part time MA, over 2 years whilst working and with 4 small children. That looks RIDICULOUS on paper. Part time is one evening lecture and roughly 16 hours of self study per week, although MUCH more at assignment time.

It's tough! Almost wishing that I had taken a sabbatical from work and tried to complete it in a year full time.

I know what you are saying. it wasn't such a tough choice for dh as like I said he was funded. He has now got a much better job with a firm where he has much much better prospects. The Msc wasn't needed for the role but I know the knowledge he gained from it has helped him enormously in the area he now works (construction).

Full time is full time -- and then some. So a minimum of 40 hours a week.

I did a part time MA but the key issue was that it was variable. I found even that hard to organise around children eg timetable for diss was over the summer holidays and by 1 Oct. I couldn't get an academic supervisor in advance of that timetable. Also written work tended to have a deadline of last day of holidays and once again reading lists /essay titles not available until end of term. Having said that I managed it and wouldn't have missed it for the world, now on PhD!

Interesting points to consider thanks

Its at least 40 hours a week.

For ajandjj, I travel 2 hours twice a week. One of the reasons this is doable is that I can use the local university library to study in at weekends (its actually better as I have no web access there). If you have a closer university, look if your DS can use their library, makes it much easier to study without all the travelling.

Thanks MrsHoarder. Graduate jobs seems so hard to come by - after a couple of assessment centre he hasn't been selected, so is now wondering if a Masters might make him more employable. Just the money side that's a challenge!