Which uni? (Psychology)

[purplepenguin86]

Now I realise that nobody else can tell me which university is right for me, but any opinions on the following universities/courses, how they are perceived by employers, and particularly opinions from anyone with knowledge of psychology would be very welcome.

I am a mature student (will be 28 at entry) and have a long term aim of going into clinical psychology, so have applied for undergrad BSc Psychology courses for entry this year. I have been lucky enough to have offers from all 5 and am now ridiculously confused about where to go and am changing my mind approximately every 20 minutes....

The options are;

Bath - 4 year BSc including placement year. My number 1 choice on paper before visiting any of them. The highest ranking both as a uni and for psychology. Beautiful city. Also run a clinical psychology doctorate, so lots of clinical based research etc going on there, plus the opportunity of possibly getting to know some of the clinical lecturers which may help in a few years time when applying for doctorates. The obvious choice? Downsides are I wasn't able to go to the open day and they don't have any post offer days, so I have only seen it when I went for my interview, and whilst it seemed like a nice place it is hard to get as full a picture when you haven't heard the talk from the department, seen the departmental facilities, looked at the accommodation etc. It is also the furthest from home. If I want to go there I need to decide in the next day or 2, as accommodation applications open Tuesday and the 'good' halls get snapped up very quickly.

Kent - 4 year BSc including placement year. Not as high ranking as some of the others, and also not Russell Group, but I really liked both the university and the department both times that I visited. It seemed a very friendly place, and the lecturer who gave me a tour of the department facilities was possibly THE most enthusiastic person I have ever met. The most generous university for me financially (assuming I reach 45 distinctions on my Access course). Quickest to get to from home. Again, beautiful city. Doesn't have down sides as such - the accommodation is expensive, but the extra financial support more than makes up for that. No research in clinical psychology, which is the area I want to go into, but I don't know how important that is at undergrad level, particularly given that I could probably spend my placement year in a clinical setting. That and the lower rankings are the main downsides - will I kick myself for not going somewhere more 'prestigious'?

Nottingham - 3 year BSc. Russell Group uni, good reputation. Really lovely campus and when I visited I liked the uni a lot more than I was expecting to. The department was very friendly, stressed how all the staff have open door policy, no strict office hours etc, and some really interesting equipment unique to Nottingham. Nearly as good as Kent financially. Really strong performing arts societies too (of interest because it has been my life up to this point, and need want to continue performing for my sanity ). Main downside is no placement year, although they do have some summer internships etc. I also don't know the city at all - I know it doesn't have the best reputation re crime etc, but I don't know how fair that is, and also whether it applies to the areas surrounding the university?

Southampton - 3 year BSc. This one is more or less out of the running I think. Russell group uni, good course, good performing arts societies, but no placement year and the weakest for me in terms of bursaries/scholarships, combined with fairly expensive accommodation. I think the financial position would make it a difficult choice, and isn't much closer to home than Bath.

Loughborough - 4 year BSc including placement year, but you have to find your own placement to a far greater extent than at Bath or Kent. Similar to Kent in terms of finance, but cheaper accommodation. Some really interesting research and a very friendly department, and very supportive of mature students. Gave me an unconditional offer based on my A levels, so would have a guaranteed place. Downsides - less prestigious than the others? Not a particularly exciting town compared to the others?

Congratulations for wading through that lot! I think that realistically my first choice is probably going to be either Bath or Kent, but I have changed my mind about which more times than I could count, with some of the others thrown in too at various points, along with deciding I applied to completely wrong universities at other points. Bath and Kent are my highest offers and are too similar to have one as firm and one as insurance, so both would need to either be firm choice or nothing. Insurance I am deciding between Nottingham and Loughborough. Loughborough has the option of a placement year and has given me an unconditional offer, so from that aspect it would be a sensible insurance, but Nottingham probably has a better reputation and is also a thousand pounds a year more generous financially. I think the things that I particularly need advice on are how much league tables matter, both in terms of overall and subject specific rankings, how relevant a uni being Russell Group is to anything (I am aware it is purely a group of unis for research purposes etc, but obviously they have good reputations and I don't know how much that needs to be considered), and how valuable a placement year will be. Also any advice about psychology specifically would be a great help, particularly if anyone knows how much where you went to uni is considered when hiring assistant clinical psychologists and getting onto doctorate courses etc.

Many thanks!

From your notes I'd say bath and Loughborough.

I'd suggest reposting here - it's a forum full of psychology students www.thestudentroom.co.uk/forumdisplay.php?f=210

Look at the graduate employment rates on unistats and go for the one that offers you the best job prospects.

I have already posted on the student room but I'm more interested in finding out about if one will be considered better when applying for jobs and doctorates etc than in students views on the courses. I don't know how important league tables, university name etc are in terms of job prospects and further study. Sometimes I see that unis say they have 24/24 for research or teaching - is this data something that can be accessed to compare different courses?

Well I think you should always take a cautious approach to league tables but according to this one

www.thecompleteuniversityguide.co.uk/league-tables/rankings?s=psychology

Bath does very well for graduate prospects.

I have looked at all 3 main league tables (Complete University Guide, Times and Guardian). Kent seems to punch well above its weight for graduate prospects, although generally still below Bath - the Times guide has Kent 5th for Psychology, with Bath in 2nd, Complete University Guide has Kent in 7th and Bath in 5th, and Guardian has Kent in 4th and Bath in 8th. So generally Bath comes out top of my choices, followed by Kent, except the Guardian which has reversed them. Both are considerably higher in all three tables than any of my other choices, and interestingly Loughborough generally comes out above Nottingham and Southampton despite the latter two having more academic reputations and being Russell Group unis.

I think with university choices there comes a point when you have to put all the league table positions aside and let your gut feeling take over.

DD1 chose UEA over a higher ranked Russell Group uni because she just felt so at home there. The fact that she did very well and took advantage of the opportunity to study abroad and took part in extra curricular activities that were relevant to the career she wanted probably had a greater influence on her job prospects than how the university was perceived.

DD2 is at Bath and the fact that she is on a placement year will probably be the most important thing that helps her to get a job when she graduates.

How is she finding Bath? As I said, on paper it was my first choice, but I don't feel like I have as good a feel for it as the others as I haven't seen it at an open day, heard the talks etc. It sounds like a strange thing to say, but I don't know if it felt as friendly as Kent and Nottingham - the department felt a little more formal and as though there might be less student/staff interaction outside of lectures etc, but I have no grounds for believing that to be the case, it was just a feeling I got when I went for my interview. But that may just have been because at the others I saw lots of staff at the open days and so got a better feeling from them.

I agree that at some point you need to just decide, but it is so difficult - I am indecisive at the best of times!

Well she absolutely loves Bath and is looking forward to going back in the autumn for her final year. She will be sharing a house with two friends who are also currently on work placements and one who is in france for part of their languages degree. I have no idea what the Psychology department is like though. I don't think DD2 would like too much interaction with staff outside lectures as being Mathematicians one or two are a bit odd!

Hahaha, fair enough! At Nottingham and Kent they both said how they have departmental parties and have open door policies rather than strict office hours, and some student vs staff events etc that I thought all made them sound like quite supportive, approachable places, but I do appreciate that lots of students wouldn't be interested in any of that!

Based on gut feel I would imagine that you will feel very happy and at home at kent. No matter what you are saying about bath being higher etc, you seem quite adamant in your writing here, that you somehow prefer kent.

I would say that the only thing that concerns me about that decision is that kent does not offer a clinical offering, which is something you say you want to get into.

I am very familiar with kent's psychology dept. they are indeed very friendly and very nice - really. So if that's what appeals to you, then I'd go for it. I think the difference between 5th/7th is minutia and you will be splitting hairs. If you're talking about 7th and 50th, then that's a big difference.

PM me if you want more thoughts about the dept. some thoughts you might want to think about would be: how fixed are you about clinical psych, what final year project do you think you'd want to do, what's your social life going to be like (given that you are 28, you probably have an idea of what you like/don't like by now so won't be so swayed by others), financially how will this all pan out for you? - I would rather be comfortable than struggling, particularly if like I said before, the rankings are v similar...

NK5BM3 - thank you for your post. In the end I decided to firm Bath, as that had been my favourite from way back before I even applied - it was one of my main incentives for doing an Access course rather than going to uni based on my old A levels. It wasn't that I had a bad vibe from Bath, it was just that I hadn't really spent enough time there to know how I felt about the department, but I have since spoken to some past and current students, who have all been very positive about it, and also spoken to the course coordinator who was lovely. Much as I loved Kent, I think that Bath will give me the advantage in terms of future career plans, and that is what I am going to university for. There will probably be times when I will regret it, and had I chosen Kent there probably would have been times I would have regretted it - nowhere is perfect. But I definitely want to go into clinical psychology - that is why I am studying psychology, so I think my decision had to be the place that would offer me the best prospects in that field. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend Kent to people wanting to study psychology though - it's a great uni with a really lovely department.

My insurance choice is Loughborough due to the option of a placement year there, plus it is an unconditional offer so if everything goes horribly wrong for some reason at least I know I still have a place!

Hello, purple. I have only just noticed this thread and it seems like any advice that I may give is too late - you last post sounds like you have already committed to your choices.
Just in case you have not, let me introduce myself. I am a senior lecturer in psychology at a middle ranking red brick, but was trained and have worked at Russell group unis, too. I would start by saying that the league tables should be largely ignored. They simply show the ranking according to an arbitrarily chosen set of criteria that differ from one table to another. Their lack of meaning is reflected in the facts that different tables can give wildly different ranking for the same institution, that a given institution (or department) will rise or fall within the same table by many places from one year to the next, and that none of them publish comprehensive information about how their rankings are derived.
Having said that, the five departments you have selected are all pretty good. I would rank Nottingham and Kent as better than the rest, followed by Southampton and Bath and finally Loughborough. Of course, they differ on placement years and funding and I am ignoring those issues in my assessment.
One final word, do not assume that running a clinical doctorate is particularly important, even if it is clinical that you want to go into. It is (almost) unheard of to go from undergrad to clinical training directly - there is only one direct entry scheme run by Hull and York - normally people have to work as an assistant psychologist for several years (very competitive jobs to get and hard work) or do a clinically related PhD before they stand any chance of getting onto clinical training. Also, it is often the case that the people who teach the clinical doctorate have no involvement in the undergraduate degree. They may even be in a different department. What is important is experience in working in a clinical setting, so if you are not already volunteering somewhere start now.

Thank you for your reply - I am going to send you a PM, I hope that is ok.

Hello Moutarde - your post is really helpful. Do you have any knowledge of Scottish unis for psychology - specifically Aberdeen, Stirling and Strathclyde? Any info or views (either positive or negative) would be gratefully received.

Nottingham. But I am biased. Apart from Loughborough it is MUCH more affordable to live there than the other places so you'd have a better quality of life.