Languages at St Andrews

[Tenpastseven]

Does anyone have any experience of a languages degree (likely French and Spanish post A level) at St Andrews?

We had a look online and the information offered on the course looks far more sparse than on other Uni sites. Unless I’m just not looking properly.

DC is thinking about the following year. Tempted by St Andrews, but 1) it's hard to get into, 2) a 5 year course is so long... Would also be interested in taking a course abroad, but I think that would be very complicated.

This is such a useful thread.

Dd1 is applying for joint french and English lit honours 21 intake. She is going to try for Oxford

Dh drove her round a few cities last week. Bristol, Warwick, Reading and Oxford. Although she couldn't actually see any of the universities it did help massively. She really liked the look of Warwick .

Cardiff is also on her list but they ran out of time.
We are as far South as you can get so she has ruled out anything North of Manchester. She also has ruled out Southampton- too close

Reading have had huge cuts in MLs recently - they laid off a lot of staff. Cardiff is a nice place. Other good unis south of Manchester would be Bath and Exeter. Exeter now offers seven languages ab initio. Some of the London unis are very good too.

And Birmingham of course.

Cardiff has the huge advantage of being very cheap to live in if you are a student - I think it's one of the cheapest.

Warwick is fantastic and they are in the process of building a multi million pound new Arts block into which ML will be going. Can't remember when it was due to open - this year or next but it's going to be all bells and whistles.

DS has just announced his preferred halls for Birmingham - he can apply come December as he is already accepted and in. I am going to lie down in a darkened room for a bit because of the cost, though his earning from this year mean that he will be able to top himself up, thank heavens.

We had a discussion up thread regarding the pros and cons of 3 languages. The big issue is the year abroad. There isn’t time to consolidate 3 languages. Yes, it’s offered but most people are happy with two and teachers often offer two, not 3. Especially in independent schools where they often have language specialists. My DD was never taught by teachers who had to teach more than one language in an independent school. Two is fine.

Universities will continue with their own links abroad I think. There is also an issue that doing a year abroad before university makes the course very long. DD wants to get on with the GDL to convert to law. It really depends on what you want to do afterwards. How long will future training be? When does the grad want to earn money? As only part of the degree is language acquisition the Gap year abroad might not help with the other academic study required.

As so few schools have decent languages depts it is best to do your own research. Often teachers have no idea I’m afraid!

@mimbleandlittlemy

Cardiff has the huge advantage of being very cheap to live in if you are a student - I think it's one of the cheapest.

Warwick is fantastic and they are in the process of building a multi million pound new Arts block into which ML will be going. Can't remember when it was due to open - this year or next but it's going to be all bells and whistles.

DS has just announced his preferred halls for Birmingham - he can apply come December as he is already accepted and in. I am going to lie down in a darkened room for a bit because of the cost, though his earning from this year mean that he will be able to top himself up, thank heavens.

Good to know re Warwick - thank-you.

Again - if you want certain careers after graduation, check the university carefully. Do people from there get the career you want?

Reading isn’t really comparable with a bristol or Exeter or Warwick. Lots of the second division universities simply won’t have the MFL students to sustain their courses. That’s also why ab initio French is now offered more widely. Bath very much has a business/socio-economic/ political slant to
MFL so look at core subjects and options. They are great universities but they are not all offering quite the same thing.

I'd only want her to take a gap year if she really used it well - to have some great life experiences and develop her life skills, as well as improve her languages. There are a lot of opportunities out there, as long as a pandemic or similar doesn't mess things up. And as she's in Scotland she'll finish school a year earlier than if she was in England.
I think she might manage 3 languages if she puts time into all of them during a gap year.

bigbradford

Reading was just in case she missed her grades, and they happened to be driving by. Useful to know it's not good for language. she was doing well before Covid getting A2 for English and A3 for French and psychology. She's had very little teaching since March, (state school) I guess we'll have a better idea once she's done her mocks.

She also missed the deadline to do an EPQ by minutes.

She's got no idea of a career - possibly law . I did notice her course was in clearing for Cardiff.

I expect you would find lots of MFL courses in clearing.

I tried to explain earlier in the thread about law. My DD converted to law via the GDL and practices in her chosen profession. What is absolutely critical is going to a university where law is very strong. There is a pecking order (whether you agree with it or not) from where lawyers are recruited. Fewer come from outside the RG bubble than you would expect. For barristers it’s vanishingly small. Even when lawyers are recruited without the employer knowing the university, Oxbridge candidates do very well. Below that, you need to consider Bristol, UCL, Durham, Exeter, Warwick and a few other red brick universities. Once you look at newer non RG universities and post 1992, it’s more difficult to get on the law career ladder. The competition is fierce so always go for high a quality university above all else if you want law.

I think lawyers need good intellect, be able to read copious amounts, evaluate what they read and work accurately at high speed. Your ability to talk about the latest French film that floated your boat probably won’t matter. Getting clued up on intern applications, mini pupillages, deadlines for applications, constructing scholarship applications and course/job applications whilst volunteering/working in useful areas of law requires high levels of organisation and stamina. Plus, if you are very bright, go for the MLaw at Cambridge. Being with like minded people and getting advice from the law careers fairs is important in formulating what area of law a student wants and how to go about being successful.

Going to the university of “neverwhere” isn’t the greatest help so don’t be swayed by their nice sounding degree. Law recruiters like certain universities and academic rigour. I have no idea about Scottish law I have to say! But I’ve been aware of the effort dd put in for success in law and it’s was not easy.

Joint honours for MFL is hard work. Depth is expected so I would look at how three are accommodated on the courses.

Some digging around has produced the following: there are universities that produce few trainee solicitors. Around 3% as a total from all of them. Some names are surprising. Bath for example. Another stat was that Oxford, Cambridge, Bristol, Nottingham and Durham,Warwick and Exeter account for over 40% of trainee solicitors. At The Bar, Oxbridge alone is nearly 40%. So definitely aim high if you want to be a lawyer.

Forgot to say that Msnchester is good for regional solicitors. The London market is more skewed towards Oxbridge.

So the list is one of the universities whose graduates, applying for the appropriate postgraduate legal training, were most likely not to be accepted? Or universities whose graduates tend not to apply for training in the first place because they want to do something with their lives other than be a solicitor?

Bath, for example, would be quite high up on the list for many intending to study Architecture, few of whose graduates, one might suppose, would have chosen that path with the aim of becoming a solicitor, but very low indeed on the list for those wanting to study History or English Literature (because the university doesn't actually offer those subjects), subjects rather more likely to include those wanting to go into the law. So not really 'surprising' that not many trainee solicitors are Bath graduates?

I for one am hoping that DC won't want to become a lawyer. There are plenty of threads on Mumsnet which show that many really dislike the profession and want to leave it. For a lot of people, it's not at all well paid, either. City law is obviously the exception to that.
The same can sadly be said of teaching though, but at least it's possible to work abroad with a teaching qualification and some experience. Depending on which type of law they do, lawyers can find themselves stuck in England/Wales.

Bath offers many courses where grads could convert to law. I can also see why Imperial would be on the list. I was surprised at Bath because of it’s commercially minded courses.

Yes, the list was the list of universities that supply the least number of students who go into training positions with law firms to be solicitors. I mentioned Bath because it has been flagged up as a great university to study MFL. I’m sure it is. However when responding to a poster whose DC wanted to convert to law, its relevant to say it’s not high up on the recruitment list. Other subjects they teach do lend themselves to law conversion but it may well be the students don’t need to convert as they prefer other careers. I wouldn’t suggest architects would be interested.

My point also was that it’s best to be in a university that has a strong law presence IF you want to convert to law for the reasons I described above. Obviously Bath isn’t that university and that’s ok! Nearby Bristol is. However I’m sure MFL students will make up their own minds based on what they see as important to them and their careers. It’s best to be aware that all universities are not equal though when it comes to getting that coveted training contract.

I can point you to many lawyers who live it. They just don’t moan in MN! The London market is very different to the regional one. I was responding to the poster who said DC was interested in law.

I get it, Big. It's a good career for some, but definitely not for many others. It's a problem that some careers are restricted, or largely restricted, to London. I think that having a more flexible job can be a big advantage. It's so much easier to move around if you have the kind of job that exists everywhere.

Bigbradford - are you Xenia in disguise? You and Xenia do seem to have almost identical fixations

@Tenpastseven - good luck to your DS with writing his personal statement. For not very many words, it seems to take a long time to write - working out what to put in and leave out! DD's school hasn't offered any help really, but is happy to comment on them and make suggestions when students have a draft they're happy with. There's some help on UCAS and I think quite a few of the university's own websites have sections on personal statements and what they're looking for too. DD sort of approached it a bit like a mini-essay and wrote a rough plan of what she was going to include and in what order. She wrote the introductory couple of sentences last as they were the hardest. Oxbridge aren't interested in extra-curricular stuff by the way but her tutor might mention DofE, volunteering etc. Also, watch out for the character count. It's less than you think - dd thought she had just the right number of characters but when she did a trial cut and paste into UCAS, it turned out to be 3 lines too long.

@tantamountto - interesting point about having a gap year before an MFL degree. Spending time in the country/ies sounds like a really good idea, and I guess effectively a student could end up with two gap years, one beforehand in the country of one language and the other mid-course in the country of the other. I did a joint honours degree (English plus MFL) a long time ago at a Scottish university, which was 5 years including the gap year. I wouldn't really have wanted to extend it any more than that.

The personal statement is a very short number of words to try and get a lot in that's for sure. DS talked about the times he'd spent in Germany and his love of all things Japanese including a fascination for Medieval English history compared with the similar period in Japan. I didn't actually read it at all until it had winged its way to UCAS as I decided I didn't know enough about what they were looking for to give a valid opinion, so a friend who is an editor and tutors A level Oxbridge applicants, gave it a once (then twice) over before the Send button was hit.

Applying for Oxbridge will obviously be different, but I think if you are applying for the other unis and not putting Oxbridge, the personal statement doesn't have quite the value it has for the really oversubscribed courses where they use it to sieve applicants out.

It would be tempting to spend half the year in a different country altogether, while there's the chance to. Probably in Asia.

@NiamCinnOir He seems to be getting there. He's got a workshop tomorrow to help writing it as part of the outreach scheme he's benefitting from so hopefully that will help tighten it up. School don't seem to be doing anything other than a clerical check so I'm very glad he's getting some other support.

He also found out this week that school have found some funding to offer a language assistant this year which I'm delighted about as last year they weren't able to afford it. They are going to be getting an hour per language each week in pairs. Woo Hoo.

Who in disguise? No.

I thought I was answering honestly about how dc night convert to law after a MFL degree IF they wanted to as expressed by posters. I don’t have experience of a DC in another career post MFL degree so that’s why I gave opinions on law post degree. I don’t know about other careers in the same detail and I certainly respect that other posters do. Apologies if that comes across as fixated.