Liberal arts degree - anyone got experience?

[NCTDN]

So DD is keen on liberal arts as a degree but looking for anyone with any advice they are willing to share. Thank you.

[quote LillianGish]@Piggywaspushed (I recognise your name from when DD was applying two years ago) my DS has been offered a place to study liberal arts and natural sciences at Birmingham this year. You don't have to do any sciences it's just an additional option for those that want to do so - he does not. Applicants were asked to write an essay before they were made an offer with a choice of three titles which he did (What do you consider to be the greatest transformation of the 21st century?) Birmingham have have offered him AAA (actually he's doing the French Bac so he has to get 14, but that's the equivalent). He's currently weighing up whether he might be better putting Exeter as first choice because they have offered him 14 - same as Birmingham - or 13 (AAB) if he puts them first.[/quote]
I didn't know that uni offers can change knowing where I'm the list you placed them. I thought that these days you didn't rank them in order of preference?

I didn't know that uni offers can change knowing where I'm the list you placed them. I thought that these days you didn't rank them in order of preference

Some universities make differentiated offers to be applied according to whether the applicant makes the university their Firm or Insurance choice.

Up to that point, all the university knows is that the person has applied. It's not, We're making you an offer of XXX, because you ranked us top on your UCAS form; if we hadn't been top of your list, it would have been YYX.

@hoolala

Ooh! DD2 briefly considered this but is now considering English at Nottingham - I think she didn't really understand what Liberal Arts is, and obviously there's no Open Days at the moment.

Can anyone explain for us? It looks like you just get to mix and match arts and humanities modules, is that right?

Thanks

Kind of. Some courses will also have core modules specific to the Liberal Arts degree which tend to be interdisciplinary and foster skills in critical thinking and interdisciplinary methodologies.

Yes, they seem to have quite a lot of sort of group work and collaboration. One of the unis includes enterprise stuff (might be Bristol?).

The courses are all a mix and match system. They vary in how much flexibility you really have and if there is a core liberal arts module ( did thought that was pretty vital. Without it you have to be extremely self driven and independent as the support structure is not there and you aren’t really part of any department or “ tribe “ . Especially with lots of English / history modules where the group size is huge. The core liberal arts year group for dd was about 30).

At leeds there is a major and several minor subjects each year. Dd swapped from English major to music in 2nd year - she’d done enough music 1st year modules for this to be ok. She didn’t enjoy the English mainly cos of the large group size I think.

Newcastle University has a combined honours department and programme which is very interesting as you can combine 3 (maybe 4?) off their list.

www.ncl.ac.uk/combined/study/subjects/