Where to do German and history degree?

[InDIYHell]

I'm trying to help DD and she thinks she has settled on a joint German and history degree (her 2 favourite a levels). Can anyone suggest what unis we should focus on that has a good reputation in both? Thanks!

OP is interested in joint German with History so I think only Edinburgh would be 4 years with full year abroad. StA, Glasgow and Aberdeen would be 5 years (or 4 years with one semester abroad).

I was comparing the English/Welsh undergrad MFL degree which is normally a year abroad. Joint MFL degrees are one semester each and you are fine with that. To get a full year abroad, as you would in England or Wales for one MFL, from what I’ve seen, the direct comparison is 5 years in Scotland. That’s comparing like with like, not a shorter time abroad. So I do feel that I did know what I was talking about @JocelynBurnell How aggressive you are!

@pinklavenders
For MFL degrees? Or other degrees with a partner university? That’s where y3 is a direct replacement year. The year abroad for Mfl
is not the same.

Also some employers might not look at university or subject, but it’s not entirely fair that they look at internships either. If these are not paid then poorer DC really struggle to do them. DC might not live near suitable employers and find transport a problem. University and degree is actually a more level playing field in some respects. It’s often the case that brighter DC have the best A levels and time to the best universities. I don’t entirely understand why that should be discounted? Of course other skills are important but employers can test for skills and attributes.

I was referring to normal degrees. My dc is at a Scottish Uni and spending their third year in Germany. It's nice because all their course mates will still be there after the year abroad.

Always so much griping on MFL threads!

OP, get your DC to look at the course detail for each institution, not just the Uni. They all vary, but these days there is so much more flexibility to tailor modules to a student’s interests/career aspirations. Whether taking a single, joint or multi disciplinary honours route.

Re year abroad. Again, whether 1,2 or more languages taken or mix with another course, there can be options to split year abroad, focus on one (but go to an overseas uni that still has classes in the other, or, take advantage of summer programmes.

Re covert native speakers, or those that have declared their native connections, whilst this is one of the reasons for language take up decline (on top of accessibility across some UK school sectors), the upside is that being in class with natives can improve non native language skills. Also, whilst they may have strong speaking skills, grammar may not be as strong. Language is not the only component of an UG degree, and some students with native heritage may have career aspirations in their native homelands (even if not born/have first hand experiences etc) so I would not discount their motives completely. But yes, some take for an easy degree too.

Finally either way, taking history combined with German or language with history integrated in programme, DC will get exposure to both faculties, and all the benefits that come with widening their network and peer groups, whilst covering their personal academic interests.

Best of luck on shortlisting options!

@pinklavenders
Yes. DDs former boyfriend did a year in a French Grande Ecole as part of his 4 year MEng degree . That wasn’t a MFL degree in a Scottish university that clearly says it’s 5 years for MFL so it’s different.

Not really griping @ealingwestmum . We are allowed differences of opinions! Most advice isn’t black or white, it’s just putting forward ideas. However I don’t like being told I am completely wrong - when I’m not. I just flagged up that some degrees are lingervtge others. And they are.

When i suggested researching numbers of native speakers, I meant maybe asking the tutors at an open day whether that was significant- and also how many students take German.

I have no idea on numbers today, but my year had about 20-25 taking single hons, and another 40 or so taking German with another subject (most another Mfl). Would be interesting to see if unis have similar numbers today. Or maybe more - after all, unis are much bigger now. Bristol was about 8000 students in total then.

Is she allowed to work/study/year abroad in Germany? I thought that's been banned since Brexit?

Year abroads still happen.

Hi @mimbleandlittlemy

Where do they do German an initio? I didn't know you could do that.

DorritLittle - they do ab initio German at Newcastle, Birmingham, Warwick, York I believe, plus others.

blackgreywhite - years abroad are still very much part of language degrees and others too. They haven’t been banned. Trickier since we came out of Erasmus but the universities all have reciprocal arrangements in place still.

The ab initio is just for ML though, not if you want to do German and History.

Most UK languages degrees are four years and not many people have the funds to stretch to five years. Students without an existing advantage already do fall behind fluency-wise but most people just go with what the University suggests and that's a semester in each or being an assistant and somehow achieving some sort of fluency in the other language over the summer.

Interestingly, as someone who also studied MFL at Bristol back in the day, I had what sounds like a very similar experience to @clary and can also identify with what @TizerorFizz says about the other students’ backgrounds. I did joint honours German and ab initio Spanish and, while Spanish was probably worse than German, I was certainly a rarity in not having had an exotic gap year trekking in the Andes or working with gauchos in Argentina. Many of my course mates lived on Gibraltar, or at least had a second home somewhere in Spain or Germany.

By contrast I spent the summer before uni stacking shelves in Boots, and had never actually visited Spain prior to arriving at university! So in hindsight I’d definitely want to find out more about the likely demographic of my course mates before choosing a university. Of the dozen or so of us starting ab initio Spanish, only two of us ultimately graduated, so I clearly wasn’t the one feeling like a fish out of water.

I also agree that, if your main friendship group isn’t your course mates (which mine wasn’t), it can feel quite disorientating returning from the year abroad to find that people have moved on. I did end up feeling a bit socially isolated in my 4th year for this reason, and probably should have invested more in friendships with those on my course rather than just those I lived in halls/flat shares with. (Again, the ab initio aspect made establishing friendships that bit harder as we were hived off into separate classes for the first year before joining the rest of the students in the 2nd).

My year abroad was amazing, I loved the rigour, breadth and variety of the course, (with history, literature, philosophy and politics studied alongside the actual languages) and as someone from a very modest background (first in my family to make it to university and didn’t go abroad until I was 15) studying MFL massively broadened my horizons and gave me lots of useful transferable skills. But I’m not sure I’d attempt an ab initio language again, and I’d definitely want to be more more clued up about the realities of the social side before I applied. I’m not sure I’d pick Bristol for languages if I was choosing again.

If your DC is going to be spending their 3rd year in Germany, it would be worth comparing where certain universities have partnerships and thinking about the kind of experience they want to have: the Humboldt in Berlin and Freiburg Uni are both excellent academically, but hugely different experiences of Germany. And finding student accommodation in Berlin is really tricky these days, so you‘d want to check there is guaranteed access to subsidized student halls, for example. The private market is brutal, unless you’re loaded.

And for everyone else: there are occasions when native speakers are sort of forced to take exams or courses aimed at non-native speakers. My DD has had to take two English language certificates to prove her English language skills to universities, despite being an English native speaker, because she went to school in a non-English country. Unsurprisingly she passed them very well, but it must have been pretty unnerving for the person she was partnered with in the ‚speaking‘ part of the test.
I would be horrified if she tried to sneak her way through an A-Level in her other native language though, that really wouldn’t be fair.

@ItsOnlyWordsInnit
I really can assure you it’s pretty common. Many people posting on MN have bilingual children who take a MFL degree in their own language.

@TempsPerdu
DD went to Bristol. She didn’t do ab initio though. I do think that’s hard. We did notice though, at graduation, that Spanish had more first class degrees awarded than nearly every other language added together! That’s a slight over exaggeration but it was noticeable. She did find a few exotic gap years but many had houses abroad and grandparents (relatives) abroad so they visited regularly. They then found them jobs in the year abroad. However DD found the university education she received abroad suited her better. Universities in cities were better than teaching English in the middle of the countryside. She chose the highest world ranking unis she could apply for and both were competitive! The students had to be chosen to go by Bristol. It’s always worth thinking about what uni and city will suit you. Or what work/British council placement. Definitely make friends with other 4 year degree students. There are lots now!!

Oooh @TempsPerdu when were you there? If you don’t mind saying of course. I was there early 1980s.

Interestingly @TizerorFizz first class degrees were rarer then - the only ones awarded in German single hons were to the two native speakers (who were both older as well, so maybe less interested in, ahem, socialising!) and there were NONE at all awarded in single hons French (about 60 students) which was a bit if a scandal at the time. Can’t recall re Spanish tho.

Just be aware that it is very hard to get top a level grades in mfl unless they are already bilingual. In DD's German class of 14 the only ones who got an a or above were billingual from birth. In French everyone with top grades were either completely bilingual or had French speaking grandparents who they spent summers with only one exception and they had a French au pair (for much younger kids) plus sent her to france for the 6 week summer holiday to a language school plus she had a weekly tutor. Languages are not a level playing field. With b & c dd did well compared to her class. Perhaps it was her school?

As to where to look - look at the course details some are literature heavy others not. With history look at whether as jojnt honours there's much choice in modules, they may only do the less interesting core ones. Also think what setting would suit her and the cost of living in that city, varies dramatically

@clary
Ob yes. I do know first class degrees years ago were around 1/100. DH cannot think of one when he did Engineering. Sometimes none were awarded. The MFLs DD did had far fewer firsts but that was a few years ago now. We worked out less than 10% but she said some had “advantages” not available to everyone. She also had never met some of them as they didn’t do the language classes. Didn’t need to she thought! . However when I was at school no one had a holiday home abroad and you had to sink or swim with your MFL. A week with an exchange school was what you got. It’s hardly surprising that years ago the native speakers did better!

@DorritLittle @mimbleandlittlemy You can study German ab initio in a joint degree with History at King’s College London. They also offer French, Spanish & Portuguese, again all ab initio or post A-Level, with History.

@gogohmm is that AQA do you know? I ask bc in recent years the grade boundaries fir French have been a grade higher than German - what I mean is, a mark of (say) 180 out if 400 would gain (say) a C in French but a B in German. ANA'S explanation for this is unsatisfactory IMHO.

Anyway, as the ops dd is doing German hopefully that's good news. Native speakers don't have a free pass to an A-star tho imo some thnjk they do. Undoubtedly they have an advantage tho.

Sorry for typos stupid phone

I did a MFL degree , joint German and Italian. That was 25 years ago so I clearly have no recent experience of universities. What I do know is that being fluent in German has been great for my career, and in every job I've had, I've been offered a slightly higher salary than average. I spent 4 years living in Germany and I'm completely fluent

@clary I was at Bristol late 90s/early 00s so a bit later than you, but seems it hadn’t really moved on that much! The privilege I encountered was incredible - obviously Bristol’s intake in general has traditionally been fairly privileged, but in MFL it really was writ large, with all the exotic gap years, second/third homes and globetrotting lifestyles feeding into the students’ achievements on the course itself. Much more so than would have been the case in most other subjects. Bristol (at the time anyway) was also very hands off in terms of supporting students with year abroad placements etc, so those of us without existing contacts in German/Spanish speaking countries were definitely at a disadvantage there.

Anyway, as the ops dd is doing German hopefully that's good news. Native speakers don't have a free pass to an A-star

Actually almost 20% of Alevel German entrants are native speakers and get about half of A star grades.

So yes, it IS a huge advantage, certainly at school.