Best universities for English Lit

[Rollergirl11]

DD is in Year 12 taking 3 A-levels and doing an EPQ. Current predictions are 2 x A star and 1 A. She’s hopeful she can get the A to an A star.

What unis would you say have the best reputation? She knows that the courses differ wildly and she needs to investigate this. Just going by the league tables (that are all fairly different) the general consensus seems to be:

Oxford, Cambridge, St Andrews, UCL, Durham, York, Warwick, Lancaster and potentially Exeter.

We are in the south east so think the Scottish unis are too far so that discounts St Andrews. Also UCL too close and too expensive and DD doesn’t want to stay at home to study. Her college have her on their Oxbridge program and out of the two she favours Cambridge over Oxford for course content.

So far then she has a very loose list which is: Cambridge, Durham, York, Warwick, Lancaster and Exeter.

Are there any other obvious places she should be thinking about?

Oh FGS tizer, I did NOT say Bedfordshire was better than Edinburgh. That's laughable that you think I said that. Find it and prove it.

ALL THE UNIS I HAVE RECOMMENDED ON HERE FOR THIS OP ARE HIGH CALIBRE HIGH TARIFF RUSSELL GROUPS.

If someone popped up on here from the world of recruitment (as occasionally one does who talks about blind recruitment) or from the employment field of, for example, publishing, the why would we not listen to them? If an English teacher gives advice on English , why would we not think they had something to say? Why would we argue wit someone wo is n English academic at an actual university?

I rarely ever recommend my students to look at Bedfordshire. Some do - for financial reasons. All I said was that, for English, the university has a better reputation that its overall standing suggests. No way should the OP's DD look at it . For clarity.

This thread is getting totally de-railed with universities that I haven’t even mentioned! Please can we move on??

Yes please!

Last word - you recommended Leeds AND Birmingham very early on in this thread. They’re both fabulous universities and I know they have good English departments. However, in the Times league they rank well below Edinburgh :) I think university league tables are highly misleading anyway but you referenced them. Enough now!! Wish your dd well OP

Yes, you are right. I did mention Leeds! Mea culpa.

I knew I had mentioned Birmingham and was at that point awaiting a league table comment.

@Rollergirl11 just popping in to say re this post, this is absolutely and 100% what DH would say. He just wanted to spend 3 years reading and analysing literature because that was his passion. So tell your DD from him, this is the best reason to study English, she doesn't need any other. The end.

And of course an English degree is highly respected by anyone in publishing, journalism, PR, marketing etc so if those are the sorts of fields your DD is likely to want to get into, she (and you) don't need to have any concerns whatsoever.

But@TizerorFizz does make a valid point about choosing a university which offers a solid grounding across ages and genres. DH now mostly writes but he used to work in publishing and was responsible for hiring junior positions such as editorial assistants, junior writers and sub-editors – first or second jobbers basically. He absolutely did ask about modules and what specifically the applicants has chosen to study, and why. Someone who had actively avoided studying any Shakespeare for example (as a family member recently did during their English degree) would have set an alarm bell ringing; far more so than which university they had gone to.

And FWIW DH would agree that @Piggywaspushed most definitely qualifies as an expert in her field. Why would anyone want to ignore someone who has a degree in, and works in, precisely the area they are asking about?

Well yes the more contemporary courses are useful for work. Most publishing companies publish new contemporary writers so studying those helps. If say recruiting for an editor for the thriller department or nonfic dept that publishes journalism or political writing etc then we would choose someone who knows something about those areas.