Geography degrees

[Hedgehoghairy]

Hi, my son is interested in studying Geography at Uni - leaning towards human but happy with a bit of physical so a BA. He will hopefuly get AAB or ABB so not Cambridge etc. We are looking at Exeter, Loughborough, Southampton and Swansea - can anyone recomend any others? He is looking for a good social life/campus. We are south east. Thank you.

I’ll start by saying DS graduated in 2014.
if he wants to do a mix of human and physical you need to look carefully at the websites for course content. Lots of courses seem to focus on one or the other.
DS went to Southampton and was very happy. He ended up focusing on Human but was happy that he did the physical options. He had Lancaster as his reserve. Offer was AAA but it was the last year of the £3k fees so huge competition.
He also applied to Keele and Leicester.
.He is now a chartered accountant

Are you eligible for contextual offers as thah could reduce offers considerably. Bristol do contextual for a lot of state schools and drop from AAA to AAB for a lot of schools and also do a further drop depending on what subjects you are doing, so an ABB offer is not unusual. It's a BSc but you can do modules in a mix of human and physical subjects throughout but there is a lot of emphasis on qualitative data which is way makes it a Bsc I think, but is a great skill to have for a lot of jobs.

Tell your son to look really carefully at the course contents and modules as they are so different depending on the uni.

DS is also looking to do human geography and has ruled quite a few unis out this way.

I did geography at Portsmouth uni, best 3 years of my life :-)

Yes, we looked at Bristol but it seemed too physical geography heavy for my son - he really loves the human, which is a shame as he would qualify for a contextual offer.

Skibiddy - which unis have you ruled out?

You can now see what achieved entry grades were for each University course on the UCAS site. Search using 2025/6 entry the University then course and scroll down and you can see the average entry and highest and lowest entry results(UCAS is using data from 2019 onwards).

Bristol is super-code related. We went to the Human Geog talk last year and Head of Department advised people not to put Bristol as their firm if they weren't interested in coding/mapping.

Lots of good suggestions - I would also consider(non RG) UEA who have an amazing Geog Department and would be a really good second choice in case grades don't work out. Not obviously as bustling as Leeds/Notts/Manch but gorgeous campus and very busy nightlife in smaller town. Also very cheap!! Best friend's daughter is there (she picked it over a RG) and has been blown away by the standard and facilities of the Geog department.

So for instance using the 2025/6 UCAS tool for Geography BA at Uni of Nottingham Grade AAB is the headline grades and most common achieved grade, but they accepted up to BBC (doesn't disclose if contextual).
You can input grades and see acceptance rates and from this 100% who achieved ABB were accepted and 87% of BBB and 54% of BBC.

@SlightlyJaded yes I thought UEA but wondered about some of the issues the uni has been having with RAAC - not sure if that has all been sorted out but if not it might be one to swerve. Which would be a shame as it's a good uni and a great city.

Lancaster is another good shout in terms of good campus and good uni (no intel on course sorry) with maybe lower offer than some. Bit of a hike for you tho @Hedgehoghairy

You are all a mine of information - so much good advice here. Thank you.

@RainingCatsandDogs That’s such a useful grade checking tool on UCAS!

Meant to add @SpentAll we went to Sheffield with DD (several years ago now) and it was a very hot day and we had to walk to the accomm and then none of it was open so DD got very grumpy and crossed it off the list. It's funny what sways them. I thought the subject talk (english) and the chat with the staff afterwards was really really good but DD still not impressed haha.

I hear you on eleventy million open days

Oooh this is so interesting!

One of the reasons DD rejected her Exeter offer was the pressure of achieving AAA. Looking at this, it seems the most common grades achieved were AAB and 57% of students with ABC were accepted, and 88% of students with ABB! Fortunately this wasn’t the main reason she didn’t accept the offer, but this data would have provided more accurate info upon which to base her choices. Great resource - thanks for posting.

DS2 just finishing BA Geog (human) at Nottingham, he got AAB.
Has enjoyed the course and absolutely loves Notts, pretty reasonable to live there too.
Absolutely beautiful campus like a country park with frequent cheap trams into the city.
Has loved his time there and just secured a grad job in business, competing against 17 others at an assessment centre who all had business/management type degrees.

...I should say they only took three of the 17.
Would highly recommend the degree and the uni.

Echoing Leeds/Notts/Manchester/Sheffield. All on main train lines and good public transport systems. Lively for social life and on the cheaper side for living costs (Leeds and Manchester less so than they used to be). All are also handy if he’s outdoorsy as easy to get into the peaks etc. Swansea and Exeter are easily 3.5 hours + by car from West London (not sure where in the SE you are), trains to each from central London will be similar. Manc/Leeds/Notts etc are more like 2 hours on the train and direct services but likely similar to drive as the others. Look at their field trip options and whether they can help with summer placements/research assistant opportunities.

OP, thanks for starting this thread. My DC wants to do a Geography degree with an emphasis on human geography so the advice on here has been very useful. York is defo a place we'll be looking at.

University of Southampton is excellent, lovely campus, high quality degree, lots of year in employment etc opportunities.

This is a really useful source of info. And not wishing to highjack your post OP but could anyone suggest why doing a joint honours geog and planning wouldn’t a good idea? My ds would have probably just gone for geog ba but when we saw info about planning it looked like it might be quite interesting and might help with career options (I think a 4th year would be required to complete a planning qualification if he decided this was the route he wanted to take) - thanks!

Hijack away! The knowledge that posters have is amazing and I'm interested to know the answer as well. The only touble with this thread is that we have added so many places as possibilities now!

When I looked at Nottm with my other dc, it was quite interesting that all the same modules were available for the ba and bsc for all three years, so you could essentially pick either and still do the same degree. From experience with the bsc he ended up going with, many do the same for year 1 and then offer more different modules in year 2 and 3.

Having grown up spitting distance from the uni I agree at how lovely the park is, I spent many happy hours as a child there!

And well done to your son with the job

DS had a similar situation. He was vaguely contemplating a career where he could either do (a) an accredited degree in <career subject> or (b) a Geog degree and then do post-grad qualification.

He wasn't totally sure of the career so didn't want to commit and he really preferred Human Geog anyway. Also, to be snobby, the accredited degrees were only offered by next-level Universities; none of the RG offered it (which seems crazy, they are missing a whole bunch of applicants by not doing it)
He didn't end up doing that career (it involves a skill that he is good at but doesn't spark any joy) so it was the right choice for him.

I suppose I am saying that it is the old argument about what is more important: the course (in minute detail) or the institution. If you have a specific career in mind, it's the former; if not, it's the latter.

@senua thanks, it makes sense. He's seen these joint honours degrees at sheffield, birmingham, newcastle, manchester and liverpool, so all good unis - and I guess if he did joint honours and didn't love planning, then he still has a geography ba - but you're right, worth looking at what modules this would close off for him. He's not 17 for a while and is struggling to visualise career-wise where things could take him, but I'm just trying to help him make the best/right decision!

Yes agree with this. DD did work experience in Planning and whilst v useful for her personal statement it helped decide her it wasn’t the career she wanted. She wanted a broader degree so she could decide later.

In fact she had a lovely chat with a lecturer at one of the unis who reinforced her decision to choose Geography as its such a broad subject. He had worked in US unis and said many UK degrees don’t offer the same breadth but that Geography does.

DD, probably like your DS, veers towards Human at the moment but also enjoys some physical topics. And of course some topics span both. One of the topics DD is most interested in spans both human and physical, so it’s good for her to be able to study it from a more holistic perspective.

Thanks @SpentAll food for thought. My other ds is 2 years in to his physical geog degree and absolutely loves it - you're totally right about the breadth of things they cover - he didn't expect to like GIS but really took to it.
DS2 is definitely a human geographer (although he has work experience lined up which spans both sides of the coin) but I think he needs to chat to people when we visit the unis.