Uni of Nottingham Natural Sciences not hons

[natscimum]

My son in year 12 visited Nottingham uni this weekend. He’s interested in doing natural sciences BSc. However in the presentation about it they said that it was just a BSc and not BSc(Hons) because they didn’t ask the students to do a dissertation. I’m not from England but I thought most good degrees were with honours? Will having a non hons degree have a negative impact on my son? He’s interested in perhaps doing a law conversion after his degree and moving into intellectual property law but would big law firms judge his degree?
This feels very strange to me but perhaps I’m missing something?

Bumping

I think your son misunderstood.

It is an honours course. You don't necessarily need to sit a dissertation to reach Honours anymore. Just hit 360 credits. If it's a course with a MSci option, the 4th year could be when the dissertation is done. https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/studywithus/ugstudy/courses/UG/2025/Natural-Sciences-BSc-Hons-U6UNATRS.html#

Generally, you don't enter into a non-honours degree in England. It's something that gets awarded if somehow you haven't completed enough credits while on the honours bachelor course.

It clearly states Hons on the website. You only get an ordinary degree in rare circumstances these days. You don't need a diss to get hons.

Afaik the sciences don’t typically do a ‘dissertation’, rather they will have some sort of final year research project.

He’s totally misunderstood. No UK unis offer ordinary degrees as the initial award - they’re lower exit awards for those that don’t do enough credits for some reason.

Hope his listening skills improve before he goes!

Yeh agree with others – the Nottingham uni website clearly states it's a BSc (Hons).

As others say, a course without hons is very unusual, if it exists at all as an entry offer – even on my day, it was only when students didn't gain enough credits that they got a simple BA with no hons.

It's also not the case that you need to do a diss to gain an honours degree. DD did do a diss in the end but she could certainly have opted out of it and taken an extra double module instead (Eng lit BA hons).

Thank you for your responses. I’m more confused- I was in the talk with him and the person speaking made a point to say it wasn’t hons, no dissertation. We weren’t the only people questioning it- I didn’t really understand so talking to another parent afterwards she was terribly surprised. Possibly the person giving the talk expressed themselves poorly. I’ll get DS to contact the uni.
I understand the “hons” bit better now so thanks to people who responded.

Not quite. Though rare eg https://www.qmu.ac.uk/study-here/undergraduate-study/2026/bsc-paramedic-science-2026-entry

Sounds as though somehow whoever gave that talk was confused. It’s right there on the website as others have pointed out, along with course details including the third year project.

DD did a dissertation for her biomedical sciences degree.