Ask a stupid question about UK grad school

Look at the name's of the universities and then google them! My two old uni's are ranked 94th and 77th! ha! oh well!

Ooh, on that first ranking list UCL is fourth, and I originally went to Cambridge, which is 1st! Sadly my degree is from De Montfort, which is 70th. Rats. These rankings are overall, of course, and also vary on subject area (Oxford was traditionally considered superior in the arts, Cambridge in the sciences, for example).

On the plus side, there's loads to do in London. And UCL is certainly good for English Lit.

On the minus side, London is a vast metropolis with bad transport and everything is hugely expensive. The people tend to be far less friendly also. If you go to university in London, unless you live in halls, it can be harder to establish a group of friends and to meet up with them regularly, because students often live in different areas of the city.

You might want to consider a self-contained campus-style university, like Nottingham or York, rather than one with teaching buildings in the centre of town and accomodation spread around the city.

try Prospects Postgrad course search

mind you aren't these based on thbe more classical subjects and thus marking down unis that do more vocational courses such as Bournemouth (or am I clutching at straws???)

Ah, this is just the thread. Though the questions won't I hope be stupid -- anyway:

One of my coworkers has an ambitious student worker who is seriously considering grad school in English lit somewhere in the UK -- she's done a lot of research online but admits to having 'a million questions.'

We'll be sitting down with her next week so we can have a sense of what her chief concerns are, so I'll have more concrete questions then, but in the meantime, what are the basics any non-UK student looking to come over for grad school should be keeping in mind? Especially since I gather Cameron and company have been wreaking havoc on the system. Specific recommendations for schools also welcomed too.

Ah man if I'd carried on with my INTERNET ENTREPRENEUR project a few years ago I'd have the perfect thing for you. But I didn't, and I don't.

Haven't done a postgrad myself so others will be better placed to answer that one. If looking at rankings make sure you check their methodology carefully. What sort of subject area and would it be research-based or a taught programme?

Research gets assessed at each Uni for funding reasons, roughly by department for each institution, and although it's maybe not going to help you choose the best school you can get an idea of dept size and culture etc. particularly if you read their submissions (although from 2008 when the last assessment was).

A little late here but thanks! We're talking with this student more today and I'll have more specific info to pass along, I suspect.

just a tip in case you weren't aware, the term "grad school" is not used in the UK so best avoid it when discussing this with institutions

funding may be the main problem, unless she's independently wealthy. my understanding is that you are unlikely to get research council funding is you are not UK/EU. it may even be impossible. the relevant research council for english is the AHRB, so check their website. if she's eligible, she has to apply separately to the ahrb and the department. assuming she has the grades, the department probably won't be a problem. you can teach, but it's not like a TA in the US that covers tuition and living expenses. we're talking pocket money here. there are other sources of funding: specialised national scholarships for US students (fulbright, etc.), university money, and college scholarships at oxbridge.

the main difference is that a phd in the uk nominally takes 3 years, rather than 5-6. in practice, in english, it takes 4ish years (rather than 8+ in the US). if you intend to stay in academia, this is not actually an advantage in the sciences, because you're obviously less experienced/have a smaller network when you graduate. i'm not sure to what extent that holds in a less collaborative subject like english. if you don't intend to stay in academia then you almost certainly shouldn't do a phd.

the other difference is you need to have an advisor in place before you arrive. you don't get 2 years to dick around and meet people.

i think the top english department by reputation in the uk is oxford, but i think in the humanities the advisor matters more than the department.

caveat: did my phd in sciences.

caek covers the main points. As far as I'm aware, overseas students cannot apply for research council funding. Most big research universities will have scholarships open to all students, but they will be very competitive.

Cameron's fiery sword hasn't changed postgraduate study the way it has undergraduate (apart from cutting research council budgets)...but who know's what is around the corner.

Thanks very much. I'm back from the meeting with her -- she is (thankfully) very clear eyed about cost and keeping her expectations close to the ground, which is refreshing. I'll definitely pass on all this information to her later today.

Oxford is certainly on her list, and based on what she wants in terms of location/convenience, it's one of several key candidates. She's self-admittedly on the shyer side as opposed to wanting to be in the crush of everything (thus, no London University/Goldsmiths/etc.), but knows she doesn't want total isolation either. So some of her choices that seemed to suit her were, besides Oxford and Cambridge, possibly Durham and, over in Ireland, Trinity. (She was also considering St. Andrews but concluded it was TOO isolated.) We all have a mutual friend currently studying in Norwich, though on an undergrad level, so she was going to look into that a bit.

I'm wondering: is there a school of any reasonable reputation to the south of London that might suit her interests?

University in Sussex (beside Brighton) has a reasonable reputation but idk about English Lit.

Given that she has a shortlist she needs to think about the topic she wants to work on and who is the best person in the UK for that topic. That by itself will rule out some choices.

"University of Sussex" obv

Thanks! She had a slew of other spots to choose from, but those spots would be part of (not necessarily the whole of) a top tier.

I'm biased but Bristol is a great place to live and study esp if wanting to be out of the madness a bit but 1.5 hours from London. I don't think they're particularly renowned for English compared to Medicine and Engineering though. (This is U. of Bristol, not UWE btw). Oxford, Cambridge and Glasgow seem to have the biggest depts in English. Exeter also does well in that area and is south of London but is a small city and fairly out of the way (Sick Mouthy could advise....)

AHRB is now the AHRC, btw (Council instead of Board) :)
Correct me if I'm wrong but I think that Unis can and do have funded PhD places available and ready to go but obviously the research areas will be fixed and there will be competition. That's how my friend ended up doing a very bizarre PhD.

Great, passed that along...

yeah UEA in norwich is the uk equivalent of iowa in terms of creative writing. not sure about english lit though. bristol is level with london, but a long way west. it's a top 20, if not top 10, uni overall. not sure about english in particular. friend of mine did a taught masters there, having done his undergrad at oxford, and seemed to enjoy it. i think kent is supposed to have a good english dept, but i might be pulling that out of my ass. oxbridge is great for people who would prefer a slightly more intimate, liberal-arts-college-type place. weirdly, given how unusual oxford and cambridge are, they would probably going to involve the least culture shock for an american.

obviously, for most people, the advice is still "don't do a phd unless it's in a science and someone is paying you". having said that, a lot of calculations implicit in the "an arts phd makes no sense" advice, which is rock solid advice in the US, apply less in the UK *if you do get funding*. the amount of time and the tendency to overrun is so much less, so if things do go wrong, the time and money spent is that much less.

but if she's not funded, and her real goal is to live/work in the uk (not to be an academic anywhere) then there are probably better ways of doing that than dropping $150k on a living expenses and fees. (that's based on the oxford fees + living expenses calculation, which is £30k/yr, and is not much different elsewhere.)

friend of mine did a taught masters there, having done his undergrad at oxford, and seemed to enjoy it.

-- in english i should asdd

I've just printed out and given her all this for reference and she thanks you all very much! She's following up on Sussex and especially appreciates all the funding/expense comments.

Bear in mind that overseas students are not allowed to work more than a set number of hours in any given week. It's either ten or twenty depending on the visa, i think. The post-study work routes are being severely restricted as well, so it's not necessarily going to be a given that they'd have a chance to stay beyond the end of their course.

She's need to apply for a Tier 4 visa, which can be time consuming and potentially expensive so apply well in advance. Being from the US should make it really easy, though.

UKCISA might be a good place to look for background info:

http://www.ukcisa.org.uk/student/index.php

I could probably work out the UK universities with the highest number of US post-grads doing English but i'm not sure whether that would give an indication of perceived quality.

i think most departments/unis/funding sources will arrange the visa for you if you're funded

I personally wouldn't recommend doing a phd without funding, unless you're personally wealthy: you can't keep yourself through a phd on odd jobs. It is very rare for a person to get funding for a Master's these days, but it does sometimes happen.

Overseas students are not eligible for any AHRC scholarships.

With research phds in the humanities, as caek said, the supervisor is often far more important than the institution - at least if you're within the top 10/20 institutions. The university provides you with libraries, admin support, pastoral care, etc, and you may luck out with a good graduate student seminar or discussion group, but by and large the academic input you get will be from your supervisor. Someone who's simpatico with you and with your research makes a great deal more difference than the brand name above the door.

That said institutional cultural differences do exist? e.g. Cambridge is more comfortable with capital-letters Literary Theory than Oxford.

Also, I've always heard positive things about English at Warwick.

St Andrews isn't sooo middle of nowhere, it's a pretty nice and ~real~ seeming place in itself (unlike the kind of places you can end up if you're attending other seemingly less remote universities, e.g. Leamington Spa, home of probably most Warwick students) and is easy access to um Dundee and slightly less so Perth. Which are also basically real places. (If she can drive then you can get anywhere in Scotland's central belt within a couple of hours.)

Re funding, there are probably a few UK English Lit mailing lists that will cover (mostly) conference, journal etc announcements, but (also) internal funding announcements, which are often announced fairly close to the deadline, so it could be worth finding and subscribing to those.

in terms of capital-letters Literary Theory the distinctions between universities can be pretty pronounced. There's the risk of finding a good supervisor who's also the department outcast cuz someone noticed he once mentioned Barthes somewhere or some such.

Hey I've been to St. Andrews and I liked it v. much myself (an old flame went to school there). Based on what the student I'm helping was telling me and her own checking out of the location etc., said location still would drive her crazy. (Also, she's avoiding driving wherever possible.) But all other tips noted!

Again she's been thanking you all v. much -- she was especially thankful for ShariVari's UKCISA link!

Okay! Thanks everyone who fired off suggestions and ideas this past October; the student worker I mentioned got accepted to a number of schools and has narrowed down her choices to Exeter and York, in the field of English literature. She's noticed that both rank pretty highly in her field and in general as good schools. With this in mind, she's leaning towards Exeter -- location, comparative nearness to London and so forth, as well as more scholarship opportunities. So: anyone have any specific opinions about either school or either city that she should keep in mind? She has no rush in deciding, but she's wanting to firmly lock down a choice so she has more time to plan.

Obviously I can't really comment on postgrad reputations etc.

it's not actually quicker to london by train. apparently exeter is 20 minutes closer.

brunel vs. the flying scotsman, brunel wins every time.

proximity to the free city of sheffield should be a deal-sealer here imo.

also the national railway museum is the best museum

I should really stress that there's nothing much to do in Exeter, it's a fairly standard small English city with a nice cathedral and not much else.

not only is it a standard small english city, there aren't even any other standard small english cities nearby to escape to. bristol and bath are the nearest outposts of civilization and they're 75 and 90 minutes away.

It's actually closer to being a big town. York is both prettier and more interesting and with better places around it. On the minus side it does appear to flood ridiculously every few years.

yes and york student union is sinking into an artificial lake iirc

it's not actually quicker to london by train. apparently exeter is 20 minutes closer.

"Apparently"

Exeter -> Paddington 2h 24m
York -> Kings Cross 1h 56m

There are trains from York that take 2h 24m, i.e. the same time as Exeter. There are also trains from Exeter that take 3h 23m.

basically exeter is about as close to you can get to living in the middle of nowhere in the whole of the UK, while still living in a town with a john lewis.

Exeter on the ropes here, referee about to intervene

Exeter sux, York r00lz

There's a John Lewis in Aberdeen but we'll pretend that doesn't exist.

I went to university in York and will be happy to give you information which is now 20 years out of date.

right you are pooster. not much in it tbh. the fact that direct york-london trains are much more frequent and york station isn't one of the most depressing stations on earth might seal the deal. although if access to london really is your main concern then i would reapply somewhere else tbh.

There's a John Lewis in Aberdeen but we'll pretend that doesn't exist.

Aberdeen is pretty nice in a sort of Patrick Kavanagh way.

York student union just refused to sanction a Feminist Society, and Matt DC's experience of Exeter is from over a decade ago; a lot has changed!

if you're implying that the avg york student is to the right/posher than the avg exeter student then lmao

Halls of residence, for instance, are completely different now; we've knocked down / refurbished / replaced almost all of them since Matt's time, and built a load more too.

I've spent a fair amount of time in both over the course of the last year or two, Exeter for fun / family and York for work, and I don't think there's a great deal to choose by way of being exciting. I must say that, right at the moment, Exeter feels like a more thriving / less depressed place. Matt's description of Exeter's pretty accurate but it would apply to York just as much, I think. The weather in Exeter is a bit warmer and probably a shade wetter.

I grew up near Exeter and lived for a decade in Yorkshire and Lancashire; for what it's worth I might consider living in Devon again, at a push, but it would take something seismic in my life to make me live in the North of England again. In fact, I can't imagine what that would be.

it would take something seismic in my life to make me live in the North of England again

^^^ if that's sincerely true, and you think it's good advice for most people not just yourself, then ...

My wife's a Mancunian, moved down when she was 13 - she's finally, in the last two or three years, conceded that Exeter's now a really great city and she wouldn't want to move back up north.

North of England... that's quite a large and diverse area

Disclaimer: I've never been to Exeter.

I suspect Exeter and York as universities and as cities are quite similar, but what would probably swing it for me (as has been mentioned upthread) is that Exeter isn't near anywhere else whereas York has got lots of bigger cities within easy range.

Caek, didn't say it was good advice, was just expressing an opinion like most in this thread.

then...

...what?

... 'appen, ye'd best stay in t' South where thee belong

'Appen indeed.

ok glad you don't think your post is advice

It has similar status in this thread as "proximity to the free city of sheffield should be a deal-sealer here imo" though, right?

If this thread is anything to go by we should reinstate the Danelaw

i ... guess? xp

Specifically for PG, we're officially the best English department in the UK for world-leading research according to the last Research Assessment Exercise

this is a weird way of putting it, and is kind of not true. i assume you mean exeter had the highest fraction of faculty rated 4*? that's true, but you forgot to mention that this was in a tie with ... well, york actually. but anyway, by any combination of the RAE ratings york is #1. by the default RAE ranking, exeter is #6 because york has slightly less deadweight than exeter in its faculty. see http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/table/2008/dec/18/rae-2008-english-degree.

but (1) even assuming the RAE measured what it claimed to measure, the RAE is nonsense at this level of granularity, as the RAE would admit (2) the RAE didn't measure what it claimed to. i mean come on: any ranking exercise in english lit in the UK in which oxford doesn't make the top 5 is flawed.

the results of physics ranking exercise (http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/table/2008/dec/18/rae-2008-physics, lancaster #1, bath #2, cue actual lols in the actual top ten physics departments) was apparently cited as of the main reasons the 2008 RAE was considered a fundamentally flawed exercise that should be replaced.

Phew, I opened a can of worms, I guess. I will pass all this on for sure! Also will be having the student speak with Nick directly when possible.

god the RAE is such a waterfall of bullshit. sorry ned.

REF not much better either IMO.

all i know about the REF is the headline "more weight to commercial impact" thing, which is kind of obviously idiotic, but if it is less vulnerable to the self-evident gaming of the results by certain departments then that would be nice.

re talk of RAE positions 4-15 being a crapshoot upthread: who is the undisputed third? Is it <melchett voice>Oxford, Cambridge, Hull</melchett voice>?

In what might be a factor for the student, Nick S has to come to Bristol to find a decent record shop and it's rare for bands to go much further South West than Bristol either. And if she likes the sort of bands that play anywhere bigger than the Academy they won't even come as far as Bristol.

Ned, if you are going to pass this on, advise your friend to check out the actual distances / travelling times being discussed! My experience of Americans in the UK suggests that they tend to laugh at our concept of "far away" in respect of this little island - if their choice is to be based on relative ease of getting from place to place, be clear that you could get from York *to* Exeter in a 6 hour drive, and have covered a large part of Engalnd on that journey. Any sense of either being of "the back of beyond" should be taken in that context.

The right answer is to choose for academic reasons, as repeatedly noted above. Student life in either is probably pretty similar.

Past that, it really depends what your friend wants out of a place - each has its (strong) advantages, depending on how they like to spend their time.

Ned's already said she doesn't want to drive over here, or at least minimise it, so public transport links are pretty important.

That's true but it doesn't invalidate the point I'm making - nothing's very far from anything else, the upthread comparison of Exeter to Oklahoma City (as against Philadelphia) might mislead in terms of how long it would take to get anywhere out-of-town. Public transport in-town is similar in both places. York has a strong advantage in public transport if (and only if) you're invested in getting to a variety of big cities pretty quickly and easily.

This is a treasure trove of incomprehensibility

re talk of RAE positions 4-15 being a crapshoot upthread: who is the undisputed third? Is it <melchett voice>Oxford, Cambridge, Hull</melchett voice>?

― sktsh, Wednesday, May 15, 2013 4:01 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the 4-15 being a crapshoot thing was in reference to undergraduate rankings, and that usually means "overall" rankings in some sense, rather than broken down by department (although those broken down by dept do exist).

the RAE is a the research assessment exercise. it assesses research output, so its most relevant to phd students. it is necessarily department based. undisputed third is going to depend on subject, but i don't think any field has an "undisputed third" tbh. i mean i can tell you who i think it is in my subject, but i know plenty of people who would disagree with me.

at undergrad, going purely on academic stuff, it's cambridge, oxford and imperial i think (although imperial cheats by only offering science degrees). after that there's a bunch of about 10-15 who swap places every year.

this "feels" about right for me for a ranking that combines research and teaching

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/2012-13/world-ranking/region/europe

(within europe i mean. lol at the idea oxford is the second best university in the world and imperial is in the top ten.)

In what might be a factor for the student, Nick S has to come to Bristol to find a decent record shop and it's rare for bands to go much further South West than Bristol either. And if she likes the sort of bands that play anywhere bigger than the Academy they won't even come as far as Bristol.

Exeter is my old stomping ground and this was a huge deal to me growing up.
The RAE isn't perfect, and you have to decide how you want to rank it as 'official' rankings are kind of hard to do. As I mentioned upthread you might like to read their RA5 submissions which give an overview of the "research environment" of the department (written by the department, and from 2008 and before, so....)

TBH I'd be very happy with either York or Exeter

the 4-15 being a crapshoot thing was in reference to undergraduate rankings .... the RAE is a the research assessment exercise. it assesses research output, so its most relevant to phd students

Switching off from full-on work mode for a bit; league tables and ranking systems, be they Times, Guardian, RAE, etc etc, are all the victims of flawed methodologies and statistical manipulation, and ought not to be used as anything more than a very initial guide to make a short list.

The key thing is to choose somewhere whee you think you're going to be happy and inspired and stimulated. I've worked here for nearly eleven years now, and the reason I've gravitated towards comms and marketing is because I love the place, and I wish I'd studied here. I certainly care more about this uni than the one I go to. And the reason I work with the humanities and social sciences subjects is because they fascinate me and I love the people who work in these subjects.

York's a good city; one of my best friends lives there and it's beautiful. Bit I think Exeter is better. For me, it's just about the best place in the country. Even if I have to buy the Vampire Weekend album in Sainsburys.

Went to, not go to. It's my birthday, that's my excuse.