Studying at university is one of the most significant stages of your education. It takes at least three years to complete your degree and provides invaluable transferrable skills and career opportunities. However, many students struggle with their choice of subject. In this article I share some useful tips that will immediately help you with your subject and university choices and bring you closer to your dream education.
1. Start with the location
As counterintuitive as it might seem, I would highly recommend deciding where you want to study first. Most subjects are taught by the majority of universities. There are about 143 universities alone in the UK, so it is not possible to go through all of them. Hence, decide on your preferred locations first and limit your choice to about 10. There are several factors you might want to take into consideration: how close to your family you are, your preference to live in a city or a town, what transport links there are and many others.
2. Follow your academic interests and passions
When deciding on the subject, it is essential to start with two questions: “What is your favourite subject?” and “What do you enjoy the most in each of your subjects?”. It is important to realise that, unless you go for a career-specific subject such as Medicine, any subject you do can lead to a wide range of fascinating careers.
University education is more about the transferrable skills and your personal development than the specifics of your subject. As an experiment, speak to as many friends and family as you can, and see how many of them still do work relating to their degree. Most likely the answer will be not many. It is more important to enjoy your degree and follow your academic passions.
3. Consider mix and matching your courses
It is becoming increasingly popular to mix and match courses at university. For example, you can study biology with management or a language, or law and economics. The list goes on. Why not combine your academic interests and go for a joined course, where you get to explore different subjects. These courses are often less well-known, hence the competition for places might be lower.
4. Don’t specialise too early
You might not yet know what you want to pursue as a career in the future. And how can you be 100% sure at the age of 17 what you might want to do 4 years later? The best advice I can give you is to pick a course that gives you plenty of opportunities to explore different modules in your first couple of years. I, myself, always wanted to study biochemistry at university. However, when I did it as a module in my second year, I absolutely hated it. Instead, I realised that my passion lied in cell and developmental biology.
The reason is that, at university level, you don’t really know what the subject is like until you study it. Therefore, select a course with many modules to choose from and you can then specialise down the line in something that you are truly passionate about.
5. Ask why
Students quite often fall for the prestigiousness of a career rather than following their passion for a particular subject. Therefore, it is important to be honest with yourself on why you want to pursue a particular course.
I would recommend doing the following exercise. Take a pen and paper (no digital technology is allowed!) and title the page with: “Why I want to study [subject] at university?”. Then spend about 15-30 minutes answering this question and truly analysing your ambitions, aspirations and career choices. If you struggle to fill in half of a page, then you are going for the wrong course. Time to rethink your strategy.
6. Don’t listen to all the advice you hear
There will always be some people that hate their course or university for one reason or the other. One bad experience doesn’t mean that the university is either bad or good. Therefore, make sure to do extensive research yourself, review prospectuses, read blogs and visit university open days. This will help you make an informed decision on the choice of your subject and university.
7. Get expert advice
If you are still unsure what you want to study at university, I would suggest seeking professional help from an educational consultant. I personally work with many students, helping them with career development and advising them on what courses and universities might suit them best. If you need any help, then please get in contact using the following form.
Enjoy choosing your university degree. Best of luck!
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