Advice for a 22 year old returning to education.

Hi all.

I'm looking for a bit of advice and encouragement because I am a bit anxious about returning to education after a long term illness. This will probably be quite a long post because unfortunately my case is a little complicated but I would really appreciate any advice or comments on what I am doing.

To cut a very long story short; I became ill at the age of 14 and was unfortunately too ill to continue at school. I lost contact with all of my friends, had no social life whatsoever and was practically housebound for a couple of years. I was eventually diagnosed with a serious bacterial infection and treated for 2 years on antibiotics before I started to improve. I'm now 22 years old, feeling a lot better (although still not 100%) and ready to return to education.

During my illness I was only able to take two GCSE's which were Maths and English. I achieved a B in Maths and a D in English. This year I retook my English GCSE and I am expecting at least a B, so in theory I now have two GCSE's (Maths and English).

Fortunately, I do know what I want to do as a career. I've always been interested in property and construction and have some experience as my father owns a building company and as a family we have renovated several properties over the last two decades. I have also spend the last 12 months renovating a property with my brother which I have been project managing.

I would like to study Building Surveying which I've been interested in for a couple of years now. I have found a Building Surveying degree at Brighton University which is what I am aiming for. The question is, what is the best and quickest way for me to get there? There is a foundation degree in building surveying at my local college which is run by the University of Greenwich which sounds absolutely perfect, it also means that I can hopefully bypass the first year of the full degree at Brighton. However, I currently do not meet the entry requirements for the foundation degree and I believe I could be too late to apply for the course this year anyway. This means I will probably have to do either A-Levels first, which is not appealing to me because that's another two years of studying, or an Access to HE course.

The Access to HE course is definitely more appealing to me because it is accepted by Greenwich University so I shouldn't have any problems getting onto the foundation degree course next year. However, I'm not sure what subjects to choose and which ones would be most suitable. I think that Maths, Law and Business studies would have some relevance to Building Surveying but I have not studied Law or Business before and the last time I studied Maths was about 5 years ago now so I am obviously a bit anxious.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Sorry for the long post.

(edited 12 years ago)

Reply 1

josh_v

Access courses are good as a means to returning to study. Youll also find that almost all unis will accept an Access course so dont limit yourself to Greenwich. If you do the Access course, i dont see why you would need to do a foundation degree. You should be able to go straight onto a full time 3year degree.

Some colleges offer a pre-access course for some people. This is normally for those who have been out of education for a long time. Although it may be a bit late to get on to a pre access course. This being said, the difficulty of work when i did mine seemed to be staggered, in that each unit built on the previous, so it wasnt like you were expected to know anything from the beginning.

What subjects do your college offer? There may be something more appropriate for building surveying?

Reply 2

P1G6D3

It is probably worth emailing a couple of Uni's and maybe the college, explaining your circumstances and just to ask for advice, they will be able to give you the best idea of what to do?

Reply 3

GSDog

Original post by josh_v

Unfortunately the full time degree I want to study at Brighton does not accept the access course, the entry requirements are either A levels or a foundation degree/HNC/HND. :s-smilie:

The benefit of the foundation degree/HNC/HND is that it's relevant to the full time degree and I'd hopefully be able to skip the first year at Brighton. I forgot to mention that both the Access to HE course and the foundation degree can be studied at my local college which is only 3 miles away. :cool:

Original post by josh_v

Some colleges offer a pre-access course for some people. This is normally for those who have been out of education for a long time. Although it may be a bit late to get on to a pre access course. This being said, the difficulty of work when i did mine seemed to be staggered, in that each unit built on the previous, so it wasnt like you were expected to know anything from the beginning.

That's very interesting, I wish I knew about the pre-access course before because I probably would have done it. It's also good to know that you weren't expected to know anything from the beginning of the Access, that is what I was concerned about. I guess it is aimed at people returning to education so hopefully I should be OK.

Original post by josh_v

What subjects do your college offer? There may be something more appropriate for building surveying?

Biology
Business Studies
Chemistry
English Language
English Lit
History
Human Biology
Law
Maths
Media Studies
Philosophy
Physics
Politics
Psychology
Sociology

The ones in bold I think are probably the most relevant to Building Surveying. Physics is probably quite important but I never even sat the Physics GCSE so I don't know if I'd find it too difficult. I can't shy away from it though because it is definitely relevant!

Original post by l_depner

It is probably worth emailing a couple of Uni's and maybe the college, explaining your circumstances and just to ask for advice, they will be able to give you the best idea of what to do?

I did visit my local college where the Access to HE and Foundation degree courses are run and they recommended the Access first then the foundation degree. I just wanted to see what others on here thought about it and also to help me decide which subjects on the access course to choose. I haven't yet spoken to the Universities so I will do that next.

Thanks for the help both of you. :smile:

(edited 12 years ago)

Reply 4

josh_v

Yeh, I would have thought that Physics would complement Building Surveying (not that i really know much about what it is)

Its strange that Brighton dont consider Access students. Have you considered other unis?