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Help! Decision time for Masters in Social Development Policy/Practice - Any advice?

Hi everyone!

I'm completely new here, but would love to hear if anyone has any advice or thoughts on what I should do...I have been accepted to the following masters programmes to start in September:

UCL - Social Development Practice @ The Bartlett
LSE - Social Policy & Development: Non-Governmental Organisations
King's College - International Child Studies
IOE - Education Planning, Economics and International Development

My eventual goal is to work with a charity, think tank, or potentially government on social development policy - I'm leaning towards education but, given that this would be a totally new subject area to me besides my former experience volunteering with charities abroad, I may be more interested in other policy areas once I get stuck into a course.

As a former English Lit graduate, I am very conscious of the fact that I need to gain a real skill from this degree that will be applicable to the types of jobs that I want to go for afterwards, so I would really like to gain some kind of quantitative skill from this masters course, whether it be from the course modules themselves or an outside course option.

My plan is to move to the US for 5-6 years after taking the course (as my husband is American and is ready to do a PHD), so the reputation of the university/masters programme and the potential for international networking there is also a factor for me. This formed part of my initial decision to apply to London-based programmes.

Any thoughts?? I am leaning towards UCL at the moment, but it would be very interesting to hear from anyone who has any knowledge/experience of these types of courses or the policy arena in general.

Thanks in advance!! :smile:
Reply 1
Hi there. What a shame you got no responses to your post. I would have loved to hear what people had to say! I am currently applying to both UCL and LSE for the same courses as you and also thinking about applying to Kings (my alma mater) but haven't decided what program yet. What did you eventually choose and why? How are you finding it?
Reply 2
Hi! I decided to go with LSE's Social Policy & Development: NGOs option. The UCL course was a little too focused on the planning aspect for me (I realised that I would rather focus on social policy) and, since I haven't worked professionally (only as a volunteer) in the NGO sector before, I figured that a more well-rounded degree might suit my needs better than the more specific Kings programme. The LSE course won out for me because of the breadth of the offered courses and the university's reputation in the social policy field, which I would argue is slightly stronger than UCL's - especially outside of the UK.

I'm only 3 weeks into my programme so far but I am really enjoying it and finding it very interesting. The choice of courses is great, in that you can focus on pretty much any area of social policy in the developing world that you want to, and there is also a bit of leniency regarding taking a few courses outside of the department as long as you are justified in doing so. For instance, I've taken a course from the Gender Institute because my interests lie in gender in development. The professors are also great - really accessible to Masters students - and you get lots of time with them in fairly small seminars. There are about 60 students taking the Social Policy & Development course and they represent a huge range of countries, which is great since so many people have experience in the development sector already.

I would definitely recommend this course so far, but I'd suggest you have a look at the course offerings to see if they match your interests. If planning is your thing, I'd go with UCL, but if you're more interested in social policy, I'd go with LSE. Either way I don't think you can really go wrong! Good luck!
Reply 3
Thanks happypanda. I was also quite worried about the planning focus of UCLs programme. All the course teachers seem to specialize in planning as well and this is really not my area of focus. Even Kings doesn't really offer any courses that interest me but LSE has a ton! At the moment, I am leaning towards Development Management as my first choice and Social Policy and Development:NGOs as my second. The MPA in Development also sounds really interesting but a bit scary - economics is really not my thing and the level of depth on the MPA may be beyond me. So LSE is definitely my first choice but I don't want to put all my eggs in one basket though so I might still apply to UCL and Kings. Do you mind if I send you messages from time to time to find out how it's all going? Or maybe pm you sometime?

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