Politics or Psychology degree?

Hi

I have a conditional offer to study Psychology at Nottingham University this September. When I made my decision to apply in October 2012 I was debating between Psychology and Politics, and in honesty, I chose Psychology because I averaged higher UMS at 94% where as I averaged 87% in History.

However, in honesty, this year I have enjoyed History far more than Psychology. By the way, we study political History for our syllabus, which is why it is relevant to politics. I haven't come across any disputes against History being a suitable root into a Politics degree, and have even heard it's the main subject to take for Politics. My interest has proliferated, I am far more engaged in global affairs and international relations than I have ever been. I feel as a subject, Political history has really changed my thinking about the world we live in, where as Psychology was more a case of me being able to quote researchers and regurgitate facts and evaluation points.

I've also looked at the Masters courses I was interested in, which were criminology related. I assumed Psychology would be the obvious pre-requisite, yet, all these degrees state that an honours degree in subjects such as Law, Politics and History are equally engaged into the admissions process.

To put it bluntly:

What degree is more respected, would you say? Why?

&

What degree offers me the most breadth for career options?

Reply 1

peter12345

The impression I get of politics is an elite degree taken by high achievers looking to rise quickly within government. I get this impression from top university PPE/ESPS students but maybe pure politics is different, I don't know. The impression I get of psychology is that is a respectable scientific discipline but it is being saturated with people who read too many murder mysteries.

Reply 2

Origami Bullets

19

Original post by Thefinalepisode1

Hi

I have a conditional offer to study Psychology at Nottingham University this September. When I made my decision to apply in October 2012 I was debating between Psychology and Politics, and in honesty, I chose Psychology because I averaged higher UMS at 94% where as I averaged 87% in History.

However, in honesty, this year I have enjoyed History far more than Psychology. By the way, we study political History for our syllabus, which is why it is relevant to politics. I haven't come across any disputes against History being a suitable root into a Politics degree, and have even heard it's the main subject to take for Politics. My interest has proliferated, I am far more engaged in global affairs and international relations than I have ever been. I feel as a subject, Political history has really changed my thinking about the world we live in, where as Psychology was more a case of me being able to quote researchers and regurgitate facts and evaluation points.

I've also looked at the Masters courses I was interested in, which were criminology related. I assumed Psychology would be the obvious pre-requisite, yet, all these degrees state that an honours degree in subjects such as Law, Politics and History are equally engaged into the admissions process.

To put it bluntly:

What degree is more respected, would you say? Why?

&

What degree offers me the most breadth for career options?

An unusual dilemma, but exactly the same one that I found myself in four years ago!

Politics is a degree that fits you for many jobs that ask for a degree rather than a subject specific degree. Few go into politics itself - but a politics degree does not prepare you to be a politician any more than a history degree prepares you to be a time traveller. It's an academic (rather than vocational) degree, where you will learn the art of critical analysis and train your mind, so to speak.

History A Level is a perfectly suitable route into a politics degree - the two are intertwined, and as relatively few colleges offer G&P A Level, I'm not aware of any universities that require it.

Psychology is one of those subjects that also does for jobs that ask for a degree. Any BPS accredited degree will be fairly science based, but I think a lot of people don't realise this. There are far more psychology graduates than there are jobs available in psychology, and the route to becoming a psychologist is long, hard and far from guaranteed, so most go into other sectors.

If you did decide that you wanted to change, then consider that
- you could consider asking Nottingham if you can change courses now, rather than taking a gap year, BUT...
- politics courses vary massively, and some are focused much more on one thing (e.g. Exeter does a lot on the Middle East), whereas others are broader. Make sure that you find the right degree for you by looking at all the available modules in detail. IMHO at this stage you are unlikely to have a clear idea of where your interests lie within politics, so I would err towards one that offers a broader base.
- a gap year will probably be a better option that rushing into any old university through Clearing. If you think that this is a route you may take, start treating this (Now! Right now!) as being your gap year, and go and find a job to fund your travels, whilst researching politics courses that you can reapply for

As for my resolution to my dilemma? I chose politics in the end, though the decision was resting on a knife edge. In the end I was swayed by (a) going to a taster lecture at a Leeds open day and really enjoying it, and (b) the relative graduate employment rates - politics was several percent higher.

On the side note about criminology, I have taken a couple of criminology modules at uni, as part of my politics degree (I'd like to recommend my own course for flexibility, but unfortunately my exact course (BA(Econ) Politics at Manchester) has gone, there's nothing quite like it elsewhere, and the structure of the BA(Econ) has changed massively - though Manchester has some other politics courses that may be suitable for you). If it's any indication, Manchester's criminology department is within the School of Law, and it's not really based around psychology at all. I did a whole module on punishment for instance (various theoretical perspectives on why & how we punish such as Durkheim and Marx, plus stuff specifically on prisons, fines and community service). Law and order policy is a part of criminology that is deeply political.

You could consider taking a politics and / with criminology degree ('and' = joint honours, so you'll split your time equally between both subjects, whereas 'with' is a major minor split, so you'll split your time in a 75:25 or 66:33 split) - they're not uncommon. But don't expect your ideas of things that you might like to do after graduation to stay the same - they rarely do :wink:

Reply 3

Superunknown17

17

They're both reasonably well respected but as peter12345 says above, it is becoming saturated which in turn could result in lower graduate employment rates. Politics on the other hand is relatively less popular and graduate employment rates are often higher as politics graduates often go into many different areas, psychology graduates tend to be quite narrow compared to politics graduates in terms of their prospects.

Politics or Psychology degree?

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