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Anthropology degree?

I'm in year 13, and I had been planning to apply for a BA Geography degree, but, after some more thought I have decided perhaps I might want to apply for Anthropology. It seems really interesting to me, and I feel more drawn to it than my previous choice (or Sociology, which I also considered).

I was wondering if it was a respected degree? I had heard (from other students etc..) that BA Geog is considered a 'doss' subject, and I didn't know what to think - I'm sure if I had researched Anthropology earlier I would have preferred it over BA Geog (as in I'm not just changing the degree course I want to do because some people criticised it).

I was wondering if anybody could please give me advice on my personal statement, books to read, etc.
Also, the A2 subjects I do are Geography, Spanish and Art.

Thank you :smile:
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badinage
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IMO, I'd say that Anthropology would be regarded as more of a 'general' degree in terms of it doesn't really point you in an obvious career direction, but the skills you would probably gain are more transferable to a lot of areas in terms of critical thinking and constructing arguments than a Geography degree. However, Anthropology would suffer from people thinking, "what is that?" which then forces you to explain what it is (often failing) and even if you are successful people still most of the time not being 100% convinced that it is useful because they don't understand what it is. I did Sociology and have found that people feel the same way about it. There were a lot of choices of modules, and it seemed to me to be a degree with a lot of intellectual freedom to explore areas that you were really interested in. I have a friend who has just completed a degree in Social Anthropology at Edinburgh University, and he enjoyed it immensely.

I can't speak at all about a Geography degree really, but the above are my thoughts on Sociology/Anthropology.

My general advice would be to consider what you want your degree to do for you, i.e. do you want to have a particular career? and then look at what degrees those careers require by looking a job descriptions of jobs that you might like to apply for in the future. My other piece of advice would just be to do what you feel is the best choice for you, and not to be swayed too much by people's perceptions of things that they probably really don't know much about.

I hope this was in some ways helpful.

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