English advice/which uni?

Hello,
I'm currently studying English, History, Psychology and Biology AS levels and will be sitting my exams in a couple of weeks time. At the moment I'm thinking of going on to do English at uni but I know very little about course options or good universities.
I'd really appreciate any suggestions or advice for English course options at uni, which unis are good for English, any advice or experience of enjoyable courses?!
I'm interested in the film/TV/production industry and I'm also open minded about joint honour courses... I've read a little about doing English with Film (is it any good?)
I'm obviously going to go look round unis after exams but for the time being, any experience or advice would be appreciated as I have very little idea about what I want to do! :smile:

Reply 1

QHF

Original post by k.w98

There are lot of decent English courses out there. Since it's a very popular subject, and since there's quite a lot of competition for lecturer positions in English, the standard is reasonably good.

I'm not sure I could usefully pick out 'which unis are good for English', but I can suggest a few things to think about. Look carefully at how each possible university's course is organised and assessed. Some courses rely more heavily on exams and others more on coursework; some have a lot of compulsory modules and others offer a lot of flexibility and only a small compulsory core; some take a period-based approach and aim to give you experience of each period of English literature, while others are organised more by themes and theories (and in practice most sit somewhere between those two poles). It might be the case that none of these approaches are dramatically better than any of the others, but you should think about which ones you would enjoy the most and which suit your style of learning.

English (or English and film) is a reasonable degree with which to approach the film and TV industries, but these aren't vocational degrees, and these aren't AFAIK fields which demand vocational degrees except for technical roles. It's likely to be experience and contacts rather than the degree itself that gets you the crucial foot in the door -- a degree (2.1 or first) is useful, because it signals to potential employers that you can stick at something and meet a certain level of intelligence, but you want to be the candidate who is clearly passionate about the field and has already gone out and acquired experience. So it will be worth your while to see if you can find any work experience opportunities in the industry, to see if you can get involved in any relevant extracurricular activities at whichever university you go to, and to see if you can talk your way into any summer work. I don't know a great deal about TV and film but if they're like any other creative media industry then you might get results just from contacting people out of the blue on the off chance -- even if all you get at first is advice.

It strikes me that if you're interested in TV and film and you want to push into the industry a bit while doing your degree then going to a university in a place with good transport links or a reasonably strong local media presence might be wise.

English advice/which uni?

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