The Student Room Group
I know you don't need any particular qualifications; just strong A-levels. They obviously prefer Geography, but it is not absolutely required. The course isn't split into human and physical, and provides you with opportunities to study both. That's pretty much all I know.
Reply 2
Hey, i'm a first year, its a really good course, no particular A-levels are needed, i took geog, econ, hist, chem and art, - tbh though they just want good grades. The course is more inclined towards the human geog side with 3 human modues, 2 physical and 1 skills. But even the phys modules have human effects/relations. The course is quite general - paper 1 people space and geogs of different is about globalisation, post/fordism, restruturing welfare and social,cultural and political geogs, paper 2 is histroical geog, paper 3 society, environment and dev, is all about poverty, development forests and sustainablity, ecological econmics, paper 4 is std phys geog like hydrology, atmos, coasts, bio geog, and paper 5 , change through time is about glacers, climate change , mi'vtch cycles, etc etc . Hope this helps x
Reply 3
Hey, I'm a first year too, on top of what Lucy has already said I would say that the course is pretty good, in the first year you get no choice which is a good idea because it gives you a breadth you might not otherwise get, and also you get to see everyone in your year a lot as you have the same lectures. It does seem slightly biased towards human with 3 human and 2 physical papers but paper 3 (society environment development) does have some physical aspects to it such as forests. In the second year you choose 4 papers out of about 12, one of which has to be physical and one has to be human. You also go on a subsidised field trip to either Morocco, Berlin, the Algarve, Majorca or Switzerland. In the third year you pick 4 of about 15 papers and you can do any combination you want, i.e. all human, all physical or a mix, + a 10,000 word dissertation. Overall, the course is interesting, the teaching is good quality, and the workload is not that bad at all as long as you're organised which means you have plenty of time to do sports and stuff. There's plenty of bursaries for dissertation travel too. Any other questions just PM me. X
Reply 4
I got an offer for geo at Cambridge, but I've heard that the course is really theoretical, so I'm hesitating. Is the course theoretical i.e. all lectures and seminars? Or are there field days, laboratory work, random walks in a cluster of 10 trees they call a forest? Ok, maybe not the last one, but is there any activity outdoors? Not necessarily only physical geo related stuff, but also human geo studied in practice.
Thanks!
Reply 5
Hattivatti
I got an offer for geo at Cambridge, but I've heard that the course is really theoretical, so I'm hesitating. Is the course theoretical i.e. all lectures and seminars? Or are there field days, laboratory work, random walks in a cluster of 10 trees they call a forest? Ok, maybe not the last one, but is there any activity outdoors? Not necessarily only physical geo related stuff, but also human geo studied in practice.
Thanks!


The human side is pretty theoretical...but then, it has to be really :p:

But the physical side has all of the above: lab work from GIS stuff to soil analysis....fun! not), field days (local fenland...very, very boring), and yes, precisely what you say: "a random walk in a cluster of trees" (some local woodland...can't remember the name, but that was quite a nice day just rambling through the trees....can't remember if we were supposed to be doing some kind of work or not).

Then in the second year for human and/or physical you get to go abroad on a week-long field trip (morocan atlas, swiss glacier, berlin, etc), and in the summer before third year you of course travel for dissertation. So you've got all that to look forward to :biggrin:


Btw I'm a third year Geographer so ask here / PM if there's anything else about the course I can tell you / questions I can answer :smile:
Reply 6
Legend22
Anyone do it? If so what is it like? Any good?

All information will be helpful.

And also what qualifications are needed to study Geography here.



Yes, it's good.

What is it like is kinda hard to answer....in the first year the course has a definite bias towards the human side, but in the second and third year you can choose your modules and specialise more in physical or human. Um. Areas drawn on include politics, economics, culture, history, anthropology...while on the physical side there's a fairly heavy focus on the cryosphere (just 'cos we happen to have a lot of experts in that field on hand, I think), but also modules on volcanology, general hazards, geomorphology, coastal morphology, biogeography, GIS, and some stats and stuff thrown into all that.

I'm not rly telling you anything the prospectus wouldn't I don't think :p: But if you have any more specific questions I can answer 'em.

Basically, there's a hugely broad range of options available, covering pretty much the whole gamut of social science, plus then the whole physical side of geog as well. But you can also choose in the second and third year to specialise quite a lot if you chose, and there are definite sets of modules that synergise well together.
Reply 7
Nellers
The workload is not that bad at all as long as you're organised


Ha! Just you wait....

(actually, second year is less work than the first, imo. But then third year you have to put some effort in and it suddenly gets....arrrghhh)
Reply 8
So, general consensus is that the work load is not too horrific?
Reply 9
Not compared to, say, a NatSci. But probably a lot more than, say, an English student.

Basically, one essay per week, with reading maybe 2-3 books and 4-5 journal articles for that. Plus occasional practicals, projects, etc.
Reply 10
Tom
Ha! Just you wait....

(actually, second year is less work than the first, imo. But then third year you have to put some effort in and it suddenly gets....arrrghhh)


I disagree. First year is an absolute doss; you can get a 2.1 with doing next to nothing. Second year seemed way more work though - don't you remember all those dam projects? Three 2000 word projects and a 4000 word open book essay on the most boring topics you could ever think up! But I do agree the third year is another level.

In comparision to Natsci's, they have a lot more structured time - i.e. lectures, practicals etc, but they don't have to do much reading outside of that.
Reply 11
How much emphasis is there on environmental issues? Or how much choice of modules that deal with them? How far do they expect you to "maintain an interest in the discipline as a whole"?
Reply 12
Indirectly there's a fair bit on stuff that relates to env. issues in the modules that look at the cryosphere and meteorology in the first two years. In the third year the "Environment and Development" module is quite environmental-issues-focused, and again other modules will cover bits of it too.

But in general, no, there isn't a desperately strong focus on climate change / env. issues per se.

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