Cardiff or Lancaster?

Wow! Perfect then! I must've stumbled across a gold mine!

First off, how do you find teaching so far? I've heard mixed opinions about the quality of the department, ranging from amazing to not the best choice but not all of them were from people who actually studied there, so inside scoop would be just what I need!

Secondly, what about work experience and volunteering opportunities? Related to psychology, to be specific. Is the fact that it's a small city a disadvantage? I've heard of the voluntary placement programme and it certainly sounded awesome, pretty supportive and focused on employability.

Also, is it true than you choose if you wanna graduate with a BA or BSc Psych in your third year?

Oh, and what minor did you choose in your first year?

I would say the teaching is pretty good. Of course there are a couple of lecturers that can make you fall asleep, but that's the case with most universities and I'd say they're definitely in the minority. The lecturers are all researchers in their department so I feel like they can give a lot of important insight into their topics.

In first year there are two big modules- Psyc101 and Psyc102. Psyc101 is composed of two lectures and one seminar per week while Psyc102 is composed of two lectures and two lab sessions per week. I'll be perfectly honest and say that seminars feel a little pointless for most people, but these are given by postgraduate assistants rather than teaching staff. The labs are very useful in my opinion as you have the opportunity to work in groups to go through problems (very useful for statistics) and to ask questions about anything you're struggling with. The staff also put a lot of emphasis on using a moodle page to ask them questions outside of class and they're normally quick to reply. So overall I'd rate the teaching positively as there's a good combination of lectures and practical work.

There are quite a few work experience/volunteering opportunities that are advertised by the department. Many of them are within the university itself working as research assistants along with staff members here, so they're good if you want to gain an insight into psychological research or show that you've gotten some experience related to psychology if you want to pursue it further. Lancaster is a research university so the size of the city shouldn't be a disadvantage as there's enough to do in the university itself. There's also more general volunteering (yet still related to psychology) such as mentoring children with autism.

For the BSc/BA question, I'll be honest and say I'm not completely sure about this. I will say however that Lancaster is offering a new course- MPsych (an integrated masters course) in case you're not familiar with it. I wasn't able to apply when I was signing up to universities but have been informed of this opportunity now.

For your final question- I am still in first year and my minor is Biology

Sounds pretty awesome! Thanks! Ohh, Psych and Bio sounds like a winning combination

One more thing. Did you have to buy the textbooks or were they available as ebooks for free? I heard that some unis have digital collections and they let you get the textbooks. And I don't mean through torrents

I personally bought the textbooks but for some of them you can access them online- only issue with these is that there can apparently only be a certain amount of people using them simultaneously so it can be annoying if you want to look up something and it's unavailable. There are also some physical copies available in the library but they're limited and you'd have to keep renewing it. I'll try and list the books that are available online that I have bought:As far as I can see 'Understand Children's Development' is not available online but you can still find physical copies in the library. These are the only three books I've bought for this year and I believe they can also be used in second year. Some of the mini-modules (like cognitive) give you texts to read rather than needing to buy a book, so there isn't that much you need to buy.

Okay, got it When did you get the list with the required textbooks? Before or after you arrived at Lancs?

Good question, I'd personally go Lancaster all the way. I'd be using the Lake District all the time from there. In fact wish I'd done that. Also, it has a few specialties where it is way beyond it's ranking and right up there.

I'm leaning toward Cardiff at the moment, the only thing is that Lancaster seems to be way better (also in rankings) for reputation, research, quality of teaching etc :/

I'm leaning toward Cardiff at the moment, the only thing is that Lancaster seems to be way better (also in rankings) for reputation, research, quality of teaching etc :/