A Week in the Life: Warwick edition (see first post)
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Re: A Week in the Life: Warwick edition(This is all assuming that things haven't changed unless otherwise stated - I'm now coming to the end of my final year.)(Original post by gingerbread_traveller)
Anyone have a description of History and Politics?
First Year
There are three core modules, one for History (Making of the Modern World, from the Enlightenment to present) and two for Politics (Introduction to Politics and World Politics). MMW has two hour-long lectures a week, as well as a 75 minute seminar in groups of 8. IP and WP combined have three hours of lectures a week (in our first term there were 2xWP and 1xIP; this changed round for second term) and each has a 60 minute seminar per week, in groups of about 12-15 usually. In addition you pick one further history module (there are a series of short presentations in the first week of term by the module directors to help you decide) - these usually have a weekly lecture and a fortnightly seminar.
In terms of weekly workload, MMW is the most demanding. You'll need to read about 5-10 specific sources per week (you're given them on a DVD at the start of the year, so there aren't any excuses about 150 people trying to get hold of one book in the library) which can take up to a day to read thoroughly, then talk about them in your seminar discussions. IP and WP have "suggested reading", so it's best to read a couple of journal articles or chapters so you understand what's going on.
You'll need to write about 12 non-assessed essays over the course of the first year, i.e. three in each module, which partially count at the end of the year in History but not in Politics (see below). They are always from a selection given to you in the module handbook, and will typically be about 1500 words for the politics modules and 2000-2500 words for history ones, though this obviously does vary. In my experience researching thoroughly can take at least 2 days if not more, and writing about the same. Week 6 of the first two terms is reading week, i.e. there are no lectures or seminars, so this tends to be a good time to get them written - you'll probably find there you have a couple due in week 7 anyway.
For assessed work, politics is straightforward - you take a 3 hour paper in IP and a 3 hour paper in WP. That involves writing 4 essay-style exam answers. History is more complicated. You don't take an exam in your optional module; instead, you are assessed on the basis of the best 2 of your 3 essays over the year, plus a further long essay of 4500 words. This essay is of your own choosing and needs quite a bit of research - it's due by about week 4 of 3rd term, so it's best to get it done over Easter. In MMW, I believe you are now assessed by a) the best 2 of your 3 essays over the year, b) a one question one hour exam in the summer, c) a group presentation from your seminar that you have researched and delivered together. I don't know much about this as it didn't exist until last year.
Nothing that is assessed in first year counts towards your final degree. You simply need to pass (i.e. get over 40%), and it is virtually impossible to fail to be honest.
Second Year
You take one core Politics module, Political Theory from Hobbes, which is essentially a history of the most notable political philosophers. The second politics module is your choice from a range of national political systems and similar (eg Politics in the UK, Politics of the USA, Politics in the 3rd world). In History you choose two optional modules, one of which I think has to be from the early-modern period.
In Hobbes you will be in a seminar of up to 18, sub-divided into three groups, each of which will need to give a handout and presentation on one of the seminar questions. It's up to you how you do this, but our approach was to meet in the library having each done a bit of reading, pool together our findings and then we'd take it in turns to type everything up into a handout and then deliver it in class. This is not in any way assessed. You will have one compulsory essay to write in first term, and one optional one in 2nd term - basically, it's in your interests to do it but you aren't required to. Essay requirements for the other modules will be much the same as first year.
With all second and third year modules you will have choice over how you are assessed. In second year, you can choose either 100% exam, a three hour paper, or 50% exam 50% assessed essay. So for the latter, that will be a 90 minute or 2 hour exam paper and a long essay like the History one from first year, with the deadline being about the same. No matter how much you might prefer essays to exams, it is definitely not worth attempting more than two long essays.
Third Year
Third year options are more complex. History have some modules which are double-weighted - that is, they count for half of your year. The actual amount of reading and seminar work is the same as it would be for a regular module, but you have to do either 2 exams on it or one exam and one dissertation-style essay of 8,000-10,000 words (tutors encourage the latter). With this in mind, your options for choosing modules are:
a) A double-weighted History module, a regular History module and one Politics module,
b) A double-weighted History module and two Politics modules,
c) Two single weighted History modules and two Politics modules,
or d) One single weighted History module and three Politics modules (though if you take this, one of your Politics modules must be Issues in Political Theory, which is core for all students doing straight Politics).
Politics modules are very varied in style for final year - I'm personally taking one on Middle East Regional Relations and another called Shapes and Shadows of the Cold War (I'm also doing a double-weighted History module on America in the 1950s). You can also choose to do a Politics dissertation in place of one of the two Politics modules, though this isn't a great idea if you're doing a double weighted History module.
Assessment in third year is like second year, other than you can choose to do two long essays and no exam if you wish. The condition for all of this, however, is that over the course of second and third years at least 50% of it must be exam-based. But this is for your own good really - if you were doing more than half of your assessed work researching and writing huge essays you would definitely struggle to get everything done.
Final degree classification is done by combining second and third year work - you do eight modules over the two years. Your lowest score for any one module is discounted (so you won't be heavily penalised if you happen to have one really bad exam day), and the grade is worked out from the remaining seven.
To be honest, I've probably made it sound a lot harder work than it actually is. Contact hours a week are very small when compared to science subjects - about 12 for first year, 9-10 for second year and 6-8 for third year. This is obviously because you are expected to read widely, but in practice if you do an average of 2-3 hours reading per module per week (excluding essays) you ought to be fine for 2:1 standard. Independent work and time management are skills you're encouraged to learn, but they aren't hard to pick up. If you do, there's no reason at all why you can't spend more of your uni life at Warwick enjoying yourself and engaging in other activities than actually doing your degree. -
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Re: A Week in the Life: Warwick editionI have got conditional offers for both EPAIS and PPE at Warwick. I am desperate to know more about both these courses, in order to make my decesion of firming and insuring my UCAS choices.
Any feedback from exsisting seniors shall be appreciated. I will indeed be grateful for ppl giving me more insight into the said courses. -
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Re: A Week in the Life: Warwick editionWith regards PAIS, read mine for History and Politics and discount the History side of it. The workload is pretty much the same as I've described.(Original post by Eat Cake)
I have got conditional offers for both EPAIS and PPE at Warwick. I am desperate to know more about both these courses, in order to make my decesion of firming and insuring my UCAS choices.
Any feedback from exsisting seniors shall be appreciated. I will indeed be grateful for ppl giving me more insight into the said courses. -
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Re: A Week in the Life: Warwick editionYeah!(Original post by Quinion)
With regards PAIS, read mine for History and Politics and discount the History side of it. The workload is pretty much the same as I've described.
Thanks a lot for that previous post of yours about Politics. It was indeed very in depth and informative. However I am keen to know more about EPAIS= Economics, Politics and International studies.
I presume in case of only PAIS: it would be again a bit different would'nt it? It would be really interesting to learn more about the workload over the three years period with the fusion of Economics with Politics in this particular course.Last edited by Eat Cake; 26-04-2009 at 20:12. -
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Re: A Week in the Life: Warwick editionI thought it's just 15 hours of lectures per week(Original post by princess1729)
1st Year Maths.
Terms 1&2:
I had about 25 hours of lectures, 3 of support classes (1 teacher, about 30 students booked in, many less actually showed up), 2 of supervisions (1 4th year, 4 students, although there was usually 1/2/3 there). I occasionally went to a supervision, went to the odd support class when it for a hard module, and went to about 20 hours of lectures. Some were skippable as you can buy the notes and go through them by yourself/flick through for the first time the week before an exam. I had 9am lectures most days as they try to timetable later years modules for later in the day as they have to travel in and we're on campus. Irrritatingly, they don't have the lectures in a block, they were spaced from 9 - 7 with a few hours in between each. Plus my programming classes were 7-9pm!
Typically, I'd have 2 assignment sheets due in Monday, one Thursday and a test on Friday. All of which count towards my degree in some small way (year one is worth 10%, assignments/tests are worth about 15% of the year) so have to be done well. The weekend and wednesday afternoons (when there aren't ever lectures) would be spent working solidly. I often worked in the evenings too.
Term 3:
No lectures. Some useful revision lectures, 1 or 2 per course. Most of the time spent messing around doing nothing, until 6 weeks in when mad revision started. Then 2 weeks of absolutely nothing at the end of term.
Social Stuff
There is Top Banana, an event in the Union Monday nights which is £1 entry, £1 drinks which i usually went to. Then Thursdays the pub Varsity which is on the edge of campus has £1 entry, £1 drinks which is also a good night but not a nightclubby one. The union has various other events as do places in Coventry/Leamington Spa but these are more expensive and you have to bus to Cov/Leam and taxi back which is costly. Twice a week was enough for me! I don't do anything with societies much although they are good. I dabbled with cheerleading, pole dancing, rock climbing (AMAZING indoors wall) and I go to Christian Union stuff a fair bit which are excellent even for the nonreligious. They do nice things for people like give out free hot chocolate after Top B which is great for the cold walk back to halls!
I'm sure it was said so on the open day.. 
and what's the male:female ratio in maths?
Last edited by julija; 06-07-2009 at 17:22. -
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Re: A Week in the Life: Warwick editionHi!(Original post by Imo1991)
Can someone write about psychology please?
I'm going into my final year at warwick doing psychology in october
Ok...so i don't know what you want to know...
There are about 120 people in each year (psychology is a popular course
) You are usually in the humanities building (the one with the purple stones outside if you've been to an open day!)
In your first year you will do 4 modules which run throughout the year...
intro to psychology which is made up of 4 parts:
Psychobiology and cognitive science (which are 5 weeks each and run in the first term) and personality and developmental psych (which again are 5 weeks and run in the second term)
Of these i know that people found psychobiology hard (esp. if you didn't do a level biology) but it is do-able... cognitive science is good if you are into the science side of psychology (i'm not)....personality is ok and if you've done a level psychology it covers some of the same stuff and developmental psych is my interest so i loved that part
2nd module is further psychology which is made up of
history of psychology and social psychology (which usually run parallel to psychobio and cog science) and psychopathology and memory (in second term)
History of psychology is pretty simple but as it's one of the first modules you do it can be frustrating to learn about philosophers before you even start on the psychology lol it's interesting if you give it a chance though
social psychology has a great lecturer but is not really my interest
Psychopathology is awesome... a lot of people are interested in it and we didn't get to do it in second year (i'm not sure if this has changed) so enjoy the module in first year! Memory is also interesting and will build on stuff from your a level
3rd module is methods and is the practical aspect of the course...
it is split up into: statistics and practical classes...
statistics is assessed by an exam and in the lecture you learn about different statistical test and when to use them
practical is assesed through practical reports and your own project (working in groups) in your 2nd/3rd term... in the classes you learn about different research methods, how to write up experiments and using computer based statistical programs (not as scary as it sounds)
4th module is one that you choose from another department i did spanish and i know people that did modules in sociology, film studies, philosophy and education...it's a good opportunity to do something else you are interested in...
You don't tend to have a lot of lectures in your first year (which you will get teased on if you have any science subject friends lol)
There is a 1 hour lecture for each modules so one for further and one for intro every week.... plus you have a seminars a week for either further or intro (they work on a fortnightly basis).... in the first year the seminars don't tend to be that useful
For the statistics part of the methods module you will have an hour lecture a week plus a seminar a week and for the practical part you have a 3 hour class
You will also usually have a lecture and a seminar a week for your extra module
so that's about 10 hours a week...
That's pretty much it for your first year.... you will have some form of assignment for each part of each module usually an essay but they are moving more towards giving short answer questions now (you can find out which modules do which once they update the psych website in mid-september) which is worth 33% of each module ...
so in your first term you will have 4 assignments and you will also have to do about 2 practical reports for your practical module (you will also get 10% of your credit for that module from taking part in some of the lecturer's research as participants...easy marks )
and then the exams at the end of the year which are worth 67%
Although you will have less lectures that your science subject friends you are supposed to do quite a bit of reading around the lectures and for the seminars and assignments.... a lot of people don't do this (myself included) and end up trying to do it all in the easter holidays before exams which is not fun so it's probably best to try to do some each week... as you don't get a reading week (similar to a half time) like the arts subjects because psych is classed as a science 
Ok that's a reaallllllllllllyyyy long post I would say to join the psychology society as you can get a mentor who will be a 2nd or 3rd year and they are really helpful when you are stuck at essay times or when you have to find journal articles on the internet 
Feel free to PM me if you have any more questions
Jemma
