Applying to York with an Ancient and Modern History Personal Statement.

i'm looking to apply for history courses which include both ancient and modern history elements -
oxford - ancient and modern history
st. andrews - history (includes ancient history anyways)
edinburgh - history and classics
durham - ancient, medieval and modern history

and york. except york doesn't offer a course with both ancient and modern history elements. if i were to still apply to york's history course with my personal statement which will be around half ancient history, would this be detrimental to my application? i'd assume they would dislike the fact that half of what i have written is irrelevant to their course which doesn't include any ancient history.

alternatively, does anyone have any suggestions about other universities which offer the course i'm looking for? ideally, i'd like it to be a bit of a safer option since my first 4 have really quite high entry reqs/are hard to get into. but living in a nice/beautiful city (or campus) with enough to do is also quite important to me.

thank you!

Reply 1

Mu-tron

Why not Exeter? They have a BA in Ancient and Modern History. It's a good uni with some good academics. A friend of mine went there and then did the ancient history MPhil at Oxford.

Re. personal statement, I am not an expert in personal statements (it's been a long time since I wrote mine) but I think you can probably word it in a way which doesn't suggest that you are particularly set on studying ancient history, if that's what you need to do. For example, you can talk about skills and techniques that you've used which can apply to ancient or to modern history. Talking about work you've done in the field of ancient history ought to still be relevant if you're applying to a modern history degree.

Reply 2

Sheppi

Leeds, Manchester, Southampton and Reading, all have Ancient History and History combos that I have looked at as applying for similar courses. UCL also covers ancient and modern in its straight History course.

Reply 3

haum3a

Original post by Sheppi

Thank you! I noticed that with UCL's course and decided on that instead of York :smile:

I think I'd enjoy UCL more than York anyways, I was just unsure about going to a London uni at first which is why I didn't pick one originally!!

Reply 4

Mu-tron

Original post by haum3a

Thank you! I noticed that with UCL's course and decided on that instead of York :smile:

I think I'd enjoy UCL more than York anyways, I was just unsure about going to a London uni at first which is why I didn't pick one originally!!

I didn't realise you were thinking of UCL as well. I did some ancient history when I did my undergrad there. Valentina Arena is a fine teacher, and I haven't been taught by Hans van Wees but his writing is excellent and very easy to read, so I expect he's great as well. I didn't much like the community (or lack of it) at UCL though, but maybe you will!!