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Uni choices for psychology - help!

Hey everyone,

Im applying for uni for september 2009. I will be a mature student as i will be 21. I have 240 ucas points, and spent 6 months at uni in 2006 although havnt got any credits from it, had to leave due to personal reasons. I have been trying to get hold of work experience in my area and have gone back to my school to get some up to date essays and papers to study and get myself back into learning. I want to study psychology by the way! As a career I want to work with disadvantaged children..social work type of thing.
I have found two universities that the course is accredited and mixes working with children and psychology. They are Lincoln and London Southbank.
The only thing is their rating as univeristies and in the psychology department isnt very good. Does anyone know anything about these 2 universities? Or can anyone recommend a uni that is good for psychology but obviously in my points range?
I find it hard to know because I am looking in the internet but some seem alright then another site says there not! Also i cant visit anywhere, or have any ideas of areas or location as i am from Guernsey!
Would really appreciate some views and help!

Thank you :smile:

Reply 1

Peki

If you want to get the best uni for your points range then don't restrict it to children and psychology, just look for straight psychology. The best way is to just go on the league tables, take down the top 40 or so and then look at their offers on the ucas website :smile:

Reply 2

NSW

yeh, i'd aggree with that. if you wanna go to a "good" uni you have to be broader on what course you want to do. children and psychology is not a particularly obscure mix, but it would restrict your choices, and you would still cover developmental psychology on a psychology course.

i can't think of any uni's in particular, but the UCAS website and league tables normally show you what UCAS points, or A level grades a uni accepts.

Reply 3

LatinMachine

I agree with the other posters on this thread - whether your actual degree includes 'children' is not a good critera to choose the uni. I'm not sure what 240 points equates to in terms of A level grades, so I can't tell you what unversities to be looking at, but you might just have to use the UCAS search function and trawl through the list. If you really are interested in social work, psychology might not be the best degree for you. You've said the courses are 'accredited' - do you mean by the BPS? Because to be a social worker you do not need to have a psychology degree, let alone one that is accredited.

I did 9 modules in my second year of psychology which led to 'accreditation' - only one of these was anything to do with children, and that was developmental psychology. For anyone who is interested in that and only that, the other 8 modules must have been HELL because they are so different (you'll study cognitive psych, social psych, and lots of stuff about the brain and motor functions).

Before you decide whether to study psychology, I think you need to think about the career you actually want - I'm not 100% sure if there is a degree or programme that leads to being an accredited social worker, but it would be worth looking at a degree in this straight off. It will probably include elements of psychology, and it will include the elements you are interested in, rather than a lot of stuff that you might find boring. If you do a psych degree first, you won't be able to do something like social work without *more* degrees or accreditation, which possibly you could have done without wasting three years studying something else. I have met people who did psychology at universities that are lower down the league tables, and all of them are in jobs which they could have got before going to university. With the expense of uni nowadays, I think it's worth bearing in mind. Also bear in mind the expense of living in London if you were to apply to uni there.

http://www.socialworkcareers.co.uk/socialwork/default.asp - this website could give you some more help.

But overall I would recommend checking you really do want to do psychology - and check that you won't mind studying the rest of it, because developmental is only a very small part!