The Student Room Group
Student at University of Edinburgh
University of Edinburgh

Scottish Ethnology

I applied for the course (with Archaeology) on a whim, not expecting to get an offer being a privately educated English person, but to my amazement the offer came through.
So now I'm actually seriously contemplating taking it up. Just wondering what you actually DO on the course, because I saw words like 'folklore' and 'culture', but I don't know how this works in the way of study....

Can anyone elaborate? The Edinburgh website is not the most helpful of all the universities. Also, I read somewhere that at least 30% of Ethnology students at Edinburgh aren't Scottish, is this accurate? And is there a high proportion of mature students on the course? I don't know why, but I'd imagine it was the sort of course that attracted older students...
I know someone taking Scottish Ethnology and Archaeology, they're English... not that that proves much (and I take courses within Celtic and Scottish Studies). The Celtic and Scottish Studies website might not be the most fancy, but I think that it puts across enough information, here is the part on Scottish Ethnology for Undergraduate study, where the description of the course is very long winded but has plenty of information. The Archaeology department is less helpful when it comes to describing what the course entails. You can use the degree regulation website to find out what courses you would be taking and with a bit of poking around you can navigate to find out what individual courses entail.

If you were to attend Edinburgh your course is not fixed in stone until 3rd year. You can take the time to discover whether Ethnology is something you want to do, pick to take it alone, Archaeology alone or some other option based on your outside course choices.

As an Archaeology student, I would advise you to be very careful in picking your university for Archaeology, it is a widely different subject at the different institutions that it is taught at and you should ensure that you know what each course entails as much as possible before starting out. Edinburgh, for example, is not a very scientific course, nor does it have any arranged practical elements (practical work is the responsibility of the student and the "compulsory" elements are easily avoided if that's a positive)... two things that I would have liked to have been aware of as I find them to be downsides to the course.
Student at University of Edinburgh
University of Edinburgh
Reply 2
Thanks those links are really useful! Some of the people in the photos look old enough to be my mum.. do you know the rough ratio of school leavers:mature students?
I was hoping for more of a practical course, although I'm not sciency at all so that limits the kind of things I could do. Is Edinburgh's archaeology quite methodical then? Lots of reading and little picking things up and looking at old pots etc?
crumbolina
Thanks those links are really useful! Some of the people in the photos look old enough to be my mum.. do you know the rough ratio of school leavers:mature students?
I was hoping for more of a practical course, although I'm not sciency at all so that limits the kind of things I could do. Is Edinburgh's archaeology quite methodical then? Lots of reading and little picking things up and looking at old pots etc?

I have no idea about ratios of school leavers-mature students.

In the first 2 years Archaeology at Edinburgh is almost entirely prehistory with no practical elements (there is a week's "practical" over Easter in 1st year and this involves looking at stones/pot/bones and being told something about it, and in 2nd year there are "labs" which are almost exactly the same as the Easter practical, but there's more writing up) and bits of theory. 3rd and 4th years are more practical on some courses, but there is a lot of theoretical/pre-history study.