The Student Room Group

Applying for Politics, PolPhil, PPE, ESPS and War Studies

Hey guys,
At the moment, I'm planning on applying for the following courses for entry in 2011.

1) UCL - European Social & Political Sciences (Italian ab initio)
2) Oxford - PPE
3) York - Politics & Philosophy
4) SOAS (perhaps) - Politics
5) KCL - War Studies

Is this even viable?

I'm not applying for PPE across the board because I'm dropping Maths at A2, but my school has managed to get students like me into Oxford in the past.

For ESPS, I spoke to the admissions tutor at the open day, and he said that a PPE personal statement was perfectly acceptable.

My question really lies with War Studies. Is a PPE statement acceptable or advisable for this course? Or would they be expecting a Hist+Pol PS.

If I applied to the above, my personal statement would have to include War and some Italian history, I assume. I studied the Italian revolutions at AS, which could help.

The subjects I took were English, History, Economics & Maths. I'm dropping Maths next year.

My first choice really is ESPS (learning Italian from scratch). Could any UCL students (or any other students) give any advice towards applying for this course? It's the one I really, really want to get accepted into.

I would also appreciate any advice that you could offer.
Thanks :smile:
dorian gray
.....


I graduated from ESPS, a coursemate of mine applied to both War Studies and ESPS. He did mention that during his Kings interview though they grilled him on why he didn't just apply for the Kings History Department instead of War Studies. And he wrote his statement based on His + Pol courses, so the War Studies Department sounds a bit finicky with this. If you want to stick with the War angle for War Studies, it would be easier to rotate your PS towards an IR and Philosophy angle than politics and philosophy for ESPS+Italian Department's consideration. I've noticed that during my year and previous years that any dissertation that was Italian centric focused more on culture/anthropology/economics or political parties rather than War or revolution. So this may be an indication on what subjects are considered important for the UCL Italian department where you'd be taking your culture and history as well as language courses. So you may make a better case if you focus on War from a disciplinary angle than on the Italian case study. Also, even though it's ab initio, the format of the interviews at ESPS include an Italian interviewer. So maybe look around the Italian Department website to see what themes in history or politics catches the Italian staff's eye.
Reply 2
WaltzvWendt
I graduated from ESPS, a coursemate of mine applied to both War Studies and ESPS. He did mention that during his Kings interview though they grilled him on why he didn't just apply for the Kings History Department instead of War Studies. And he wrote his statement based on His + Pol courses, so the War Studies Department sounds a bit finicky with this. If you want to stick with the War angle for War Studies, it would be easier to rotate your PS towards an IR and Philosophy angle than politics and philosophy for ESPS+Italian Department's consideration. I've noticed that during my year and previous years that any dissertation that was Italian centric focused more on culture/anthropology/economics or political parties rather than War or revolution. So this may be an indication on what subjects are considered important for the UCL Italian department where you'd be taking your culture and history as well as language courses. So you may make a better case if you focus on War from a disciplinary angle than on the Italian case study. Also, even though it's ab initio, the format of the interviews at ESPS include an Italian interviewer. So maybe look around the Italian Department website to see what themes in history or politics catches the Italian staff's eye.


Thanks a lot! (+rep)

I'm leaning more towards KCL's International Politics course. I read on another thread that "students starting the Foundation degree in 2011 are guaranteed, providing they have gained the necessary credits in the first two years, to be able to continue to the 3rd year of the BA in International Politics and graduate with a BA degree."

Out of interest, which language did you take for ESPS? And what other courses did you apply for?
Reply 3
I've had enough trouble trying to tailor my personal statement to both politics and philosophy and ppe. good luck to you!

:h:
Reply 4
WaltzvWendt
Thanks for the rep! I interviewed for Russian ab initio. But due to family pressures I had to transfer to Italian ab initio (though later still took SSEES courses for the politics portion) for the first couple of weeks.....until the Italian Department barred me from changing language seminars because of a clash with a compulsory Economics lecture. I settled on Dutch in the end as it freed up my schedule, which was good because I got to study the wave of Right Wing extremist movements and the 'NO' vote on the EU Constitution Referendum of 2005. So I was a language tourist, lol.

I applied for Politics courses and got offers from Edinburgh and the School of Slavonic and East European Studies though missed out on LSE Government. I got in for the MSc International Relations (Research) after ESPS though. I'm an American so at the time of applying I really didn't know anything about the UK politics courses.


Ah, that's interesting, thanks!

Also, you said that I should look up the Italian staff to see their areas of interest. I've found the list of staff, should I look at the 'Academic + Administrative' staff, or the 'Teaching Fellows + Teaching Assistants'. I assume that only the Teaching fellows would be present at the interviews?
WaltzvWendt
I settled on Dutch in the end as it freed up my schedule, which was good because I got to study the wave of Right Wing extremist movements and the 'NO' vote on the EU Constitution Referendum of 2005. So I was a language tourist, lol.


Were you on your year aboard during the referendums of the EU Constitution? If so you were very lucky :smile:

Students starting ESPS/ SSEES in 2011 will also get to spend their year aboard (3rd year) during the 2014 European Elections. This should be very interesting and will provide something to write about for the year aboard dissertation!