The Student Room Group

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Reply 1
St Andrews
Reply 2
UCL, King's College, Edinburgh, Durham, Nottingham, Royal Holloway and Warwick. St Andrews is alright but not that great from what I've heard.
paddy357
UCL, King's College, Edinburgh, Durham, Nottingham, Royal Holloway and Warwick. St Andrews is alright but not that great from what I've heard.

Looking at your list, I think St. Andrews is at least better than Royal Holloway and on par with the others. By the way, how good is Bristol and Manchester?
Reply 4
jeffreyweingard
Looking at your list, I think St. Andrews is at least better than Royal Holloway and on par with the others. By the way, how good is Bristol and Manchester?

I wouldn't count Royal Holloway out, it's consistantly excellent in Classics and Languages.
I personally wouldn't consider St. Andrews, it's practically in the middle of nowhere and is really only well known because Prince William went there:rolleyes:
Bristol is a strong uni and its Classics department is quite good. Manchester is good for Classics, but overall isn't as strong.
Reply 5
We have an excellent Classics department here in Exeter, which includes many professors whose research is well known across Europe and America. One of my friends did his Classics Masters here, having done his BA at Oxford, so it clearly isn't that bad :p:
Reply 6
paddy357
I wouldn't count Royal Holloway out, it's consistantly excellent in Classics and Languages.
I personally wouldn't consider St. Andrews, it's practically in the middle of nowhere and is really only well known because Prince William went there:rolleyes:
Bristol is a strong uni and its Classics department is quite good. Manchester is good for Classics, but overall isn't as strong.


With the greatest possible respect - you're talking baloney about St Andrews. Its School of Classics is superb and it's an hour from Edinburgh, the capital city.
Reply 7
Warwick's speciality is languages, but they're a newer uni, so maybe their library isn't comparable to say Durham (which has a FANTASTIC library - better than St. Andrew's main one by a long shot). Durham has a collegiate system which is always good. At Warwick everyone moves miles out in the second and third years. I applied to St A's for Mediaeval History instead of anything from their Classics Faculty and when I visited a girl there doing Ancient Hstory said that it had a better reputation that her course although she loved what she was doing. Hum. Nice predicament to have huh?
KCL: Classics is 5* & 24, superb staff, well organized.
Reply 9
DenverDiva
With the greatest possible respect - you're talking baloney about St Andrews. Its School of Classics is superb and it's an hour from Edinburgh, the capital city.

Well I know that I certainly wouldn't want to journey an hour as a student for a night out.
Whilst the department might be good, there are certainly others which are far better.
jeffreyweingard
Looking at your list, I think St. Andrews is at least better than Royal Holloway and on par with the others. By the way, how good is Bristol and Manchester?

Are you completely crazy? St Andrews is the best after Oxbridge, no question. I'm not a St Andrews student btw, so don't think that I'm saying this because I'm biased.
UCL.

"Offers the best chance of becoming a popular with the middle classes pop star"

(home of Coldplay and Keane)
dismal_laundry
KCL: Classics is 5* & 24, superb staff, well organized.

I would say KCL too - generally it is 3rd in the league tables for Classics after Oxbridge and the Guardian even had it top of the Classics list last year or the year before last. Plus, the course is to diiieee for...but I'm biased, I'm planning to start there in September!!!:p:
Coincidentally, I'm just looking again through the KCL Classics booklet I got when I visited last summer...superb course, lots of flexibility and latitude to study specific strands, also if it fits timetable-wise, option to take courses at UCL and RHUL (although RHUL would be quite a ride)

Here's the link to The Times rating http://extras.timesonline.co.uk/gooduniversityguide2005/20classics.pdf

Also see the KCL Classics handbook online in the depts part of the KCL site.

I feel really thrilled to have gotten an offer.
Reply 14
DenverDiva
With the greatest possible respect - you're talking baloney about St Andrews. Its School of Classics is superb and it's an hour from Edinburgh, the capital city.


Actually I was considering going for a classics degree (decided against it in the end - employment etc.) and although it'd have been my natural choice, I heard nothing good about the Classics school at St Andy's.

I do agree that St Andrews isn't all that far away from some of the largest cities up here if you're willing to travel, but you would have to turn a city visit into a day trip to make it worthwhile... and you know how lethargic students are.

Second to Oxbridge - London then Durham (which I was considering) probably.
Reply 15
I'm just completing my Classical Studies degree at Durham (I started out doing Classics but switched after deciding that 9 years of Latin was enough!) and I must admit that the Durham Classics and Ancient History dept has been quite disappointing.
Don't get me wrong- Durham is a wonderful Uni but looking back I probably should have chosen a larger dept with more scope.
On the plus side, the fact that the dept is small (there are 180 in my year covering all the available Classics degree courses) has meant that I have got to know a few of my lecturers quite well, but to be honest most of them are more interested in their research and couldn't give a damn about the students. That is not the case across the board however, and some, such as (the famous) Edith Hall, Barbara Graziosi and Ashley Clements, have been fantastic.
Also, I chose Durham because I thought it provided the widest choice and variation in modules so you had the chance to really focus on what you enjoyed, but that has been narrowed so much that there aren't that many options left.
I thought, 3 years ago, that Durham Classics was on the way up, having managed to get the likes of Prof. Hall, but I believe the fact that she is leaving this year proves the downward trend of the faculty.
However, this is all simply my own opinion and others may well think differently. It could even be that this is the case across most Uni's. If anyone wants to know any more about Durham feel free to PM me. Not all of it is bad-promise!!
Reply 16
Edith Hall is super, I've met her a few times now at conferences.
So out of interest - what other Classics departments did you apply to? And why did you pick Durham?
Reply 17
Angelil
Edith Hall is super, I've met her a few times now at conferences.
So out of interest - what other Classics departments did you apply to? And why did you pick Durham?


Yeh she's such a legend. I'm just writing my essay for her module just now- 5000 words on 'How do the Coen brothers adapt Homer's Odyssey to create their film, O Brother, Where Art Thou?' Her modules have actually been the ones I've really enjoyed.

Anyway, I applied to Durham, Edinburgh, Warwick, Nottingham, Bristol and Manchester.
I picked Durham mainly because I fell in love with the city when I visited. It really is a fantastic and beautiful place to live. I've never really been one of those 'big-city' types so I wasn't sure if any of the other Uni's would suit me.
The collegiate system at Durham was a massive pull and it proves to be one of the Uni's greatest strengths. It makes it much easier to succeed and get the help and support you need, because you are one in perhaps 1000, rather than one in tens of thousands like most other Uni's.
Dept wise I chose Durham Classics because it had the widest choices of modules and you could pick and choose pretty freely as long as you had any pre-requisites. That, unfortunately, doesn't really exist anymore with the new degree formats that have been brought in. Most classics based degree courses have around 4 compulsory modules now, whereas in my first year you only had compulsories if you did any of the languages.
The breadth of the staffing was very good as well. They don't have expertise in one area over another. For example some of the modules I have done for the past few years, apart from my Latin and Greek ones were:

Sources and Methods -ie. of accessing the facts about ancient history
The Greek Gods- which involved putting together a presentation to put on at local schools
From Tragedy to Comedy- the development of drama, both Gk and Roman
Gk and Roman Epic- self-explanatory
Images of Slavery- an Edith lecture=brilliant!
Cultural Responses to the Odyssey- a beginners insight into reception studies through the Odyssey-another Edith one!
Roman Syria- really hard coz most of the secondary lit is in German, French or Dutch!
Urbs Roma

I can't remember my one's from 1st year-it was too long ago!- but you get the idea. I've had a chance to turn my hand at just about every aspect of Classics all in one degree.

Sorry that was all a bit long and well done if you got to the end!!
Reply 18
lol no, sounds interesting!
In my first year here at Exeter I did Beginners' Latin having never done it before, although I know someone in the same situation as you, who changed from Classics to Classical Studies because she didn't want her degree to be 3/4 languages. I also did Greek and Roman Narrative, which was great.
Continued Latin this year (Intermediate) but I'm hoping to go on to Beginners' Greek next year. I've also been doing Greek and Roman Drama this year, which has been fairly satisfactory in terms of the choice of texts, but I'm not so pleased with how it's been taught. As I've gone on I've also noticed that too many of the modules are history/politics based for me, rather than lit-based. No compulsory modules though :smile:
Thanks for your post, it's just nice to see what others are going through on the same course :smile:
Is Warwick anyway near the london unis in quality?
Thinking of my second choice after cambridge when I apply next year