What's more important? Doing a degree you enjoy or a degree that's respected/useful?

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It's hard enough for most of us to maintain motivation even when it's an enjoyable subject. Plus with psychology you're going to learn some useful stats/research methods. Couldn't you select a uni with a bps accreditation?

Reply 21

HeavyTeddy

Useful. No point paying a maximum of £9,000 a year and then graduating with little job oppurtunities available. Waste of time and money.

Reply 22

freks15

My son is going to do a joint honours (grades pending of course!) in English Lit and Criminology....one is a strength, the other a passion - can't go wrong! You can always major in your favourite one once you have had time to get used to the courses. Good luck :wink:

Reply 23

laura94

I was deciding between philosophy and economics, and decided to go for philosophy despite economics' better career prospects. I figured that in order to study something for 3 years and do well I'd have to do something I enjoy, and in order to be considered for jobs at the moment you pretty much need a 2:1, so doing well is vital. I'm hoping that if I get enough work experience and internships during my degree I should be ok. When I did some work experience at Goldman Sachs they said that a philosophy degree is fine, and can even hold an advantage, if it is combined with good work experience. This is because they can teach you all you need to know for the job when you get there in just a few weeks, rather than having you learn just some of it in 3 years!

Anyway, I guess we'll see if my plan works in a few years!

Reply 24

dj1015

Which one of the degrees the OP mentioned was the useful one?

Reply 25

BefuddledPenguin

I chose enjoy, I do an English BA and have no idea how much it is/isn't respected and I don't care. I just have to work out what to do with it. Maybe do a teaching course. I'd love to be a teacher in a college, may have to do a masters for that though, no idea.

Reply 26

tinyflame

Original post by Vixxen

At at my university (UCL) it is the consensus that, comparatively with A-Level Psychology, degree-level Psychology is not enjoyable. We spend most of the time writing lab reports in ridiculously scientific language for an experiment which goes something like: Wait for an hour whilst your participants sit at a computer pressing a key every time they see a dot on the screen. If you enjoy making something scientific for the sake of it, and making discoveries which mean nothing at all and were probably due to experimental error, then go ahead and do Psychology. But then again your course may be more interesting if it's not BPS-accredited.

I would encourage you to think about whether you *really* do enjoy Psychology, or you just enjoy it marginally more than English. For example, would you choose to read a University-level Psychology textbook over say, watching a movie/going out with your friends? If it's the former then by all means study Psychology because you probably do have a passion for it and will greatly enjoy your 3 years studying it. But take into account that you won't be able to study it to PhD level because it's not BPS-accredited (not 100% sure if this is true...), and it may not be much use in getting a career in something Psychology-related either (such as counselling or working with people with psychological problems).

If I were you I'd do the more respected course (unless it is really dreary, and imo English and Psychology are pretty level in terms of dreariness), which seems like English in this case. Most university courses are not exactly fun, so you may as well do the option which will give you the best prospects. Both English and Psychology are fairly generic courses (although I think Psychology has slightly better employment rates) which will allow you do your 3 years and then go into a career you will enjoy. Do you have any idea of what kind of career you would like?

Damn...

I actually took a gap year because I was about to study engineering, which I found out that I would probably hate and drop out of?

And I really wanted to do it more for the career prospects, rather than out of interest?

Now I am about to apply to university to study a subject that I am interested the most (maybe not necessarily enjoy madly), which is psychology?

I really have no other degrees I can think of doing other than psychology?

I have considered chemistry, but I know that it's a bad idea to just hop into a chemistry degree and drop out later, again only for the career prospects...

Then I thought about law, but it's ridiculously competitive after you graduate to get a law career starting...

And as for the rest, stuff like accounting or finance, I'm sure I can do conversion courses for this after I graduate?My chemistry teacher told me to study accounting after I graduate, rather than as an undergraduate course.

So I'm not left with much really?

I don't want to take another gap year, and I am not interested in apprenticeships at the moment. And I don't want to be chained to a school leaver job either.

So I still feel like I want to go university, but I am very scared of studying psychology, because it's quite looked down upon, and I worry about the "career prospects"?

What would your advise be?