Changing courses/doing a GDL after graduation

Essentially, I've gotten into my first choice uni to do history. Great--I love history, and I loved the university on the open day. I'm very excited to start the course.

However, there is one issue: employability. I understand that history is a degree that opens up many options, and a solid 2:1 from a good university is definitely respected by employers. Yet, it isn't vocational, and the job market is definitely competitive. This, of course, I know; I was aware of this when I applied.

I hadn't the vaguest idea of what I wanted to do for a long while. I've only very recently became interested in the prospect of a career, and I've been contemplating whether or not law would be right for me. As with history, I am interested in it, though at the time of applying to university it didn't draw me in like studying the Russian revolution did, for example. That may have been lack of exposure, but nevertheless I just didn't consider it. And now this interest has arrived too late to actually apply to law, typically.

So: my plan for the minute is essentially to do first year of history, and reconsider my options thereafter. If I love history too much/decide I don't want to do law, then I'm sorted. If I do want to do law, I could potentially switch directly onto the course. If this is not possible, I suppose I would have to go through the arduous process of reapplying through UCAS, which would waste £9,000 and a year of my life, maybe (I might need work experience, or a better grade in one of my subjects.)

However, if I were to do history for three years, graduate, and decide that law was definitely for me, I would have to do a law conversion course: more time spent, and more money. Yet, I would be qualified in law and have a solid BA to fall back on.

Both of these options have their pros and cons, and this is honestly quite a conundrum. Any advice on this is appreciated, especially from people with direct experience in this sort of thing: switching courses, converting after the degree, or generally not having a direct career in mind, aha.

No point in switching directly into a law course, if you decide that law is for you and gun for it very hard, you can land a training contract at a firm that will cover the GDL and LPC + provide you with a maintenance living grant.

Imo, just stick with history and explore career options whilst at uni. Try to find informal job shadowing if you can, pounce on any internship programmes available to you, go to careers fairs etc etc. It seems like you're not really sure about a career (which is OK), but you do need to do a bit of leg work alongside your academic responsiblities if you want to boost your chances of securing a job offer before finishing uni or just shortly after.

In the grand scheme of things, the course you do matters little.

Posted from TSR Mobile