UCL Economics and Business with East European Studies 2023 Applicants

Hey everyone, this thread is for anyone applying to UCL for Economics and Business with East European Studies or any other related course!

Feel free to share which A Levels you are doing (& predicted grades), when you submitted your application and which other unis you applied to

I think we applied to almost the same ones lol. I got 42/45 in the IB, I applied to KCL and Oxford for E&M, LSE for Intl social and public policy with econ, and E&M at St Andrews (offer holder).

Oh yeah we almost did! I applied for KCL and Oxford for E&M, LSE for Management and Queen Mary for E&M (offer holder). How did you find the TSA today?? And also have you heard anything from UCL?

oh nice! I suprisingly heard nothing from UCL the status is still stuck on application received. Maybe they haven't yet started reviewing applications for this course yet. KCL is reviewing, however, they asked for my transcripts a while ago. I didn't find theTSA difficult its just that time screwed me over so much. I had to guess like 6 and rush towards the end. Hoping for somewhere around 40.

@57gooseberries in your Personal Statement did you talk about East Europe?

I'm a first year doing this course. feel free to ask me anything

Cool! Do you know how many people take this course at UCL (can't find the stats but I presume its a small cohort). What is the split like between econ/business, and East European context? Are the professors specialised on a certain area or is it common for all the disciplines. Are there any optional modules, or is the first year the same?

I transferred from pure Economics to this course but, there's around 90 people in this course. However, most of your modules will be shared with people doing History, Politics, and Economics as well as other first year students in the SSEES department.

RE the split, I believe that the course should be named Economics with Business instead as the compulsory modules you will be doing are 3 Economics modules, a Statistical Economics module, and only 1 Business module in 1st year. So definitely more Economics heavy. With the compulsory modules, there is no link to East Europe at all. You will only get this context depending on the optional 3 modules you choose. The rule of thumb is that if the title of the module has no mention of Europe in it, there will be little to no context of EE unless used as an example in lectures.

And yes, the professors are specialised in the area of studies. For example, The Economics professor is well qualified in the discipline (Sangaralingam Ramesh if you want to Google) and will not be able to answer questions regarding a module about European Politics, etc.

Regarding modules, you will be able to choose 45 credits worth of optional modules (most modules are 15 credits, so 3 modules). I will attach the Economics and Business handbook with the list of modules you can choose from. Hope this helps!

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/ssees/ug-economics-and-business-handbook-2022-23

I transferred from pure Economics to this course but, there's around 90 people in this course. However, most of your modules will be shared with people doing History, Politics, and Economics as well as other first year students in the SSEES department.

RE the split, I believe that the course should be named Economics with Business instead as the compulsory modules you will be doing are 3 Economics modules, a Statistical Economics module, and only 1 Business module in 1st year. So definitely more Economics heavy. With the compulsory modules, there is no link to East Europe at all. You will only get this context depending on the optional 3 modules you choose. The rule of thumb is that if the title of the module has no mention of Europe in it, there will be little to no context of EE unless used as an example in lectures.

And yes, the professors are specialised in the area of studies. For example, The Economics professor is well qualified in the discipline (Sangaralingam Ramesh if you want to Google) and will not be able to answer questions regarding a module about European Politics, etc.

Regarding modules, you will be able to choose 45 credits worth of optional modules (most modules are 15 credits, so 3 modules). I will attach the Economics and Business handbook with the list of modules you can choose from. Hope this helps!

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/ssees/ug-economics-and-business-handbook-2022-23

I see, thank you! What is the overall workload like in a typical week, and is there any time/opportunities for internships? And I presume all your lectures are in the same building, right?

What made you transfer to this course from pure Econ? Considering that it's a relatively small cohort compared to pure Econ, do you feel like you're somewhat excluded from the main uni? (I heard somebody say that the SSEES department doesn't organise as many events as other departments). Also, roughly what's the male to female ratio for your course?

Term 1 is still relatively light so far. Here's a mini description of what a typical week is like for me. This will differ based off your optional modules but generally should be quite similar:

Monday - Econ lecture
Tuesday - Business lecture and Politics lecture. I'll then start on question sheets for tutorials
Wednesday - Nothing, I'll continue doing my readings and answering problem sheets for tutorials
Thursday (most hated day! Especially because its an early start after Sport's Night) - Politics, Economics, and Business tutorial. Tutorials are where you sit down in a class of 10 people and discuss solutions to the questions set based off of the lecture.
Friday - Statistics lecture and tutorial.

By internships do you mean consulting/investment banking Spring Weeks? If so, this occurs during Spring break where you get 3 weeks of April off, so yes you do have time for internships. And no, the lectures and tutorials are not all held at the SSEES building. It is spread out around UCL's campus! E.g. I have Politics in the Chemistry building and Business in Archaeology.

TLDR; Wider range of modules you can choose from, no you will not be excluded, everyone else is part of their own department and 'main uni' is the Student's Union which you will be a part of. About 30%

With Economics and Business, I get to choose from a wider range of optional modules. The optional modules for Pure Econ are still quite finance/Econ related (such as Finance for Economists) whereas E&B at SSEES gives me the option to pick up modules in Politics, International Relations, Sociology, East European languages, Film studies, etc. And in 2nd year, you get to choose optional modules from any department at UCL which you can't do with Pure Econ. Personally, I prefer studying a wide range of disciplines rather than just one, so that if I get tired of revising for Economics, I can switch to revising Politics or Business.

And yes, it is a small cohort (around 90 vs 300) but your lectures and tutorials will be spread out around UCL Campus (I only have 1 class in the SSEES building this year) so you won't feel excluded from it. SSEES does host events such as talks but I'm not really interested in them so rarely ever go haha. There's also a SSEES ball coming up some time next year so that is one event I will be attending.

Furthermore, everyone is part of their own course's department so it's not really possible to be exclude from the main uni. I would say that the 'main uni' is the Student's Union which everyone is a part of and they host lots of events so you can meet people from other years doing other courses ( https://studentsunionucl.org/whats-on?s=2022-11-20&e=2022-11-29 for an idea). There's also a really wide range of societies you can join and they host social events. Through living in UCL halls, you will also be able to make friends with loads of people studying different courses so you could always tag along to their events and vice versa.

As for female to male ratio on my course... I would first have to go on a tangent and speak about the Chinese international vs locals.... there's about 70 Chinese and 20 local student (got bored during the E&B welcome and my mate and I counted) in my cohort. I can't speak for the F to M ratio for the Chinese students but from observation I want to say about 35% of them are girls. But for local students, there's about 5 females and about 15 males. But don't be put off by the digits. In your lectures and tutorials, it will not solely be E&B students as other SSEES students will be doing the E&B compulsory modules as their optionals. And you share Economics (200 people in my lecture) with History, Pol and Economics which has a bigger number of students enrolled. My girl-friends in most of my modules comes from the HPE course

Sorry if this was too long, I try to be as informative as possible as this is information I wish I knew while applying!

hi ive applied for this course too - i rcvd and email to book a campus tour with SSEES department - did anyone else get this too?

hey i didn't get it. when did you apply and when did you receive the email?

i applied on 14/11 and rcvd a confirmation the same day and last week i got an email saying -

Dear NAME,
Thank you for your application to UCL SSEES!

We are delighted you are considering studying with us here at UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES).
Our academic community is one of Europe's leading institutions for the study of Russia, the Baltics, and Central, Eastern and South-East Europe.

Have you visited us in person yet?

We are now running regular tours of our wonderful building at 16 Taviton Street, giving visitors and prospective students a chance to get to know our academic community and get a feel for what studying at SSEES might be like.

We are available for tours every Wednesday between 2pm and 5pm. Tours will be led by a SSEES Student Ambassador or by a member of our Admissions and Engagement Office.

The tour will take around 30 minutes and will show you the unique main building, library, teaching facilities and Masaryk common rooms. There will also be a chance to visit the Admissions Office and ask any questions you may have about studying here.

You may wish to combine your visit to SSEES with a tour of the wider UCL Campus; these can be booked here.


We wish you all the best and hope to welcome you to UCL soon!

Kind regards,

Admissions and Engagement Office
UCL SSEES