Deciding between Durham, York and Warwick

Hiya, I am currently crying to decide between three of my offers. The grade requirements are all fairly similar so that doesn’t seem to be a huge factor. I have applied to study English Literature starting in September and was wondering if any currents students had any insights. Something I have noticed is the Durham course seems far more traditional than Warwick and York. I am wondering if this is perhaps a misconception and if there is currently more modern modules and freedoms. Along with this, I wanted to know about the unis’ assessment (which have formal timed assessment and how many they have, and which have introduced more creative assessments). Any help on this would be greatly appreciated! I am currently at a lost end deciding between the three.

Reply 1

Durham Students

Official Rep

Original post by Anonymous

Hiya, congratulations on your offers- those are all great choices!

I can’t say anything about the English Courses at Warwick or York but I am currently a second year English student at Durham so I’ll try to help you out as much as I can.

I would say that Durham still has quite a traditional course, I have previously described the first year as ‘literature from the beginning’, because it's really just establishing a foundation you can build up from once you start to specialise. Some of the things that I learned in my first year did end up being surprisingly useful in my second year when they started popping up as references in critical studies on things that seemed at first unrelated, but if you know what you want to specialise in already then this might be a bit confining. In your first year at Durham you’ll have a choice of 7 modules (you have to take 6),3 of these are compulsory - last year these were Introduction to Drama, Introduction to Poetry and Introduction to the Novel, and the 3 optional modules I took were Classical and Biblical Background to English Literature, Romance and the Literature of Chivalry, and Epic and the Literature of Legend. The first year does not count toward your final grade so it really is just an introduction.

The options you have in your second year are more varied and there’s more of them to choose from, but you do still have 2 compulsory modules (Shakespeare and Literary Theory and Criticism) and it is required that you take one pre-1800 module in either your second or third year. Your second and third years do count toward your final grade. In your third year there are no more compulsory things (other than the dissertation) and the modules are more specialised (I’ll give you some examples but keep in mind they tend to change every year: Medieval French Literature, The Rise of Popular Music, Contemporary Feminist Drama) and there are even more to choose from, but a good number of these will be focused on quite traditional literature.

Modules are generally assessed either by summative essays (as opposed to formative, which do not count but are marked and graded as practice) ranging form 1500-4500 words, or by exams - so far all my exams have been online but I do believe they are looking to move them back in-person. There are some modules offered in third year that have a slightly different assessment style, such as the Creative Writing modules, but I would say they are in the minority.

I hope that was helpful and best of luck with your choices!

-Claudia

Durham University

Durham

Visit website