Edinburgh vs KCL for Politics

Hey all. I'm an international student with unconditional offers to KCL and Edinburgh, studying politics. I'm wondering if anybody has any experience with the politics departments at these two unis, or feedback that could help me decide between the two. I'm particularly interested in formal theory/mathematical modeling of politics, which is obviously a pretty rare subfield and I'm not sure to what extent that is offered at either school.

At the moment I'm much more keen on Edinburgh for purely non-academic reasons (I like the city better, etc), but it would be nice to have some information on curricular concerns as well.

Reply 1

georgewllc

Original post by Gh66

Hi, I am currently in my first year of studying politics and Edinburgh. Definitely recommend the city as a place to live and there are plenty of extracurricular and social activities to be involved in. In terms of studying politics, first-year modules consist of introductory courses in key ideas in politics and IR as well as a course in political theory and key historical political thinkers.

The school in which your degree would be based in the School of Social and Political Science (SPSS) is not the best I feel in terms of feedback, support etc. however I am not sure how it would compare with other Uni's, contact time is rather minimal with only 2 lectures and a single 50min tutorial per week for each module. It very much depends on how good the tutors are, some are really great and go above and beyond to make the courses worthwhile, others not so much.

However, I would recommend that there are good courses in quantitative methods run by (SPSS) that focuses more on the quantitative and mathematical side of studying politics and social science if that is what you are interested in. There may be the opportunity to graduate with a joint degree in politics and Quantitative methods.

Reply 2

Picnicl

I've no experience with either but Edinburgh do an MA Politics with Quantitative Methods. n.b. even though Scottish MA courses last 4 years, they are only the equivalent of a 3 year English BA course.
So an English MA at a similar ranked university is superior to a Scottish MA, even though they'd both last 4 years. The reason Scottish undergraduate degrees last a year longer than English undergraduate degrees is Scottish students typically start university at age 17 so the extra year serves to allow students to study more than just their main subject, to round out their knowledge and really work out what they want to specialise in.

In world rankings, currently Edinburgh's slightly higher for subjects in general and KCL is slightly higher for Politics.