English at UCL

What’s it really like to study English literature at UCL? What do you like about it and what do you dislike about it? And how much self-study is expected?

Reply 1

Anonymous #1

Bump

University College London

London

Reply 2

artful_lounger

Universities Forum Helper

Original post by Anonymous

What’s it really like to study English literature at UCL? What do you like about it and what do you dislike about it? And how much self-study is expected?

Same amount as any degree - the expectation is that you will spend 30-40 hours per week on your studies, including all timetabled activities. So just subtract the average timetabled hours from that total and that's roughly how much time you should expect to be spending on things. Of course as with most academic courses it's unlikely you will need to spend that amount of time evenly every week across the year and may find periods of peaks and troughs as deadlines come and go where you spend more or fewer than that amount of time (although spending that kind of time investment consistently every week is likely to be the best option if aiming for a 1st).

I've no idea what their regular timetabled hours are though. My department (a smaller humanities department) usually has 2 hours of lecture and 1 hour of tutorial per week for a 1 term 15 credit module (or 4 hours of classes for beginners language modules). Since you'd normally take 4 such modules per term then one would reasonably expect in my department about 8 hours of lectures and 4 hours of tutorials/seminars per week, potentially plus a few hours if doing one or more beginners languages (which are required for most courses in my department at least at some point in the degree). I'd anticipate English would probably be similar, although I understand they have a few more Oxbridge style tutorials each term so not sure how many of those you end up getting.