Most students thinking of applying to the UK for a postgraduate programme will feel they need some advice and help to do this. While the choice, decision and application must be done by you, very helpful support can be obtained from a number of sources. First, of course, the main aim of this website is to provide you with general advice and guidance on applying to the UK for a postgraduate programme! In addition, though, the most useful source of guidance is probably The British Council. The British Council has offices in 110 countries and provides support and information on all aspects of British life and culture. One of its key roles is to promote UK education internationally, and it does this through its brand of EducationUK. Initial advice can be found directly on The British Council website. On the website you will find access to education advice for applicants from your own country. This contains contact details and website addresses for The British Council in your own country, and information on how to make an appointment with a British Council Education Officer.
You should also visit the website of UKCISA, which provides excellent detailed guidance and advice. UKCISA is an organisation established specifically to provide information, advice and support to international students.
The first stage in making your choice is to find out which universities offer programmes in your field. For well-established subjects there may be 40 or 50 universities offering a suitable Masters course, and for research degrees most universities will take Doctoral students in most subjects. For highly specialist programmes, though, there may be only one or two universities that offer a suitable course – so you will need to plan your search very carefully.
The Postgrad.com course search
The first thing to do is to use the course search on this site to search a comprehensive database of UK postgraduate programmes. When searching for a programme, it is important to think broadly about the titles of programmes that you might be interested in. Although you may be looking for a Masters programme or a PhD programme in Urban Planning, programmes in this field may have a wide range of titles – for example, Urban Management, Planning and Society, Geography and Planning, Urban Design. It is important, therefore, to search using as wide a range of titles, names and key words as you can think of. It is also important to consider how a programme with a general title might have options or specialist pathways within it that enable you to focus on your particular interests. For example, an MA in Theatre Studies may enable you to focus on Elizabethan Theatre, Costume Design or Production. It is always helpful, therefore, to look at exactly what is covered and what the options may be within a programme with a general name.
Personal contacts
A good source of information will be the academic staff in your current university. They will have a good knowledge of their subject area and may well know which universities offer programmes in the subjects that you want to study. The advantage of using such personal contacts is that they may know the staff who teach on some of the programmes either personally or through their publications and research, and so can give a very detailed insight. The disadvantage is that they may not know all the programmes available, their information may not be up to date and they may not know of new programmes that have been started. Also, if you are an excellent student they may have a vested interest in your staying on at your current university!
Education agents
Another source of information is through education agents. Agents provide information and support for students seeking to study abroad, and will have access to many sources of useful information. Agents earn their income by either charging applicants for assisting them to apply or by charging a fee to the university with which you finally register. This means they will have a commercial relationship with a selected number of universities. They may, therefore, not necessarily provide information on all the universities and programmes available and may encourage you to apply to those that will provide the agents with the best financial benefits for themselves.
Students are often wary about the advice and help they receive from education agents. However, most are very reputable and provide a useful and professional service to both students and universities. You can check whether the agent you are considering using is registered with the national agents’ association in your own country by looking on the English UK website. This will give you contact details of registered agents, and while it does not provide any guarantees of quality, it at least indicates whether the agent is recognised in their own country.
In some ways this is an easy question, as you are probably clear about the broad subject area that you want to study – Music, or Civil Engineering for example. However, it is in the detail that you will discover that every programme is different. If you want to do a Masters in Music do you want to focus on composition, music theory, musicology, performance, contemporary music, music and business, or another aspect of academic music? Do you want a broad programme or one focused on just one of these areas? And there is then a wide range of issues about the teaching methods and the facilities that will be available to you.
See Chapter 3 of the book Postgraduate Study in the UK by Nicholas and Rosalind Foskett (from which this text is extracted) for a series of checklists and exercises to help you create a shortlist of suitable universities and programmes.
When you have completed these exercises you can look in detail at the prospectuses or websites of the programmes and universities that you identified from your general search. This will enable you to narrow the choice down to a small number of programmes that seem to meet your needs quite closely. This is your short list of places to consider applying to.
