I want to apply to University but don't know where to start

I’m 17, in a British Cirriculum School studying A Levels - Year 13, my last school year. I want to apply to university but I just don’t know how to it’s all too confusing. I would like to study Psychology and when looking at websites or brochures, there are many things I don’t understand. For instance :

whats a bachelor degree?
a PHD?
BSW, MA, MSW ?

How many years do I have to study for each (generally speaking)? Which degree is the highest form?

Whats an Honor or a Joint Honor?

whats the difference between taking Psychology as an Art, or Psychology as a Science?

Does anyone know any University related website that can help explain all this? Like a Guide on applying and what to look out for etc…?

I really appreciate those that reply, so thanks in advance. (if you do reply)

I don’t know if you have one in your area, I would have thought you do.
The place I would go is to Connextions. I’m not a 100% on what information they have available for university, but I know they offer advice to people between 16 and 19.
https://www.connexions-direct.com/
I used them a little when I was looking at going to college. Don’t know how much help it’ll be but that’s where I’d start personally.

It’s a university degree, opposed to a “college” degree, in which you have free choice for majors and minors: bachelor degrees have a closed, standard curriculum and very few credits left for electives, while in college you kind of knit your graduation yourself by picking majors, minors and extras as you see fit.

Let me use myself as an example here. I’m doing a bachelor degree in Economics and a college degree in Letters. I consider both choices good, and here’s why. A bachelor degree, albeit seemingly inflexible, meets certain quality standards, which is very good for you. For instance, if it wasn’t for the curriculum explicitly making me take them, I would not have attended Methodology classes, or Social Accountings, or Mathematical Modeling, three subjects which I now consider central in my formation. Methodology taught me the philosophy of science, its real possibilities and drawbacks, its true extension and power; Social Accountings taught me a lot about ideology and the power of having information information presented at the right time, the right way; and Modeling is just about the most brilliant thing I’ve ever learnt in Maths.

So bachelor degree is a good idea when you’re going for a pure science in which you might as well use knowing deeply its many aspects. If it wasn’t for a bachelor degree in Economics, I’d probably not develop myself to my full capabilities as a researcher, and end up just choosing what I liked, ending up with little possibilities and a very narrow–minded idea of society and economics.

As for Letters, I’m studying it as a college degree. So right now I’m in the “basic cycle” which corresponds to “a–levels” or the “bac” or something like that. I’ll be ranked according to this year’s grades, and depending on my performance, I’ll be able to get into the nicer classes. Basically, Letters is structured “habilitations,” which are just like majors, “series,” which are similar to minors and “free courses,” which are something along the lines of extras.

So how does it work. I basically have a bigillion of credits, and I need to spend them with something. In order to get my degree, I need to hab (that is, to major) in at least one field of study: that could be a language (Portuguese, English, French, German, Chinese, Armenian, Ancient Greek, Swahili, Yorúbà etc.), or Linguistics, or Literary Theory & Compared Literature. I myself am planning to either just hab in Portuguese (with the advantage of having a lot of free credit to spend with minors and extras) or to hab in Portuguese & either French, Ancient Greek or Italian (I’m minoring the three of them either way).

With the remaining credits, I can take courses like language series (which go up to proficiency level), literature (some very interesting courses here, like French Theatre, German Lyrics, Brazilian Symbolism, Australian Angry Penguins etc, apart from the theory itself which sometimes rocks, sometimes bores), linguistics (I’m particularly interested in semiology and semiotics here).

But there’s more! If I so see fit, I can also request a seat in any basic course (or set of courses) in the university, I mean, a course from another faculty. For instance, I’m planning to take “Comics” in the School of Arts, “Basic Neurology” in the School of Medicine, and an “Mastery in Education” minor in the School of Education (so that I can be a teacher).

So as you can see, a college degree (as opposed to bachelor) rocks when you pretty much know already what you want, and where to get from, and when what you’re looking for, rather than an already–well–established school of thought, is a lot of knowledge from various areas. It gives you a lot of freedom and wide, wide possibilities, at the risk of setting you perhaps a bit too loose. Takes discipline to use a college degree well: not just emulate a bachelor degree, which would be mediocre, but also not just woohoo around until you noticed you have had a great time but are worth about nothing in terms of work. :wink:

You’re not doing that one so soon. Ph.Ds are for graduated people, and its the highest degree one can get in academia. It means you have developed a new area of study in a certain school of thought, or set off the foundations of a new school of thought, or brought some seriously relevant ideas to humankind. This kind of degree is given for people defending seriously intricate theses, and it can only be granted by a set of “judges” from at least two different countries, having to be recognized by at least two universities around the globe. You won’t be doing that so soon.

I have no idea what a BSW is. MA stands for “Master of Arts” and its a different kind of graduation (more traditional in a sense—but appealing nonetheless, I myself would love to have an MA). It’s not the case for you, I’m afraid, as it’s a degree mainly for people who want to be Men of Arts or Men of Letters: teaches rhetorics, logics, philosophy, arts, music etc. Lovely lovely lovely. But not of much appeal to the job market, if that’s a concern for you.

An MSW is a Master of Social Work. Has to do with social work (“no way, Bruno!” :tongue:): organizing groups, managing stuff etc. Not really what you’re looking for if you mean to study Psychology, I guess… :neutral:

You need to start from the beginning: that is, a graduation. Graduations are usually either bachelor degree, college or MA. After you graduate, you’ll be able to work in your field of study, academically and professionally. If you want to go further in your studies, you get into a post grad course, or a mastery, or a doctorate :smile:Ph.D), or start developing field research (which can eventually become a mastery or a Ph.D anyways). But for now and for the next four years or so you’re going to focus on graduating: that means bachelor, college or MA.

No idea.

I can only guess. (My guess? “Art” focusing on psychoanalysis and working as a shrink or psychologist of some other sort; “Science” focusing on research and social psychology.) But if possible, go to a college and have a basic formation in both fields. :wink:

I don’t know if these answers will still be of any use to you but here goes :tongue:

…Also keep in mind that I’m at a Canadian University right now, so I’m assuming our system works fairly close to the British system.
At my university (and at all universities in Canada) the Bachelors degree is the undergraduate degree. It can take 3 or 4 years to complete, depending on whether you are doing a general degree or an honors degree.
A PhD is a Doctoral degree, that’s the highest degree you can earn. Usually you need to write a thesis, perform research and/or do an experiment in order to make a contribution to your academic field. Then you defend your work in front of a panel of experts who ask you lots of questions, etc.
Those others that you mentioned look mostly like Master’s Degrees. That is what you would pursue after a Bachelor’s Degree, and (in most cases) before a PhD.

The way it works here is this; an ‘Honor’ usually refers to what we call an Honours Degree, or, a Bachelor of Arts(Hon)/Bachelor of Science(Hon). This is a four year Bachelors Degree where the student has managed to maintain a cumulative academic score of 75% of higher. If you studies for four years but did not score higher than 75%, you’d only be able to get a general BA or BSc, unless you went back to take more courses and boost your grade average.

A join honour sounds a bit like what we call a combined major - Instead of pursuing one major and one minor, you study for two majors. I am doing this myself right now - it’s nice because you are able to specialize in more than one area of study, but the bad part is you have less room in your schedule for taking elective courses.

Finally, about the science vs. art degree in psychology; in Canada (and I assume Britain as well) both degrees with get you a fair amount of study in psychology. However the arts degree will probably require you to take more humanities and social science courses, whereas the science degree will require you take more science and math courses. At least, that’s how it works here.

The best thing to do would be to pick a few Universities which interest you, and see if you can book a tour or see an academic adviser. They will be able to answer you’re questions :smile:

That’s weird, in Canada it’s the opposite :content:
The Colleges here are very specialized. I took a two year diploma in Business at College, where we had no room at all for elective credits; instead everything we needed to take was scheduled ahead of time with no input from students. Universities on the other hand give us lots of room to choose our own courses, unless the student decides to become a science major or a business major, in which case the course requirements are more rigid. Choosing to pursue a combined major also restricts the number or electives you can take, but the benefit to this option is that you graduate with more than one specialization to your degree. Also many of the different courses are cross-listed, which means you can apply them towards a different major if you like. For example, I could count my history class towards a degree in political science, or vice versa. The great part about this is that if you change your mind and want to major in something else, you don’t need to start from scratch, most of your credits can be transferred because lots of them are cross-listed.