Postgraduate Masters Courses

Postgraduate Masters Courses

Why Should I Choose to Study a Masters Course?

Students who have completed an undergraduate degree but would still like to continue studying their subject further can go on to do a postgraduate Masters course. Masters courses offer you a far greater choice of what you can study within your chosen subject and usually involve a dissertation which you choose and research yourself.

As well as giving students a platform to study their subject area in far more detail than at undergraduate level, a postgraduate qualification also improves students’ employability. The list of Masters courses available to foreign students is, if anything, even longer than at undergraduate level. They range from the practical career based courses, in Finance for example, to very specialist academic courses, in English Literature for example. To find the range of Masters subjects offered at the universities you are interested in, check out the individual pages in our UK Universities directory.

How Long do Masters Courses Take?

If studied full time then almost all Masters courses last one year. It varies slightly for each university but generally, the academic year starts in October and ends in September the following year, and is split into three terms of 10-12 weeks long. The exact dates of your course should be easy to find on the university website.

The number of ‘contact hours’ (the time spent with tutors in lectures or seminars) each week whilst studying a Masters is generally fewer than at undergraduate level as students are expected to work on their own far more. These hours could be as low as just 3 or 4 a week, although can also still be much higher. To make up the time, Masters students are given far more responsibility to study on their own than at undergraduate level, particularly on their dissertation which they are expected to research and write almost completely on their own over the course of the year.