Postgrad in UCD

princess-sprkle

does anyone here do a masters in ucd?
I'm in my final year & i really want to go on to do a masters in politics, focus mainly on Irish politics.
I'm still thinking about where to go.

so experiences as a postgrad in ucd? any better run than the undergrad?
Even better, anyone doing a masters in politics want to shed a bit more light on the course?
cheers!

Chakar

Yeah I'm thinking about postgraduate options alright. I need to get the prospectus of postgraduate courses in UCD, probably in the Careers and Appointments Office. The deadlines for applications for the courses are either before Christmas and in January I think.

Jonny Arson

Chakar wrote: »

Yeah I'm thinking about postgraduate options alright. I need to get the prospectus of postgraduate courses in UCD, probably in the Careers and Appointments Office. The deadlines for applications for the courses are either before Christmas and in January I think.

just to clarify on that point the schools operate their own application deadlines, for instance one subject i'm doing the deadline is February and the other subject the deadline is June. some courses have multiple deadlines with non-EU students usually having to apply earlier than EU students.

Chakar, you should go down to the C&A office this week and get the prospectus. it has a list of all the postgrad courses on offer in each school, contact info and all the deadline dates

anyway i so don't have a clue what i'm going to do after May so i'm thinking about putting the postgrad lark on ice for a year, i'll probably just apply for the sake of it incase i change my mind!

smilingeyerish

I did an MA in geography in UCD, i had already done a degree in arts (geography and info studies). i am finishing up and MA in DIT right now and the difference is HUGE!

basically in UCD i chose an area of geography and thats what i was supposed to concentrate on. classes were minimal. one course was research methods so basically it was "how to write your thesis" . another class was more of a background class so we were answering questions like "what is geography"? (what a waste!). and the others were technical classes where we learned (badly) how to use map drawing equipment. (we had already covered this in 1st year undergrad) and that was pretty much it! complete waste of money and i learned nothing.just good to say i have an MA on my CV i suppose.

DIT on the other hand is MUCH better, there are more contact hours and you get much more practical information. also you do some work experience so you get that much needed "experience" you need when it comes to looking for a job. (i know you dont wanna work now but believe me after that much education youll be dyin to get out and earn a decent bit of cash!) the thought of spending alot of hours in college for an MA mightnt appeal but at the end of the day you will come out wil something worthwhile.

after years of thinkin UCD was the best place for third level education i now know that its not worht anything! and if i were an employer i would be hiring someone with a DIT education way before someone with a UCD education.

and that concludes my rant!

oh and i should have nentioned, i was very good friends with the history and politics and IR maasters classes, they had less contact hours than us and seemed to be nearly left to their own devices!! maybe this is what your looking for though!

Jonny Arson

smilingeyerish wrote: »

I did an MA in geography in UCD, i had already done a degree in arts (geography and info studies). i am finishing up and MA in DIT right now and the difference is HUGE!

basically in UCD i chose an area of geography and thats what i was supposed to concentrate on. classes were minimal. one course was research methods so basically it was "how to write your thesis" . another class was more of a background class so we were answering questions like "what is geography"? (what a waste!). and the others were technical classes where we learned (badly) how to use map drawing equipment. (we had already covered this in 1st year undergrad) and that was pretty much it! complete waste of money and i learned nothing.just good to say i have an MA on my CV i suppose.

DIT on the other hand is MUCH better, there are more contact hours and you get much more practical information. also you do some work experience so you get that much needed "experience" you need when it comes to looking for a job. (i know you dont wanna work now but believe me after that much education youll be dyin to get out and earn a decent bit of cash!) the thought of spending alot of hours in college for an MA mightnt appeal but at the end of the day you will come out wil something worthwhile.

after years of thinkin UCD was the best place for third level education i now know that its not worht anything! and if i were an employer i would be hiring someone with a DIT education way before someone with a UCD education.

and that concludes my rant!

oh and i should have nentioned, i was very good friends with the history and politics and IR maasters classes, they had less contact hours than us and seemed to be nearly left to their own devices!! maybe this is what your looking for though!

haha! i'm a current final year Geography and Info Studies student myself considering doing the MA in Geography in UCD. good to hear something about the course, i have been considering doing the MA as a springboard to get onto a Regional/Urban planning or environmental course or generally ending up in a career along those lines. being honest, alot of what you said is what i've thinking about lately, i really would like to do an MA that was more than just basically 4th year of Arts. saying that i find the UCD geography department fantastic to deal with and that would give me more comfort than jumping into a new uni and a new department. its really about balancing the pros and cons!

out of interest what MA are you doing in DIT and how is it relevant to what you studied for your MA in UCD?

smilingeyerish

yeah the geography department are REALLY nice in UCD, always helped you out, and the good thing was you ahd your own desk and space in the postgrad room. i know the year after i did my MA there was a really big clas so they might have changed the course a bit. but you cant judge an MA on the "niceness" of the department or the space that they have there. it will be nearly like a year out for you. you need to do something where you actually learn stuff.i wanted to do MRUP too but i didnt get in after doing the MA in geography so do not think its an easy way to go there.although i suppose joe brady has gotten a higher position so he might put a good word in although i think he is a fiar man and so prob wouldnt do that for anyone. i dunno what advice to give you about trying to get into MRUP. do REALLY well in your finals? after that, dont do the MA unless you want a very easy way to get an MA without actually learning anything and having no real job prospects.

Royale with Cheese

Hmmm I was also thinking of doing the Geography MA to get into the MRUP course. How well do you have to do in the MA to get a place in the MRUP or is it just not going to happen at all?

I'd already figured the MA would just be a 4th year of Arts and a waste of a year of my life. Don't want to do it unless there's a good chance I'll get into the MRUP pending on doing very well in the MA.

I got a 2.1 in Geography and a 2.2 in my other subject in my undergraduate degree. I'm guessing that's nowhere near good enough to go straight into the MRUP.

smilingeyerish

the geography MA isnt even as hard as your undergrad final year, its a ridiculous course and it IS a waste of time. i got a good 2.1 in both geography and info studies and didnt get into MRUP. i applied to go straight in after undergrad and didnt get in and did the MA in geog. i thought like you guys that i would defo get in with that. so applied again having a 2.1 in my MA and STILL didnt get in. the people i know who did get in either got a 1st in ALL years of their undergrad exams and so got straight in or (and they wont admit it to you but its true) have daddys who are planners and architects etc. one girl i know worked in DCC for a summer and got someone she worked with to write letters sayin she should get into the course. so basically IMO you need exceptional marks in ALL your exams (not just finals) or know someone.

but definitely apply. dont just go by what im saying.
the course seems to be getting more popular though.

Chakar

Jonny Arson wrote: »

just to clarify on that point the schools operate their own application deadlines, for instance one subject i'm doing the deadline is February and the other subject the deadline is June. some courses have multiple deadlines with non-EU students usually having to apply earlier than EU students.

Chakar, you should go down to the C&A office this week and get the prospectus. it has a list of all the postgrad courses on offer in each school, contact info and all the deadline dates

anyway i so don't have a clue what i'm going to do after May so i'm thinking about putting the postgrad lark on ice for a year, i'll probably just apply for the sake of it incase i change my mind!

Thanks. I'll get the prospectus there.

snickerpuss

I'm doing a masters in art history, it is kinda like doing another year to be honest except we have 6 hours a week, no exams and a much smaller class and more contact with the lecturers.
Next semester we're concentrating more on thesis writing/research methods etc.
I'm loving it but then I love the subject itself a sickening amount so I hadn't many doubts about doing it.
It's been far more organised then when I was an undergrad anyway.

pretty*monster

You have to really love your subject to find doing the MA worthwhile, contact hours are low and you really need to be a motivated yourself to keep in mind that just because that thesis ain't due for months doesn't mean you don't ought to be thinking about it. Also you'd want to be fairly sure that the staff in your department and the courses offered are right for you. Find out what courses are on offer this year.
Also it's a big step up from the undergrad. I've been shocked this year by the fact that student presentations are actually good as opposed to some rubbish that needs be suffered through.
Cock up wise there seem to be far fewer than for undergrads, mostly because there are going to be such a comparitivly small number in your class that you're actually not just a number to them in charge (at school level anyway).

m1ke

I did an MA in politics. I had great fun and really loved it. There weren't many contact hours (6-8 a week) but it was quality rather than quantity. A masters seminar with only a few people is completely different than a lecture with 200 other people in the room. Besides there was tons of course work to do (12 x 4000 word essays). The difference between a masters and undergrad is that you have to bring original ideas and independent research to the table. You can't rely on others to spoon feed you as in the previous years.

convert

I did an MA in history in UCD in Irish history and found it fine. but there's been an change in how it's structured, so there are now more contact hours and there's much more marks for coursework during the year rather than just relying on a thesis. it was grand. and a nice decent sized class.

Pride Fighter

convert wrote: »

I did an MA in history in UCD in Irish history and found it fine. but there's been an change in how it's structured, so there are now more contact hours and there's much more marks for coursework during the year rather than just relying on a thesis. it was grand. and a nice decent sized class.

How long is the MA in history, is it one or two years?

convert

Pride Fighter wrote: »

How long is the MA in history, is it one or two years?

It's one year. I started in September and then submitted my thesis in the following September. There's a good deal of work, but it's not nearly as bad as final year.

machiavellianme

Whats the point in a taught masters? Most employers just regard it as the applicant wants to get one up on their competition but to no real advantage as its just a matter of sitting through a few hours and writing up a minor thesis (glorified report). Challenge yourself and go for a Research Masters or prefferably a PhD. You'll get a lot more benefit from it in the long term as well as challenging yourself academically.

pretty*monster

machiavellianme wrote: »

Whats the point in a taught masters? Most employers just regard it as the applicant wants to get one up on their competition but to no real advantage as its just a matter of sitting through a few hours and writing up a minor thesis (glorified report). Challenge yourself and go for a Research Masters or prefferably a PhD. You'll get a lot more benefit from it in the long term as well as challenging yourself academically.

I doubt many people do a taugh MA to impress their employers.
Most people I know taking one are doing so because they're passionate about their subject but want to be taught more about it before they'd feel happy to either go out and to original research (there's nothing to stop you from doing a PhD after your MA) on their own or give up full time study of it all together.

I personally thought that there were just too many gaps in my knowledge of philosophy to entertain the idea of submitting an MLitt proposal.

FionnMatthew

machiavellianme wrote: »

Whats the point in a taught masters? Most employers just regard it as the applicant wants to get one up on their competition but to no real advantage as its just a matter of sitting through a few hours and writing up a minor thesis (glorified report). Challenge yourself and go for a Research Masters or prefferably a PhD. You'll get a lot more benefit from it in the long term as well as challenging yourself academically.

If you have to ask...

machiavellianme

I did a PhD so I dont particularly care about the pro's and cons of various masters courses, I just wondered about the motivation of picking the easier option over a more challenging and interesting route. I've seen a lot of people come and go in the various Masters programs. Of them, the ones with Research Masters tend to do better than those with taught Masters's when it comes to getting a job. I've heard instances of people with firsts and MA's getting turned down in favour of people with 2.1's and MLitts or equivalent in Engineering and Science Courses.

Assets Model

But science and arts is totally different people with 2.2s in their degrees can get into science phds so obviously they won't do taught masters.

funktastic

'I did a PhD so I dont particularly care about the pro's and cons of various masters courses, I just wondered about the motivation of picking the easier option over a more challenging and interesting route.'

Depends what you want to do. Most departments now want people to do the taught MA before a PhD/MLitt. Some people want to develop their grounding of the subject more/are not sure they want to devote four or more years to a PhD. Nothing worse than starting research and then finding out you hate the subject. I know two people who left a PhD three years into it. a masters can also help in terms of pay scale in areas such as teaching.

In my Irish History MA (UCD) there was an obscene lack of contact hours. In the second semester we only had ONE seminar a week. That was max 1.5 hours a week where the group would get together.

pretty*monster

Assets Model wrote: »

But science and arts is totally different people with 2.2s in their degrees can get into science phds so obviously they won't do taught masters.

I don't think it's fair to imply that people do taught masters because they haven't the results to get into the research programmes. I got a first in philosophy and could have gotten into a MLitt (and I'm far from being the only person doing an MA for whom this is the case). I applied for the MA because I wanted to do a taught Masters, because I felt that I needed to have a better general knowledge of my subject before considering a specialist area of research.

I don't think it's fair to say, as machiavellianme does that an MA is the eay route. An MA isn't a route. It's one step in a person's education, where they go after is the route a person is taking.

convert

For someone who has completed a PhD I'm surprised you still haven't learned that 's denotes possession and not to denote the plural form of a word. Regarding taught masters, some people choose to use it as a stepping stone to an MLitt or PhD. It provides them with the opportunity to taste primary research without having to commit to more than one year of study if they discover it's not for them.

Rosita

machiavellianme wrote: »

Whats the point in a taught masters? Most employers just regard it as the applicant wants to get one up on their competition but to no real advantage as its just a matter of sitting through a few hours and writing up a minor thesis (glorified report). Challenge yourself and go for a Research Masters or prefferably a PhD. You'll get a lot more benefit from it in the long term as well as challenging yourself academically.

There's no great mystery to it.

Some who do a taught Master's simply want to explore a specific area in a subject they enjoy and may not want to research on their own some obscure topic to follow that interest. Also not everyone would have the time/inclination of committing to 3/4 years of Phd research with maybe not a whole lot at the end of it.

annabella_ucd

Has anyone started making an application for the IRCHSS (Irish Research Council for Humanities and Social Sciences) Post-graduate Scholarships? Anyone have any advise on applying? I know UCD is running a workshops on how to apply on December 4th. Anyone attending?
http://www.ucd.ie/graduatestudies/irchss/index.html

Thanks Annabella!

El Siglo

I just came across this thread there now, the MRUP is a hard course to get into but if you still want to be a planner QUB offers a 1 year MSc in Environmental Planning, which is nearly better than the UCD 1 because it's focused almost entirely on professional practice whereas the MRUP, you'll spend the bones of semester and a half engrossed in theory, which isn't fun at all, then you're thrown into drawing up development plans etc in the second year followed by a pile of projects and yes your thesis which might not be too long but it's a killer to do when you've group projects going on at the same time. If you do want a "spring board" MA I would say some thing along the lines of economics would be your best bet. I'm not a postgrad, I'm doing the BA Geography, Planning and Environmental Policy which is pretty damn good course!

walshie1974

If your looking for funding for your postgrad you should check out the IRCSET Information Session at UCD
Thursday 24th January 2008 in B005, Health Sciences Building, Belfield Campus Time: 12.30 to 2pm
The College of Engineering Mathematical and Physical Sciences Graduate School and the College of Life Sciences Graduate School will be hosting an Information Session on the recently launched Irish Research Council for the Irish Research council for Science Engineering and Technology (IRCSET) POSTGRADUATE RESEARCH SCHOLARSHIP SCHEME 2008.

princess-sprkle

mega bump!

i'm starting to panic now! i got a high 2.1 so my results are fine. But does anyone know when you hear whether or not you have a place in a masters? cheers

Pride Fighter

princess-sprkle wrote: »

mega bump!

i'm starting to panic now! i got a high 2.1 so my results are fine. But does anyone know when you hear whether or not you have a place in a masters? cheers

I dont know as I am going into third year only but good luck anyway:)

the evil lime

It varies from course to course. I got accepted conditional on my results before I started my finals (I think, that whole period's a bit hazy), but I know people who are still waiting for other courses.

princess-sprkle

oh good! a lot of people from my year are saying they'll be back next year now and it started to make me panic! I'm going for a politics MA btw. I'll bump this again if i get it :cool: