Tell us about your course...

PurpleFistMixer

Here's hoping I don't get smacked for pimping a thread in another forum... I thought this would be better than peppering all the individual college forums with it, though.

There's a thread in the LC forum here, that's for posting about your college course. The idea is to give the LC students a bit of a better insight into the course, beyond what the internet may say (ie, "25 places, 300 points"), to give them a taste of personal experience of the course. Hopefully this can be helpful to prospective students, but only if courses they're considering are detailed.

So what I'm asking here is if anyone here has a spare few minutes to write up an overview of the course they're studying and post it in that thread, it'd be greatly appreciated. If you see someone else has already detailed the course you're doing, but you've got a different take/something to add, feel free to write your own experiences of it.

Stuff that would be beneficial to include would be, as detailed in the OP of the thread in question;
"the points, the number of students, the lectures, hours, workload etc, and than what they think of it, their impression of it and the general quality of the course they are doing"

Thank you!

spaceylou

I just finished Geography, Planning and Environmental Policy in UCD as an undergrad. We were the first year to do the course and it was through general arts, however it is now denominated entry and afaik the points are higher than arts in UCD.

In general for the geography part of the course you are in with the rest of geography so for 1st and 2nd year that means very big classes BUT the first year tutorial programme is outstanding and you are in a group of c. 20 or less. Third year geography there tends to be a lot more options, and small group classes using seminars etc rather than just lectures so you really get to know your class mates.

The Planning and Environmental Policy part of the course is the bit that makes this different from doing Geog with any other course through arts. The class is in and around 25 people and you study a range of subjects such as housing policy; history of planning; environmental economics; urban economics, planning and the community etc etc. In second and third year the class takes some of the same modules as the 1st year MRUP students (Masters in Rural and Urban Planning). The advantage of doing this course is that if you are interested in doing planning as a post grad, once you have achieved a certain grade and continue straight into the post grad (no option to take a year out between the two) you are exempt from a number of modules (the ones you took with the 1st year MRUPs) and can finish the MRUP in 12months rather than 2 academic year.

Workload - like other arts you will have on average 6 modules per semester, each module generally has 2 hours of lecture time a week - giving you 12 hours of timetabled classes each week plus any tutorials. And like any other arts course if you want to do well you will also need to spend a significant amount of time in the library, reading, doing assignments, writing essays, working on group projects etc...

So that is the basic info, naturally enough there are plus points and minus points about every course and this is no exception.

So firstly the plus points:

The gpep department (especially the geog half of it) is one of the most friendly, most open, most helpful departments in the university (imo). Pretty much all the lecturers are very approachable and if you show an interest in their subject they will help you. There is also a student-staff committee each year which has reps from each years where any issues can be raised. As I mentioned above the tutorial programme in first year is excellent. In addition for both geog and pep there are fieldtrips of some kind with different modules which (imo) were great because it takes the subject out into the real world. In third year there is also a foreign fieldtrip course which is great. Group work is often used for assessment methods which, while being a pain in the arse at the time, is an oppertunity to get to know your classmates and it looks good on a cv afterwards.

PEP modules tend to be pre-selected (ie you don't have many options) but the geog half of the course allows alot of choice especially after first year. I for example am bloody hopeless, (basically cause I find it pretty boring), at physical geography and much rather human geography in particular urban geography, environmental issues and geopolitics so after 1st year I was able to largely avoid physical geography whereas some of my friends did mostly physical geography because that was their thing!

Another plus point is that you can get exemptions for some modules of the MRUP and can do the masters in 12 months and graduate with an internationally recognised masters with professional accrediation from both the RTPI and the IPA. But if you decide that is not the route for you (as I have) then you haven't wasted your time as an undergrad either and there are a number of options available - to name a few: Hdip - be a teacher, MA in geography, Post grad options in development studies (route i am kinda taking), be a post grad in businesss, or whatever - like any BA there is loads you can do....

Now the negatives of this particular course......GPEP is all one department but they used to be 3 seperate departments and Geog lecturers and PEP lectures are located in two different buildings which are a 20 min walk apart. Despite this the wonderful people in admin will frequently still schedule lectures to happen straight after each other in the two buildings - a pain but that said can usually be sorted out by talking to the lecturers involved and gettting one to wrap up couple of minutes early and the other to begin a couple of min late.

Another negative that my class found was that because we were the first year of the course there were many many teething problems and some confusion about progression etc - this i imagine has been sorted by now for incoming first years BUT has left a somewhat bitter taste in the mouth of some of my class mates.

If you want to do the MRUP in 12 month and take advantage of exemptions for stuff you've covered in your BA you can't take a year out to earn money and the fees are expensive - it is one of the more expensive post-grads in UCD so beware!

Also there were some issues with environmental policy - as much a personality clash between the class and the lecturers as anything else but it did cause problems and was an issue for the year coming after me as well. But I wouldn't let it put you off the course as a whole.

I can't think of any other down points except that by the end of third year I was finding the planning stuff pretty boring, had decided it wasn't for me and could not wait to be finished with it so i could concentrate on stuff I'm interested in but one of my friends was feeling the exact same way about the geography side of things so i guess everyone is different.

This post is very very very long so I'll not go into any details about particular modules, people can always ask questions if they want. But i would recommend GPEP to anyone who thinks they are interested in Planning and Geography to anyone doing Arts in UCD at all!!