Hi Sanjeet, can't seem to reply directly to your comment so hope you see this. So sorry it's taken me so long to reply, have been so busy with exams! I've had a couple of questions about stats, so have decided the easiest thing to do would be to make a video about it which I will do in the next couple of days. As for the essays, in first year they are 2000 words which actually goes quite quickly. Usually you'd write about 200-300 words on intro and same on conclusion, so that leaves about 1500 words to write which is only really 4 or 5 points. They will give you guidance about how to write essays and the title of the coursework will be related to one of your lecture topics. So you use the lecture slides as a guide about what to include, so it's really not too hard to find enough stuff to write about! By the time you get to 3rd year you will find that 2000 words isn't very much, in 3rd year most essays are 2500-3000. I think a lot of people actually found the lab reports easier to write in a way because part of it just involves writing about the methods (so you're just describing what you did in the study, which is pretty easy to do) and the results. The harder parts are the intro and the discussion, but they give you lots of guidance. By 8 hours contact time I mean that the only things you have scheduled are (if I remember correctly) 3 lectures a week (one for each module, and each lecture is 2 hours long) as well as 1 hour lab class and 1 hour stats workshop = 8 hours. That is literally all you have timetabled. So obviously you have a lot of "free time" so if you use it wisely the work won't be too stressful, I don't feel that they give you too much work in first year, for me anyway overall it was definitely less than I had to do at A Level. Obviously the essays are harder and are different to school essays but that's why first year doesn't count towards your degree - they realise it's going to take a bit of getting used to. You can go and speak to lecturers during the lecture breaks or at the end if they have time, or they all have office hours during which you can just turn up at their office without booking an appointment and ask them any questions. You also have a personal advisor so they are always at hand if you are feeling stressed or concerned. Don't be scared, everyone's in the same boat and the university want you to do well so if you need help you just have to ask! Hope that helps x
Hi Sara, thanks for your comment! Unfortunately I can't seem to reply directly to you, I think you must have your settings so that people can't reply to your comments. But I'll just hope you see this! I had a job as a receptionist in an ice rink nearby in first year, which I did on Monday nights and all day on Saturdays. I think having a job in first year is definitely fine but I didn't want to have one in second and particularly in third year as the workload increases and also first year doesn't count towards your degree classification whereas the second and third year does. But I know plenty of people who have had jobs in second and third year and they manage. Getting a job on campus is a particularly good idea as you don't waste time travelling to work. You can also get paid to help out on open days which are a good idea as then you just work once or twice a week every so often. I've also taken part in some psychology studies that are paid, there aren't loads of them but I've earned £30 from a 2 hour study before! I wouldn't work more than three times a week though. Also we get really long holidays so I've had full-time jobs each summer to earn some money. Hope that helps!
Yes,it helps,thanks a lot :) I hope I will get in to psychology and criminology,I got conditional offer so far,but Royal Holloway seems like a perfect choice for me.
Congratulations on your conditional offer and good luck with your exams! I'm sure you'll love it here, I do think on the whole the psychology department is really good here.
Hi. Izy! thank you for posting this video a year ago. I've got conditional offers from Royal Holloway. I just can't make firm decision between Royal Holloway and Kent. I do really care about league tables and the level of Royal Holloway is keep decreasing. I agree that the psychology course itself is more interesting in Royal Holloway. Also as a international student, I'm just worried that there are toooo many international students.
+신나라 Hello! No worries, glad it helped :) Congrats on your conditional offer! I looked at Kent as well. While it was a nice campus, I paid particular importance to the quality of the lecturers and on the open days the lecturers at RHUL seemed so much more engaged and passionate - I think because they do so much research and publish so many papers etc. I think RHUL has a better reputation in the UK than Kent (although that's just my perception), and certainly the fact that it's part of the University of London helps. Kent is a lot newer and modern which sometimes is seen as being less impressive in the UK, universities like RHUL which have a lot more history and tradition are sometimes seen as more difficult to get in to. But that's just my opinion, hope it helps - and good luck!
I was asked these questions on twitter, so thought I would answer them here as they might be useful for other people and it's easier for me this way! The questions were: 1) what is freshers week/welcome week like? 2) how much work is psychology in your first year? Like roughly how many exams and essays and presentations etc 3) And also you know you said in your video you do the group project in your 3rd year, do you get to choose your group?
1) So my flat stayed in a bit more than some flats during freshers week, so we didn't go out that much. But the first night the Hub was providing free dinners and everyone was encouraged to go (and I think pretty much everyone went) so this was a great opportunity to get to know people in a relaxed, less awkward way! The sports and societies fairs are also that week and it's fun to look round them, and we all went down together. There's also a welcome tent that does little activities like cake decorating etc. I didn't actually go out at all in freshers week but there's the usual on, Monkey's Monday's (a pub down the road) and SU on Wednesday and Friday, Liquid on Thursday and Medicine on Saturday. I think they now do passes specifically for freshers on welcome week which you can buy and it gives you priority entry, I would recommend this if you want to go out most nights as it will be soooo busy. 2) It’s not too bad. The thing is at uni it's kind of up to you how much you work. In terms of the bare minimum, you have maybe seven 2000 word essays in first year. This sounds like a lot but they're reasonably spaced out, and each term is 11 weeks long. And then two 2500 lab reports and the final lab report is 3000 words. With your stats module you have an hour's lecture per week and in this you will learn about one topic, then you have an hour’s workshop in which you will do a couple of questions using SPSS (a stats program) on the computer. And then at home you have to do a multiple choice quiz consisting of 10 questions based on your understanding of the lecture plus your workshop answers (you do a quiz each week, and all of them combined makes up about 10% of your mark for that module, so a really really tiny amount of your entire degree but obviously every little counts!). You don’t do any formal presentations in first year, your personal advisor might ask you to do one or two presentations and maybe a couple of other little tasks but these will just be with your PA group (about 5 of you). I believe you do 7 or 8 exams. There are always reading lists for every lecture, and it’s up to you how much you read. They never expect you to read the whole lot, they recommend that you pick a few articles and read the relevant textbook chapter. In my second year I tried really hard to keep up with the reading and make notes on articles as it does help come revision time, but after about 4 weeks into the term it’s usually hard to continue doing much reading as you will start to get coursework. Just remember that your first year doesn’t technically count towards your degree, so if you do get a bad mark in something or you don’t do as much work as you’d like it doesn’t really matter, as long as you pass. 3) You don’t get to choose your group for your third year project unfortunately. You go to a presentation evening and all of the lecturers who want to supervise a project will present a little bit about themselves and their research interests and then at a later date you have to give 7 names in order of preference (there are about 20 in total). I think they said nearly everyone will get their top 4, but many people get their first choice (I did). You will then be in a group with whoever else got allocated the same supervisor as you. Hope this helps!
Hi Izy ive been watching ur videos on royal holloway and im seriously considering applying to royal holloway for 2016 to study psychology, but the thought of stats is realy worrying me, ive never been good at maths and havent taken it at a-level because i got a c at gcse. what is stats what do u need to know and those essays in the first year oh my life how on earth can you write so much and then on top of that the lab reports...is it really stressful? also what do you mean 8 hours contact time??? do lecturers offer extra help or stuff im so scared but i love your videos! x
Hello Izy, I love your videos and good luck with your studies! I do have a few questions though: 1)Have you stayed in the campus in the first year? If so, will you be kind enough to share with us some information about the pros and cons or the differences between the accommodation offers at uni halls? For example: where do you can store your belongings in the holiday period if you choose the 30 weeks offer and stuff like that (or if you haven't lived in the campus in the first year, do you have any information about these things?) 2)I'm going to study Psychology with Criminology at Royal this year and i'm wondering : How much have you payed for your course books?
Viziteu Andrei Hi Viziteu, thanks for your kind words! 1) I stayed in halls on campus in first year, I stayed in Wedderburn which was my first choice. Wedderburn was one of the more expensive halls, but it was so nice and was perfect for students - you got a huge desk, comfortable chair, double bed, wardrobe and shelves and it was an ensuite. Each flat had 8 rooms which was a nice amount, and the kitchens were fairly spacious. It was also tucked away at the bottom of the campus (but because the campus is so small it took 5-10 mins to walk to lectures). If you choose the 30 weeks offer I think the uni offer rooms in Founders (the huge building) which you can pay to store your stuff in (not sure how much I'm afraid). Or there are companies that will store your stuff but again not sure how much this would cost and don't know whether they will pick up your stuff or whether you have to take it there which could be a bit of a pain. If you google 'egham student storage' you could compare different companies to see what they offer. But unless you live within a couple of hours drive from the uni I would really recommend getting a longer accommodation contract or if you're not planning on bringing very much stuff then I guess it would be ok, but personally I just don't think it's worth the hassle. 2) Great question! All the lecturers say that you don't have to buy a text book for their course. There are usually quite a few copies in the library, but be warned that right before the coursework deadline and during the exam time these may be harder to get hold of. But for the rest of the year you will definitely be able to borrow them. So you could always borrow the books for the first few weeks to see how useful you find each book before you decide to buy. Each textbook is typically around £20-30 if you buy off amazon, but often people in the year above will sell their textbooks for quite a bit less. Also textbooks are only really useful in providing an overview of the topic, and often lecturers base their lectures around chapters in the books anyway so I found that unless there's something you don't quite understand or if you want more of a basic overview, then textbooks aren't all that useful. For me that meant that for more sciencey modules like biological psychology the textbook was useful as I hadn't done biology at A Level so kept needing to read the basics. But you will need to read academic articles and in essays they prefer you not to cite the textbook, you would only reference articles (but don't worry these are all free and for each lecture there will be some suggested articles). Then in second and third year there is definitely more of a shift from textbooks to academic articles, so much so that i didn't buy any textbooks in third year and for most of my modules textbooks weren't really mentioned. Hope this helps, good luck with your studies!
hi there :) your rhul videos have helped me so much in terms of deciding which uni I wanna go to. I am planning on studying Psychology here and so far it seems like the perfect uni for me! The only thing I couldn't find out on the internet is how good the sports clubs are at the uni (rankings). And do you know much about the rhul Volleyball Club?
Izy i want to ask you how is the social aspect going on there?Do you usually go in London for fun or for educational purposes?Btw thank you very much,this helped me a lot for making my decision!!!
Thank you for posting this! I just accepted my unconditional offer to study Psychology at Royal Holloway so this is really useful! How many presentations would you say that you've done over your time at Royal Holloway? Thank you for making these videos they've been really useful!
Thank you for your kind words! Glad they're useful and that you will be coming to Royal Holloway, I'm sure you'll love it. Good question, in first year I don't think we did any. But in second year in your lab classes you do three group presentations. Basically you have to do three studies throughout the year which you design in randomly allocated groups of about 5 or 6 people. You then each test say 20 or 30 participants and then combine all of the data and analyse it. So then in the presentation each person says a little bit, e.g. the intro, methods, results, discussion etc and you're each supposed to talk for about 5 mins.. But it's only to your lab class (there's about 25-30 in each class I think) and it doesn't count towards your degree. Also depending on who your personal advisor is you might have to do a few short informal presentations in either first or second year (or both) but this would just be in front of your PA and the other 3 or 4 people in your PA group, and it's just supposed to be a way of developing your presentation skills. And in third year I haven't had to do any individual presentations, and the only group one I've had to do was just about my third year project and that was just in front of our supervisor and again it didn't count :)
TheSocialExperiment Hi again, you don't actually HAVE to buy any textbooks - lecturers may recommend that you read some of them but it's more in case you don't understand something/for the basics, most of the time you will be reading academic journals which are online. And the library has copies of all of the textbooks, and there are usually enough during the year but during revision time it can be hard to get hold of them as a lot of people decide to borrow them for revision. But if you do decide to buy them, often people in the year above sell their textbooks fairly cheaply, either on the psychology facebook page or through an advertisement on ecampus (www.royalholloway.ac.uk/ecampus/home.aspx) or they will send an email out to all students/get the psychology office to send out an email. Or buy used ones on amazon of course...But I would wait until you start before buying any unless you're desperate to get ahead, especially as each lecturer tends to advise you on textbooks during the first lecture.
TheSocialExperiment It depends on the book, most textbooks are either for a week or three weeks but you can renew them online very easily, and I just kept renewing mine - there were some that I had for almost a whole year as you can continue to renew them until someone else requests it.
Hi Great video review. I'm curious about which are the other universities you looked at. lecture sounds great. How many do you get and are there seminars or tutorials? Are you allocated to certain tutor to support you? I read somewhere that they use a lot of math in statistic research compared to other universities. Are you taught to calculate stats manually?
Hi Nessie, thanks for your kind words! My final five were: Royal Holloway, Birmingham, Bath, Surrey and Durham but I also visited: Sheffield, Kent, Reading, Oxford and Sussex. You do 7 modules in total: 3 in the first term, 3 in the second term and a stats module which you do in both terms, and this module is worth double the amount. You do one piece of coursework (2000 words in first year) per module, and theres a tutorial for each piece of coursework. We don't have any other seminars/tutorials although you do have a lab class once a week and a workshop, during which you practice what you've learnt in the statistics lecture for that week. In first year we are taught to calculate stats manually, and for the exam you have to do it all manually. Then in second year we are taught how to do all of it on the computer using SPSS, the statistics program. I think it works well doing it like this, because it means you have a better understanding of how SPSS works and what the different statistics techniques actually are. But the course co-ordinator (or certainly the one we had) is a particularly good lecturer, she's very bubbly and entertaining (makes stats so much more bearable). The slides for each lecture basically take the format of an instruction guide, and they take you through what you have to do step by step. So when you then have to do it by yourself later it's fairly easy to do providing you follow the slides. And because you have to do a quiz after each stats lecture it helps you to learn how to do it. When you start here you are given a personal advisor who is a lecturer, and you meet them a couple of times a term to make sure you're doing ok, and of course if you need any help you can see them more often. Hope this helps!
Yes. It does help. Thanks. I'm just a little worried about the manual stats as math is not my best subject and last thing i want is to be out in the first year if i do go there. I like that the course study personality disorders etc. I haven't seen other courses that does that. I was looking at Kent too but really drawn to Royal holloway.
I imagine you'd be fine, it's not like arithmetic it's more just following the steps which they put quite clearly on the slides. And in the exam in first year you get to take in a textbook and some notes and it's a three hour exam so you aren't really pushed for time.
Hi :) I love your videos!! You're exactly the person I'm looking for as I'm considering studying psychology at Royal Holloway so thank you! I have a few questions if you don't mind... Do you have any tips for writing the personal statement when applyling for psychology? Did you have any experience with psychology before applying? Thanks!! :)
Viola Komedova Hi Viola, sorry it's taken me so long to reply have been very busy revising! Thanks for your kind words. I would say that it's important to try to express why you want to do Psychology, what is it about it that appeals to you and if you know roughly what career you might want to have definitely include that. They want to know that you've thought about it carefully, that it's not just something you've randomly decided to do! Personally at the time I was interested in working with children, so in my statement I wrote that i wanted to become an educational psychologist. I now want to do something completely different to that, so remember it doesn't matter if you're not 100% certain what you want to do, they understand that you may change your mind but try to articulate why you're excited to study Psychology. Or perhaps a particular type of Psychology interests you, if so say why. Maybe if you enjoy biology at school you could mention that you would be particularly interested in biological psychology/neuroscience. I had never studied psychology, but I had done some voluntary work at a school for children with special needs so I mentioned that. So definitely try to express why you want to study Psychology, but I suppose apart from that just any general skills that will be seen positively by the uni, like any positions of responsibility that you've had, maybe problem solving skills. Hope this helps and good luck!
Hi Sanjeet, can't seem to reply directly to your comment so hope you see this. So sorry it's taken me so long to reply, have been so busy with exams! I've had a couple of questions about stats, so have decided the easiest thing to do would be to make a video about it which I will do in the next couple of days. As for the essays, in first year they are 2000 words which actually goes quite quickly. Usually you'd write about 200-300 words on intro and same on conclusion, so that leaves about 1500 words to write which is only really 4 or 5 points. They will give you guidance about how to write essays and the title of the coursework will be related to one of your lecture topics. So you use the lecture slides as a guide about what to include, so it's really not too hard to find enough stuff to write about! By the time you get to 3rd year you will find that 2000 words isn't very much, in 3rd year most essays are 2500-3000. I think a lot of people actually found the lab reports easier to write in a way because part of it just involves writing about the methods (so you're just describing what you did in the study, which is pretty easy to do) and the results. The harder parts are the intro and the discussion, but they give you lots of guidance. By 8 hours contact time I mean that the only things you have scheduled are (if I remember correctly) 3 lectures a week (one for each module, and each lecture is 2 hours long) as well as 1 hour lab class and 1 hour stats workshop = 8 hours. That is literally all you have timetabled. So obviously you have a lot of "free time" so if you use it wisely the work won't be too stressful, I don't feel that they give you too much work in first year, for me anyway overall it was definitely less than I had to do at A Level. Obviously the essays are harder and are different to school essays but that's why first year doesn't count towards your degree - they realise it's going to take a bit of getting used to. You can go and speak to lecturers during the lecture breaks or at the end if they have time, or they all have office hours during which you can just turn up at their office without booking an appointment and ask them any questions. You also have a personal advisor so they are always at hand if you are feeling stressed or concerned. Don't be scared, everyone's in the same boat and the university want you to do well so if you need help you just have to ask! Hope that helps x
Hi Sara, thanks for your comment! Unfortunately I can't seem to reply directly to you, I think you must have your settings so that people can't reply to your comments. But I'll just hope you see this! I had a job as a receptionist in an ice rink nearby in first year, which I did on Monday nights and all day on Saturdays. I think having a job in first year is definitely fine but I didn't want to have one in second and particularly in third year as the workload increases and also first year doesn't count towards your degree classification whereas the second and third year does. But I know plenty of people who have had jobs in second and third year and they manage. Getting a job on campus is a particularly good idea as you don't waste time travelling to work. You can also get paid to help out on open days which are a good idea as then you just work once or twice a week every so often. I've also taken part in some psychology studies that are paid, there aren't loads of them but I've earned £30 from a 2 hour study before! I wouldn't work more than three times a week though. Also we get really long holidays so I've had full-time jobs each summer to earn some money. Hope that helps!
Yes,it helps,thanks a lot :) I hope I will get in to psychology and criminology,I got conditional offer so far,but Royal Holloway seems like a perfect choice for me.
Congratulations on your conditional offer and good luck with your exams! I'm sure you'll love it here, I do think on the whole the psychology department is really good here.
Hi. Izy!
thank you for posting this video a year ago.
I've got conditional offers from Royal Holloway. I just can't make firm decision between Royal Holloway and Kent.
I do really care about league tables and the level of Royal Holloway is keep decreasing.
I agree that the psychology course itself is more interesting in Royal Holloway.
Also as a international student, I'm just worried that there are toooo many international students.
+신나라 Hello! No worries, glad it helped :) Congrats on your conditional offer! I looked at Kent as well. While it was a nice campus, I paid particular importance to the quality of the lecturers and on the open days the lecturers at RHUL seemed so much more engaged and passionate - I think because they do so much research and publish so many papers etc. I think RHUL has a better reputation in the UK than Kent (although that's just my perception), and certainly the fact that it's part of the University of London helps. Kent is a lot newer and modern which sometimes is seen as being less impressive in the UK, universities like RHUL which have a lot more history and tradition are sometimes seen as more difficult to get in to. But that's just my opinion, hope it helps - and good luck!
+Izy Vlogs thanks! Just for one question, what is the advantage of uni of London?
I was asked these questions on twitter, so thought I would answer them here as they might be useful for other people and it's easier for me this way! The questions were:
1) what is freshers week/welcome week like?
2) how much work is psychology in your first year? Like roughly how many exams and essays and presentations etc
3) And also you know you said in your video you do the group project in your 3rd year, do you get to choose your group?
1) So my flat stayed in a bit more than some flats during freshers week, so we didn't go out that much. But the first night the Hub was providing free dinners and everyone was encouraged to go (and I think pretty much everyone went) so this was a great opportunity to get to know people in a relaxed, less awkward way! The sports and societies fairs are also that week and it's fun to look round them, and we all went down together. There's also a welcome tent that does little activities like cake decorating etc. I didn't actually go out at all in freshers week but there's the usual on, Monkey's Monday's (a pub down the road) and SU on Wednesday and Friday, Liquid on Thursday and Medicine on Saturday. I think they now do passes specifically for freshers on welcome week which you can buy and it gives you priority entry, I would recommend this if you want to go out most nights as it will be soooo busy.
2) It’s not too bad. The thing is at uni it's kind of up to you how much you work. In terms of the bare minimum, you have maybe seven 2000 word essays in first year. This sounds like a lot but they're reasonably spaced out, and each term is 11 weeks long. And then two 2500 lab reports and the final lab report is 3000 words. With your stats module you have an hour's lecture per week and in this you will learn about one topic, then you have an hour’s workshop in which you will do a couple of questions using SPSS (a stats program) on the computer. And then at home you have to do a multiple choice quiz consisting of 10 questions based on your understanding of the lecture plus your workshop answers (you do a quiz each week, and all of them combined makes up about 10% of your mark for that module, so a really really tiny amount of your entire degree but obviously every little counts!). You don’t do any formal presentations in first year, your personal advisor might ask you to do one or two presentations and maybe a couple of other little tasks but these will just be with your PA group (about 5 of you). I believe you do 7 or 8 exams. There are always reading lists for every lecture, and it’s up to you how much you read. They never expect you to read the whole lot, they recommend that you pick a few articles and read the relevant textbook chapter. In my second year I tried really hard to keep up with the reading and make notes on articles as it does help come revision time, but after about 4 weeks into the term it’s usually hard to continue doing much reading as you will start to get coursework. Just remember that your first year doesn’t technically count towards your degree, so if you do get a bad mark in something or you don’t do as much work as you’d like it doesn’t really matter, as long as you pass.
3) You don’t get to choose your group for your third year project unfortunately. You go to a presentation evening and all of the lecturers who want to supervise a project will present a little bit about themselves and their research interests and then at a later date you have to give 7 names in order of preference (there are about 20 in total). I think they said nearly everyone will get their top 4, but many people get their first choice (I did). You will then be in a group with whoever else got allocated the same supervisor as you.
Hope this helps!
Hi Izy, I am a psychology student at Holloway, did you ever have to give group presentations as part of your assessments?
Hi Izy ive been watching ur videos on royal holloway and im seriously considering applying to royal holloway for 2016 to study psychology, but the thought of stats is realy worrying me, ive never been good at maths and havent taken it at a-level because i got a c at gcse. what is stats what do u need to know and those essays in the first year oh my life how on earth can you write
so much and then on top of that the lab reports...is it really stressful? also what do you mean 8 hours contact time??? do lecturers offer extra help or stuff im so scared but i love your videos! x
Do you think as a first year student, you should buy all the books needed?
Great video :) I just have one question,are you working while studying?
Hello Izy, I love your videos and good luck with your studies! I do have a few questions though:
1)Have you stayed in the campus in the first year? If so, will you be kind enough to share with us some information about the pros and cons or the differences between the accommodation offers at uni halls? For example: where do you can store your belongings in the holiday period if you choose the 30 weeks offer and stuff like that (or if you haven't lived in the campus in the first year, do you have any information about these things?)
2)I'm going to study Psychology with Criminology at Royal this year and i'm wondering : How much have you payed for your course books?
Viziteu Andrei Hi Viziteu, thanks for your kind words!
1) I stayed in halls on campus in first year, I stayed in Wedderburn which was my first choice. Wedderburn was one of the more expensive halls, but it was so nice and was perfect for students - you got a huge desk, comfortable chair, double bed, wardrobe and shelves and it was an ensuite. Each flat had 8 rooms which was a nice amount, and the kitchens were fairly spacious. It was also tucked away at the bottom of the campus (but because the campus is so small it took 5-10 mins to walk to lectures). If you choose the 30 weeks offer I think the uni offer rooms in Founders (the huge building) which you can pay to store your stuff in (not sure how much I'm afraid). Or there are companies that will store your stuff but again not sure how much this would cost and don't know whether they will pick up your stuff or whether you have to take it there which could be a bit of a pain. If you google 'egham student storage' you could compare different companies to see what they offer. But unless you live within a couple of hours drive from the uni I would really recommend getting a longer accommodation contract or if you're not planning on bringing very much stuff then I guess it would be ok, but personally I just don't think it's worth the hassle.
2) Great question! All the lecturers say that you don't have to buy a text book for their course. There are usually quite a few copies in the library, but be warned that right before the coursework deadline and during the exam time these may be harder to get hold of. But for the rest of the year you will definitely be able to borrow them. So you could always borrow the books for the first few weeks to see how useful you find each book before you decide to buy. Each textbook is typically around £20-30 if you buy off amazon, but often people in the year above will sell their textbooks for quite a bit less. Also textbooks are only really useful in providing an overview of the topic, and often lecturers base their lectures around chapters in the books anyway so I found that unless there's something you don't quite understand or if you want more of a basic overview, then textbooks aren't all that useful. For me that meant that for more sciencey modules like biological psychology the textbook was useful as I hadn't done biology at A Level so kept needing to read the basics. But you will need to read academic articles and in essays they prefer you not to cite the textbook, you would only reference articles (but don't worry these are all free and for each lecture there will be some suggested articles). Then in second and third year there is definitely more of a shift from textbooks to academic articles, so much so that i didn't buy any textbooks in third year and for most of my modules textbooks weren't really mentioned. Hope this helps, good luck with your studies!
It was really helpful, thank you very much!
hi there :) your rhul videos have helped me so much in terms of deciding which uni I wanna go to. I am planning on studying Psychology here and so far it seems like the perfect uni for me! The only thing I couldn't find out on the internet is how good the sports clubs are at the uni (rankings). And do you know much about the rhul Volleyball Club?
So how did your studies go?? Did you go there? Do you recommend the university for future psychology students?
Izy i want to ask you how is the social aspect going on there?Do you usually go in London for fun or for educational purposes?Btw thank you very much,this helped me a lot for making my decision!!!
Thank you for posting this! I just accepted my unconditional offer to study Psychology at Royal Holloway so this is really useful! How many presentations would you say that you've done over your time at Royal Holloway? Thank you for making these videos they've been really useful!
Thank you for your kind words! Glad they're useful and that you will be coming to Royal Holloway, I'm sure you'll love it. Good question, in first year I don't think we did any. But in second year in your lab classes you do three group presentations. Basically you have to do three studies throughout the year which you design in randomly allocated groups of about 5 or 6 people. You then each test say 20 or 30 participants and then combine all of the data and analyse it. So then in the presentation each person says a little bit, e.g. the intro, methods, results, discussion etc and you're each supposed to talk for about 5 mins.. But it's only to your lab class (there's about 25-30 in each class I think) and it doesn't count towards your degree. Also depending on who your personal advisor is you might have to do a few short informal presentations in either first or second year (or both) but this would just be in front of your PA and the other 3 or 4 people in your PA group, and it's just supposed to be a way of developing your presentation skills. And in third year I haven't had to do any individual presentations, and the only group one I've had to do was just about my third year project and that was just in front of our supervisor and again it didn't count :)
Hi there, what is the cheapest way of getting the textbooks for the first year?
TheSocialExperiment Hi again, you don't actually HAVE to buy any textbooks - lecturers may recommend that you read some of them but it's more in case you don't understand something/for the basics, most of the time you will be reading academic journals which are online. And the library has copies of all of the textbooks, and there are usually enough during the year but during revision time it can be hard to get hold of them as a lot of people decide to borrow them for revision. But if you do decide to buy them, often people in the year above sell their textbooks fairly cheaply, either on the psychology facebook page or through an advertisement on ecampus (www.royalholloway.ac.uk/ecampus/home.aspx) or they will send an email out to all students/get the psychology office to send out an email. Or buy used ones on amazon of course...But I would wait until you start before buying any unless you're desperate to get ahead, especially as each lecturer tends to advise you on textbooks during the first lecture.
Thank you, helpful as ever! How long can i borrow a book from the library for?
TheSocialExperiment It depends on the book, most textbooks are either for a week or three weeks but you can renew them online very easily, and I just kept renewing mine - there were some that I had for almost a whole year as you can continue to renew them until someone else requests it.
Hi Great video review. I'm curious about which are the other universities you looked at. lecture sounds great. How many do you get and are there seminars or tutorials? Are you allocated to certain tutor to support you? I read somewhere that they use a lot of math in statistic research compared to other universities. Are you taught to calculate stats manually?
Hi Nessie, thanks for your kind words! My final five were: Royal Holloway, Birmingham, Bath, Surrey and Durham but I also visited: Sheffield, Kent, Reading, Oxford and Sussex. You do 7 modules in total: 3 in the first term, 3 in the second term and a stats module which you do in both terms, and this module is worth double the amount. You do one piece of coursework (2000 words in first year) per module, and theres a tutorial for each piece of coursework. We don't have any other seminars/tutorials although you do have a lab class once a week and a workshop, during which you practice what you've learnt in the statistics lecture for that week. In first year we are taught to calculate stats manually, and for the exam you have to do it all manually. Then in second year we are taught how to do all of it on the computer using SPSS, the statistics program. I think it works well doing it like this, because it means you have a better understanding of how SPSS works and what the different statistics techniques actually are. But the course co-ordinator (or certainly the one we had) is a particularly good lecturer, she's very bubbly and entertaining (makes stats so much more bearable). The slides for each lecture basically take the format of an instruction guide, and they take you through what you have to do step by step. So when you then have to do it by yourself later it's fairly easy to do providing you follow the slides. And because you have to do a quiz after each stats lecture it helps you to learn how to do it.
When you start here you are given a personal advisor who is a lecturer, and you meet them a couple of times a term to make sure you're doing ok, and of course if you need any help you can see them more often.
Hope this helps!
Yes. It does help. Thanks. I'm just a little worried about the manual stats as math is not my best subject and last thing i want is to be out in the first year if i do go there.
I like that the course study personality disorders etc. I haven't seen other courses that does that. I was looking at Kent too but really drawn to Royal holloway.
I imagine you'd be fine, it's not like arithmetic it's more just following the steps which they put quite clearly on the slides. And in the exam in first year you get to take in a textbook and some notes and it's a three hour exam so you aren't really pushed for time.
Thanks that sounds much better than I imagined.
Hi :) I love your videos!! You're exactly the person I'm looking for as I'm considering studying psychology at Royal Holloway so thank you! I have a few questions if you don't mind... Do you have any tips for writing the personal statement when applyling for psychology? Did you have any experience with psychology before applying?
Thanks!! :)
Viola Komedova Hi Viola, sorry it's taken me so long to reply have been very busy revising! Thanks for your kind words. I would say that it's important to try to express why you want to do Psychology, what is it about it that appeals to you and if you know roughly what career you might want to have definitely include that. They want to know that you've thought about it carefully, that it's not just something you've randomly decided to do! Personally at the time I was interested in working with children, so in my statement I wrote that i wanted to become an educational psychologist. I now want to do something completely different to that, so remember it doesn't matter if you're not 100% certain what you want to do, they understand that you may change your mind but try to articulate why you're excited to study Psychology. Or perhaps a particular type of Psychology interests you, if so say why. Maybe if you enjoy biology at school you could mention that you would be particularly interested in biological psychology/neuroscience. I had never studied psychology, but I had done some voluntary work at a school for children with special needs so I mentioned that. So definitely try to express why you want to study Psychology, but I suppose apart from that just any general skills that will be seen positively by the uni, like any positions of responsibility that you've had, maybe problem solving skills. Hope this helps and good luck!