Choose the right course based on your preferences, not other people's

Newspapers publish all sorts of university and college league tables, but these should be treated with some caution. They are unlikely to tell the full story and the factors they highlight may not be the ones which matter most to you. There is The Complete University Guide, an interactive site which allows you to alter the weightings of the different measures to suit your own requirements and so create your own unique table.

If you want to find out more about each of the universities and colleges in the UK from a purely factual point of view, then make sure you look at the Entry Profiles available in Course Search. The profiles include entry requirements and fee information.

Courses are unlike most consumer products and the concept of a "best buy" is not really appropriate. What will be best for you might not suit somebody else. You may wish to consult the data collected annually by the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA): www.hesa.ac.uk.

UCAS and the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), on behalf of the four funding bodies of UK higher education, have produced the Unistats website, www.unistats.com. This site enables you to find out the achievements of recent students and discover what sort of jobs they are doing six months after finishing. You can also read what over 177,000 students felt about the quality of their higher education experience.

Careers

The better qualified you are, the more likely you are to find better paid, more satisfying employment. While it helps to have an employment goal in mind when you enter higher education, not all mature students are in that position, and even those who think they are certain of their plans will probably review them later. Many students of all ages change their minds by the time they graduate and each year thousands of graduates enter professions in areas unrelated to their studies.

Remember

  • Research is vital - spend time choosing the right course for you.
  • Make sure the course you choose covers the areas you want to study. Courses with the same title can vary significantly in content.
  • Make sure you check whether any parts of the course are compulsory.
  • Check what options there will be later in the course.
  • Check what opportunities there will be to change track later in the course if you need or want to.
  • Find out how many of the students on the courses in which you are interested are mature. You could be part of a substantial group or the sole mature student in a seminar group. Mature students tend to perform best when they form at least a sizeable minority on a course.
  • Mixing with school-Ieavers can have many merits.
  • Mature students can play important roles as figures to whom younger students can relate. Your experience of life will bring an extra dimension to seminar and tutorial groups, and will be valued.

Find out more about what to study.