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Worthless feelings

Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
Hey guys,

Basically I'm in my second year of University now and have been feeling pretty worthless about everything. I do a degree in English, which already has me worried because of the terrible job market stories I've been hearing all too much of recently.

Secondly, I attend a really badly ranked University (having dropped loads of places) and been told by untold amounts of people that employers will take a sharp sigh when they see where I graduated and just throw my CV in the bin!

I see other of my friends either at Oxbridge institutions, or top flight Uni's and see people studying degrees that really contribute to society (e.g. medicine/engineering) and I've been getting really depressed about feeling worthless with no job prospects and not studying anything that contributes to society.

:/ Sorry if this comes across as all sentimental....

Thanks for hearing out my vent!

Comments

  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Look on the bright side, at least you're in Higher Education - focuss yourself, get the best degree you can and take it from there. I went to a decent ranked uni and totally fucked up leaving with no degree, no money and nowhere to sleep other than a couch, so you're pretty much guaranteed to better than I did.

    If you're at a really poorly ranked insititution and it's really bothering you, you can always consider a transfer...if your grades are good, other unis may consider taking you on. Or, you can do a second degree - you can get funded for this even with an exisiting degree with certain courses such as social work I believe. So to think its all worthless is more than a little premature.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    The media love to sell a good horror story, don't believe everything that you see or read. Most graduates don't go into big graduate employment schemes, most graduates just muddle by and do well for themselves.

    As for your institution, my personal opinion is that the ranking tables are a load of gash. I work for a fairly prestigious University (no, I won't say which one) but we're ranked anywhere between 5th and 21st, depending on which ranking you use and who you ask. It's not like school tables where everyone works off the same criteria, each ranking table ranks different things differently and the rankings vary wildly dependng on which table you look at. It also depends on what you actually study; as an example, at my university the computer science degrees have a very poor reputation, despite the university itself having a very good reputation. One of the former polytechnics in the north east generally has a poor reputation, but for some courses (like pharmacy) it has an excellent reputation.

    Also, to a great extent it doesn't matter which university you go to. Most of the big graduate schemes use blind recruitment now, especially the Civil Service Fast Stream, which means that the assessors and interviewers never know which university you went to. They know your degree and classification and that's it. If you focus on getting a good degree classification you will be fine, and it really doesn't matter which university issues your degree. But it does depend on what you want to do; the prestigious universities have more opportunities for networking (Lloyds Banking Group and PwC are never out of our students' union, I don't think it's the same at "lesser" universities) and sometimes that counts for a lot, but only in certain sectors.
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