by C » Sat Jan 14, 2012 6:22 pm
I did my undergraduate degree at The University of Hertfordshire and my MSc and current PhD at Lancaster University. I liked both Uni's but prefer Lancaster (which is also in the top 10 Uni's, whereas Hertfordshire didn't have as good a reputation, not that it had a bad reputation or anything, just not as good). Study support has been okay, I didn't really apply for anything this year in terms of that as all I really wanted was extra time in exams and as PhD is all independent research I didn't need this. I have a study needs agreement thing but that's it. I got DSA last year and extra time in exams (the only exams I sat were for stats everything else was coursework). I also got some statistics tuition last year which was quite good. The lady was nice and it was helpful... but sometimes I feel like I work better on my own, using my own strategies and things, even though it's very slow. At Hertfordshire (seems like so long ago now!) I also got study support sessions but only for a couple of months as I didn't really need them, extra time and the use of a computer for exams (except for stats - because of the formulas and things it was actually more simple to do it by hand). One thing I am struggling with a little bit is telling people about my difficulties, I never really know whether to just 'get on with it' by myself or to disclose. Luckily, my principal supervisor is brilliant and really patient with me even though I still haven't disclosed fully to her (I've just said things along the lines of 'I'm rubbish at stats'). I'll probably tell her sometime...
I can't remember the name of Field's statistics book but Field and Hole also wrote 'Designing and reporting experiments', which deals with the methodological and statistics element of psychology, like writing psychology lab reports and things like that. Also, I don't know if you know but in psychology and related disciplines, there's a computer program called SPSS (Statistical Program for the Social Sciences) where you can enter your data and click on statistical tests and it performs it for you. I moan and complain about how difficult it is to work and it can be confusing but, so long as you know what you're looking for and what test to do, SPSS does a lot of the work for you. Sorry if you knew about this already but just to let you know, in psychology it's not like you have to work out a lot of stuff by hand (except for doing BSc and MSc psychology classes they make you work things out by hand anyway, to get you used to the tests, but if you want to pursue a career in psychology, you'd mostly be using SPSS). There's a book called SPSS survival manual by Julie Pallant, which is quite good as well.
What Universities are you thinking of applying to? What A levels are you taking?