Harriet: MSc Urban and Regional Planning

MSc Urban and Regional Planning

 
Harriet, an MSc Urban and Regional Planning student, describes her experiences of the course and of life in the School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Birmingham.

Transcript:

Hello, I'm Harriet and I study Urban and Regional Planning.

I chose Birmingham because it’s got a really good reputation as a university, and also the city itself is really diverse and really interesting and has lots of good planning issues.

My course is special because it really involved the practical aspect of the diversity of Birmingham, like we get really involved with all the different developers and all the different planning aspects of the city. So we’re not just learning in the classroom, we’re actually getting involved with things that are going on in the city, which are obviously very relevant.

It’s delivered on Mondays and Tuesdays from ten till five, and that’s all kind of lectures and activity work.

I do have a job lined up, and that was in lieu of getting work experience before I came back to Uni. So hopefully I’ll be going back there when I'm done with this course, and that’s a planning consultancy in Brighton which is kind of where I'm based now.

So far I've really enjoyed kind of how personal the experience is, in that it’s a really small class sizes, everyone gets to know each other, all the tutors get to know you, and it’s just a really nice kind of informal communal environment.

I’d say if you want to go into postgraduate make sure you do lots of research before. I was slightly apprehensive about coming back to Uni because I didn’t really do a traditional course, and then I’d been working for a couple of years.  And so I was feeling a bit strange about returning back and, you know, do I know how to do it, like will I have the support. So like really have a good look at different unis available. I mean I chose here because there was lots of support available and the class sizes are pretty small so I knew if I wanted help I can go ask and feel like I'm more of a name and not just a number really.