Hello, my name’s Charlotte Bailey, and I'm studying full-time on Urban and Regional Planning.
I chose Birmingham University as I was fortunate enough to study my undergraduate studies at the University; therefore I already knew the staff that were teaching the course. I already knew about the University and the societies, and I felt it was right for me to my Masters course at the University.
I think that my course is special because it has a variety of modules that are being offered. My favourite one is the interactive planning modules. We get to work in group situations and we get to go out on site and do lots of development site projects, and we get to interact with other people that are from different cultures, so we get to use that to help bring ideas from other planning systems across the countries.
My course is delivered through a variety of seminars, lectures and group work. There's a real emphasis on independent learning. So we have our lectures two days a week which is fulltime on Monday and Tuesday, and then during that time we also have group work where we get certain projects and we have to go out on field trips throughout Birmingham to development sites, so it’s very much an interactive process between lectures, seminars and group work.
I've already secured a job when I graduate, and that’s as a graduate planner. However, I'm also doing and looking into graduate schemes just to keep my options open, but I really feel that this course gives you the opportunity to either go into real estate, property or planning, so it gives that variety of different choices in the career sector.
Well my favourite thing is meeting all the different people on my course. My course varies from people from the Middle East, from the UK, from China, and interacting with people from different cultures and getting make new friends – that’s really important to me.
For me I would say that the top tip would be to research quite widely on the course. For me the modules stood out and that’s why I picked this particular course. Also because I knew the University before because I did my undergraduate studies here. I would also say to research the facilities; also the lecturers as there might be a specific interest in which lecturer teaches a certain course, so a certain topic that you're interested in, but also the University as a whole is very important.