Higher Education/Web Quest
Resources to help you
make your higher education decision
The following people, places and
web sites will help you with your decision about what to do at university and
where to study. You can use this form
to record the information you collect from the resources described below
The careers library in your
school or college should have a wealth of resources such as reference books
and guides to higher education.
Your local careers service will
have a careers library that may contain a wider selection of resources than
your school or college. If you are not sure where to go then use the map on
the Careers
Gateway to identify which part of the UK you are in, and click to find the
contact details for your local careers service. Ring them and ask where the
nearest office is with a library.
Your tutor, careers teacher or
careers adviser may be able to spend some time with you to help you sort
out some ideas. To make the process easier it will be better if you have done
some thinking beforehand and made a note of some relevant information. You can
use this form as a guide.
Choosing a course
On the Internet the following are
useful:-
- The Higher
Education section of the Careers Gateway has links to over 600 establishments
that offer degree and HND courses. You can use the alphabetical list to view
some sites and see what types of information they have available on them.
- The UCAS
web site will allow you to do a Course Search, although this can be quite
long winded if you do not have a specific course in mind. Higher
Ideas will help you generate ideas before using the UCAS site.
- University study of a subject
can be quite different to that at school or college. If you want to know more
about what is happening within a subject area, the Pinakes
site is a starting point to the academic gateways where the latest ideas within
subjects are discussed.
How good is a course/university?
There are quite a few sites
that try to measure the quality of an institution and the departments within
it. Some even go as far as trying to rate the accommodation, social facilities
and sports. When using these sites it is important to notice who wrote them
and when they were done.
- The official site that holds the
QARs (Quality Assessment Reports) for England
and Wales and those for Scotland
is the higher education equivalent of Ofsted, that inspects schools and colleges
(from April 2001).
- For a number of years The
Sunday Times has been surveying universities and rating them on a wide
range of factors.
- The
Guardian has also been doing a similar exercise of rating universities
against different criteria.
Money matters
- Financing your time at university
is an important consideration for many potential undergraduates. The official
DfES
site has the latest information on student finance
What will you do after your degree?
- Having an idea of where your degree
might lead can often help you choose one. The Prospects
web site has a lot if information and ideas about what graduates do with their
degree or HND.
