What our students think

I think the department we’ve got here in Politics and International Relations is fantastic. They are very welcoming, they’ve got a great breadth of expert knowledge, and I think they are going from strength to strength in terms of the experts that are joining the team.

Southampton offers one of the only Politics degrees that is a BSc as opposed to a BA, which I found really attractive because of the employability aspect of developing quantitative skills.

I really enjoyed the freedom I was allowed by the department in choosing a dissertation topic which meant something to me, even if there was not an obvious ‘expert’ on the topic within the teaching staff.

I chose a module in Global Health, which was University-wide and which meant that I was sitting in a class with medics, Mathematics and Economics students. It was really interesting to be in that environment because Global Health is something that is interdisciplinary in the real world, and we all came at it with different angles. It’s great that Southampton allows you to do that, and it's really benefited me in widening my knowledge

The thing I enjoyed the most about this course was the freedom to choose a wide variety of topics for dissertations. On a whole the faculty were extremely accommodating and ensured that, whilst there may not be a specialist in that topic, that they went out of their way to help you.

Take every opportunity you can get, as the time goes really quickly, make the most of it

there is a very strong international student community in Southampton, and someone from outside the social sciences just cannot understand how important that is. Inside the social sciences, each international student has a different academic background, this means that each student can contribute differently to conversation, to debate, and to your own personal development

My ability to work hard, motivate myself, assimilate information, analyse, criticise and formulate arguments has developed enormously. But more than that, I have achieved a renewed confidence and direction in my life.

Each year so far my degree has had a mandatory Statistics module. I haven’t done a statistics module since Year 10, but university has allowed me to discover a new love for the subject.