It is the end of March, meaning not only the end of block 3, but also preparing for block 4. Honestly, this doesn’t really require preparation, other than choosing your next block’s courses: A recurring festivity which every UCG student is involved with at least four times a year.

For me, I mostly start with checking out what UCG has to offer. I not only check for my own major or year, but view all UCG courses that will be offered next block. So did I last year decide to follow a macro-economics course, and next block I will follow a brand-new first year humanities course, artivism. I’m not the only one using this strategy: it’s always a surprise to see who, from whatever major, is following the same courses as you that block. UCG is also pretty open in this way, and so while for example being in a science major, you can at the same time follow humanities courses to broaden your horizon.

Secondly, I go through the course list from the other faculties. As this basically means an endless number of courses to choose from, I mostly stick to the arts faculty, and go through the course list from majors like international relations or media studies. This means inside the pretty broad humanities major, I am able to define my own area of expertise. Outside of the mandatory UCG courses, I mostly took history and international relations-related courses.

The funny thing is that at the start of the second year I had no clue I was going into that direction yet. In the first year I was mostly involved with Health & Lifesciences courses, to end up choosing the Cognition and Behaviour major (BBC) in the second year. After a week of being in this major, I switched to Humanities and only in the third year found that within the humanities, international relations interests me the most. Having this freedom in choosing whatever you want, and being able to switch course, is a great way of finding what you genuinely like.

You might think, how do you get into a master’s degree, following an undefined track like that? The answer is that it depends a lot on what master’s you want to apply to: for master’s in the arts it’s generally more flexible than in sciences. I am planning on following a master’s in international relations, and when looking at its course requirements, 45 credits in international relations, I figured I already meet that agreement.

Other ways of getting into master’s is talking to the corresponding study-advisor and see what courses you still need to do. Often the board of admissions of that master’s is willing to cooperate and make exceptions (as they often believe University College students can easily get on track with the other students). In worst-case scenarios: pre-masters are your friend and will get you in your dream degree.

Why not take a look at the course list? This course list of UCG gives you an overview of the courses offered this year, and here you can view courses offered by the entire university (even more choice).

Fun activity:  make a list of courses you would follow right now, hide the list, apply to UCG, get admitted, graduate, find the old list and compare it to what courses you really followed. This will show you how much your interests can change over time – which is natural, and it is good to have the freedom to allow this change.