Choosing a Course

The multidisciplinary nature of the course means that you'll be conducting a virtual health check of much of the humanities side of your universities, since you'll he studying with different departments. So see whether those areas are fully staffed, and giving good quality service (the tables in this book will come in handy for that). One lame duck of a department in a discipline important to you could make things difficult. Find out too whether timetables might clash and whether departments are supportive - questions perhaps better asked of current students on an open day, rather than the staff themselves: you'll look impertinent and won't trust the answer anyway.

Courses can last three years or four years. It is possible to spend a year, a semester or no time at all on the other side of the Atlantic: consider how much time you would like to and can afford to spend abroad. British universities work in collaboration with different American institutions: if you have a burning desire to soak up the LA sunshine or see politics in action at Washington, then remember when filling out your Ucas form that you are effectively choosing two universities rather than one. And try to find out about the level of support offered while you're away. You don't want to feel isolated while you're out there.

American studies tends to mean the US of, rather than the continents. However, some universities offer options to study and live in Canada or Latin America and at least one university has merged its American and Latin American studies departments, so it is worth investigating how much geographical scope the course covers if you don't want to he limited to the land of McDonald's.

Bear in mind that, as with the English language between the UK and the US, the same word can mean different things in different places. For some, for example, literature is confined to 19th- and 20th-century writing, while others may insist you head back to the Mayflower and Puritan scribblings. Don't just look at course headings, look to see exactly what they teach.

And, as ever, check the method of course assessment, and make sure that marking your exams, coursework or a dissertation suits your strengths and the way you like to work.