Studying Essex : lectures and seminars

The way you study at uni is completely different to how you are taught at school or college. It's all about choice and independent study. You choose whether you go to lectures and seminars, and how hard you work. The number of lectures and seminars varies depending on your degree course. In your first and second years, arts-based subjects such as History or Literature comprise of just one lecture and one seminar class for each module per week, which usually last between 60 and 90 minutes. Once you get into your third (or final) year you'll usually just have a two-hour seminar for each module. If you do to the maths you'll realise you could have as little as eight hours contact time! Not bad for a week's work, but of course there are all those books to read…

However, if you choose a subject like Sports Science or Biological Sciences then you could be in labs from 9am to 5pm! There can be some major variations between courses when it comes to contact hours. Whatever you do - don't recoil in horror and start thinking about changing your choice of degree. Although you will have more actual contact time - you won't have as much reading to do outside of this. Take a look at the specific departmental webpages on the University’s official site for detailed info on course structures.