As an undergraduate who has completed their degree, you have so many exciting options to choose from for the next chapter of your life. One of those options is to continue your education at a postgraduate level.
Choosing this path has several benefits, including improving your graduate career prospects, the potential to take your career to the next level if you’ve already got a job, and the opportunity to study something you are really passionate about in greater depth.
There are several different types of postgraduate degree you can study at our Ulster University’s Branch Campuses, and it’s important that you choose the right one for you.
Standard Masters
A standard Master of Science (also known as an MSc) is a one year postgraduate course. Our standard Masters require you to have a 2:2 (second class) honours degree, or the equivalent to study the course, although there are MSc options designed for those who do not meet these entry requirements, such as the Extended Masters below.
There are several advantages to studying an MSc, particularly in a competitive graduate job market. They are also an excellent way to bolster your career if you decide to come back to university after starting in the workplace. You can find all our Masters programs here, including our Master of Business Administration (MBA). The MBA doesn’t have an Extended masters option.
Extended Masters
An Extended Masters is a 15-month course, which is three months longer than a standard masters, that integrates the Graduate Certificate programme. You can apply for this if you achieved a lower class undergraduate degree, for instance third class, pass or ordinary.
These additional months give you the chance to learn Research Methods for Postgraduate Studies, Enterprise Development and Academic essentials – all the tools you need to successfully complete an MSc. If you complete the Graduate Certificate with a minimum overall average mark of 50%, you move directly onto your main studies. At Ulster University, we offer several different Extended MScs and you can discover more about what applying for one entails here.
Advanced Practice
The Advanced Practice is a 15-week, Internship and Professional Development Project or Applied Consulting Project that is incorporated into the standard business Masters programmes offered at Ulster.
Our Careers and Employability Service have an extensive network to connect you to potential internships and offer application support. Once you’ve been offered a place, you will then experience a workplace environment, produce reflective reports and take part in a project where you can apply previously learnt theoretical concepts to a real-life industry challenge.
Anyone keen to take on the applied consulting project instead will gain experience working with clients, sticking to budgets and deadlines, carrying out research and delivering consultancy on a previously identified issue. You can study with Advanced Practice on the following postgraduate courses:
- MSc International Business, including Extended version
- MSc Marketing, including Extended version
- MBA
- MSc International Business with Human Resource Management, including Extended version
- MSc International Business with Data Analytics, including Extended version
Find out more about Advanced Practice here.
No matter which Masters you are considering, our helpful team are on-hand to help you. To talk through your options, please feel free to contact our team here.