Best of 2016 - Our Most Popular Blogs This Year

I hope you're enjoying the festive season and looking forward to the New Year.

2016 will be remembered as a busy year for postgraduate study. We've had new Masters loans, new Erasmus funding, upcoming higher education reforms and a little thing called 'Brexit'.

But that's not all that's happened this year. We also launched the FindAMasters blog! OK, so it's not quite the game-changer that the arrival of postgraduate loans has proven to be. But it has helped us keep students updated about postgraduate loans (and a few other topics).

So, to mark the end of the blog's first year, I've picked out the five posts that proved most popular with our readers.

It's no surprise that postgraduate loans have made it onto the list for 2016, but the popularity of this post proves that students have been just as interested in other funding options.

And there have been quite a few of those, from Erasmus+ Masters loans to new postgraduate support in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

We've kept this blog updated with the details.

Read more: Can't Get a Masters Loan? 6 Alternatives

There's one 'funding' option that's available to all students, in theory: working alongside your Masters.

But how easy is it to manage a job alongside a postgraduate degree? And what kinds of employment are most suitable? In this post, Chantelle speaks from her own experience as a working Masters student - and offers some general advice to others.

Read more: Working During a Masters - How Hard Can It Be?

Brexit may have raised some questions about the future of postgraduate study abroad in Europe, but we haven't let that deter us from celebrating great international opportunities.

And, by the looks of it, neither have our readers. They've made this introduction to Erasmus Masters funding one of our most popular posts for 2016.

Read more: International Spotlight: Erasmus Masters Funding in 2016

Second place on the list sees Mark looking back to his Masters dissertation and considering what else the experience taught him (in addition to a fair bit about nineteenth-century history and literature).

Your own dissertation will be a fair way off if you're just considering postgraduate study, but it's a big part of what makes a Masters a Masters. With that in mind, it's perhaps unsurprising that this topic proved so popular.

Read more: 5 Things I Learned During my Masters Dissertation

Our number one post addressed a topic that clearly matters to students as Chantelle surveyed some of the best value postgraduate study destinations in Europe.

We'd like to think there's more to the popularity of this post than the chance to save some money, though. In a year shaped by Brexit, it's worth celebrating the range of international study options available for postgraduates.

Read more: Study Abroad, for Free? 11 European Countries Where Masters Tuition is FREE (or Almost Free) in 2016-17

Hopefully you've found these posts (and others) useful. We've certainly appreciated all of our readers in the first year of the blog.

We'll be back in 2017 with more advice and information on Masters study, funding advice and postgraduate news.

For now though: Happy New Year from all at FindAMasters.