How Much Time Does it Actually Take to Apply for a Masters? - Less Than You Probably Think

It's winter!

It's time to relax and enjoy the festivities; to read all those books you promised you'd open. To finally stream all those Christmas movies. To take up a new and exciting hobby, like sitting with a book and / or an iPad, streaming movies.

. . .to start, sort and successfully finish your application for a Masters beginning this January.

First of all, it's only just Decemeber. Secondly, that's not too late at all.

The thing about Masters degree applications is that they're probably quite a bit simpler than you expect.

For a start, there's no UCAS. A small number of institutions use a version of UCAS, but the vast majority take applications directly from students. You might think that makes things more complicated, but it can actually have the opposite effect. No UCAS means that universities themselves can say exactly what they want from you - and when they want it by.

You've also got a big advantage this time around: you've done it before. And - spoiler alert - applying for a Masters isn't that different to applying for an undergraduate degree.

Trust me: I did it in an afternoon (pretty much). More on that in a bit.

Actually, no. Lots of universities have Masters programmes starting in January. And, because they handle admissions themselves, they can keep on accepting applications until they fill them.

Funny you should ask that, dear interpolated reader.

We've actually made it really simple to find Masters programmes starting in January: by putting them all in a special section of our website.

Still not convinced you can do apply for a Masters in time for January? Let me tell you a story. . .

The year is 2006, your author is approaching the end of a Bachelors degree in English and American Literature and, for one reason or another, is quite tempted by the thought of spending another year studying even more English Literature (but perhaps a little less American Literature - nothing personal, Moby Dick).

I had a general idea that there was a thing called a 'Masters' that would fit the bill and conversations with course tutors confirmed that this was indeed the case. Should I wish to, I could go and study for another year, get two more letters after my name and be worshipped as Grand High King of Books*. Or something.

Being a proactive sort of final-year undergraduate student, I took this information straight to the pub, discussed it briefly with some friends, played some pool, had a takeaway, went on holiday, came back, moved home, went to a music festival, got my degree results, remembered what a Masters was and decided it was probably too late to apply.

Except it wasn't.

How did I discover that?

*First person to leave a message on our Facebook page addressed to the 'Grand High King of Books' wins the coolest free pen I can find lying around the FindAMasters office.

The problem with having decided I couldn't apply for a Masters was that I still had to decide what I was going to do instead. And it didn't take long to realise that the thing I really wanted to do was, in fact, a Masters.

So, like many a person before and after me, I opened up Google and casually typed 'masters in gothic literature'*. I doubt that many people have specifically searched for postgraduate qualifications in gothic literature, but this was what I wanted to study and I wanted to know if anyone just happened to have put together a course specialising in it.

They had. There, at the top of the search results, was an 'MA in Gothic Studies', listed on some website called 'FindAMasters'*.

I clicked through and found that some nice person had, indeed, created a Masters degree covering everything I wanted to study (that nice person eventually became my PhD supervisor, but that's a different story).

Still, it was late July and I was convinced there was no way I could actually apply for this course. But I thought I'd send an email anyway.

So, I popped together a quick outline of my academic background and experience, together with my interest in this course (a personal statement, if you will). A few days later I received a reply from the course tutor, inviting me to come and discuss my interest.

So, I caught the train (the Masters was in Wales; I wasn't) found the campus and headed up for an informal interview.

*Incidentally, this pretty much means that my decision to study a specialised Literature degree in a niche field did, ultimately, lead me to my current editorial role at a well-established digital publisher. So take that, critics of the Humanities.

Now, interviews for Masters degrees vary. For some courses, you may well find yourself facing a formal panel tasked with assessing your attitude and aptitude, with the ultimate aim of selecting candidates for a limited number of places.

My interview wasn't like that. That isn't to say it wasn't important, or that I could have turned up, rambled about my train journey, made a comment about my shoes* and expected to get a place on the MA. But it was fairly informal. The tutor and I met for coffee, we talked about what had lead to my interest in the course, the topics I was particularly keen to work on and the sort of research and study I'd end up doing.

By the time we'd finished both of us knew that the course would be a good fit.

I headed home, filled out some forms (not particularly exciting, but not particularly time-consuming either) and was soon accepted on to the programme, ready to start in September.

The only thing left to do was organise accommodation. This, I'll admit, was slightly tricky with only a month or so to go until the course started, but it was by no means impossible. In the end I got in touch with the university and found a room in their student halls - I'd recommend you try something similar, at least in the first instance.

*I did actually end up referring to both my shoes and my train journey during the interview. No, really. If you want to know more you'll have to get in touch and ask.

If you're thinking about applying for a Masters this year, you absolutely can. Plenty of excellent courses still have places and you'll probably have a great time studying on one of them. I certainly did.

You should at least take a look, right?

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