Hello all, I am looking to do a Masters in Forensic Psychology and wanted some advice. Some courses that are available offer no placement (however are willing to put you in touch with the right people for VOLUNTEER opportunities) and are full time (1 year). There are others however that only offer paid placements, if you apply part time (2 years), but once you apply for part time, it is not 100% you will get the placement as you have to apply and be interviewed separately for the placement. I was hoping to be done with the Masters in 1 year, as I also would like to go on and do a PhD, hence adding an extra year seems a lot. But the potential idea of having a placement sounds good. I just wondered what people thought about part time as opposed to full time and how placements are viewed and if they are worth the extra year commitment within the course. Thank you!

If your plan is to do a PhD, I would say it's not necessary to do a placement. You will get a lot of practical experience during the PhD and some programmes have placements for 3 months or so built in.

Full time is generally better as it's easier to be engaged with the course and students on your cohort.

I can't comment on placements, but I did my Masters part-time over two years. It was good in that I was able to keep my job while I was doing it and work part-funded me, however I was told up front that I would have no reduction in work - So I ended up doing a full-time job in two and a half days a week and then had to do my Masters work on top. I was also only allowed two days off for study leave, so no reading weeks for me to go over stuff that I was unsure of. Also in terms of other people on the course, there were only a few part-timers so I got to know the full-timers on my course the first year, but the nature of the modules in the second year meant that I got to know practically no one from the second year.

Part-time worked for me in that I wouldn't have been able to afford to take a year off and fund myself, plus I had my job security. But I would always recommend to anyone that if you can do it full-time, then to do it.

It's also one of the reasons why I decided that I wanted to do my PhD full-time and based at the university.