Honours Electives

Depending upon how many credits are allocated to compulsory courses, you will be told how many credits must be picked from one or two lists:  

• ‘List 1’ which is a list of courses recommended for your programme, and  

• ‘List 2’ which is a list of courses also judged to be suitable for your programme.  

The course lists and descriptions indicate which programme “owns” the courses, this means that the course comes under the control of the programme's Board of Examiners.  

An important and valuable aspect of this system is that it opens up more avenues for you to shape your Senior Honours year to your specific interests.  

Admittance

Generally, only the students registered for a specific programme are admitted to that programme's compulsory courses.

• However, if a course is compulsory for your programme you will be automatically admitted to it even if it is not owned by your programme.  
• If you wish to do a compulsory course from another degree programme as an elective this may not be possible. Please refer to the comments given in the course descriptions.

If in doubt, contact the appropriate Honours Programme Organiser.  

Course Contacts

It is possible to choose courses outside of Lists 1 and 2 (above) subject to the approval of your Honours Programme Organiser (HPO). If you are thinking of broadening your programme in this way, please consider the following: 

• How the subject adds academic value to your programme.  

• If you have fulfilled any specific requirements and expected background set out for the course.  

• The courses must be at level 10 or 11 -  you need to have studied the subject in earlier years - so this will limit your choice to biology and related areas. 

Most courses build upon specific biology Junior Honours courses and this leads to courses having prerequisites of requirements or recommended courses. 

• Course descriptions end with information on the requirements for admittance to the course.  
• Students who spent their Junior Honours year abroad and intercalating medics and vets will be unable to meet requirements specified in terms of specific Junior Honours courses - they will be excused from these requirements by the Honours Programme Organiser.  
• Some prerequisites are prefaced by the word "normally"; this indicates that exceptions may be made, particularly for well qualified students. 

Junior Honours

Questions

If you have any questions about the electives please contact the Honours Programme Organiser, who is responsible for the electives owned by their programme and controls admission to them. 

Course Contacts

Access to courses is controlled by the Honours Programme Organisers. 

• Each organiser will allocate the students on their programme to appropriate electives, discussing this as necessary with other organisers.  
• In an ideal world all students would get their top or other high choices but of course this is unlikely to happen as demand will be uneven.  

Honours Programme Organisers will take note of several issues when allocating the students on their programme to electives and when trying to place other students who wish to do courses 'owned' by their programme. These will include:  

• Whether the student is doing the 'owning' programme. 
• The ranking given to the elective by the student on their choice form. 
• Whether the elective is on the lists of recommended and suitable electives for the student's programme.  
• The student's background for courses that specify requirements. 
• The class size. 

The aim will be to arrive at the 'best' overall solution taking account of the available information.  

Allocations for Semester 2 electives are made at the start of Semester 1, but these are preliminary and students must confirm their Semester 2 courses towards the end of Semester 1.  

The number of students admitted to electives is reasonably flexible and the course descriptions indicate the maximum class sizes.  

• Unnecessary restrictions will not be applied.
• However, there must be some limits as it is appreciated that honours teaching and learning is much more effective in smaller rather than larger classes.  
• We also know that students look forward to smaller classes in their Senior Honours year after being in large classes in previous years.  

In allocating electives, Honours Programme Organisers will give preference to students for whom the course is particularly relevant but will do what they can to admit other students. 

Minimum Class Size

The Board of Studies has agreed that if too few students wish to do a course it may be withdrawn.

• The minimum number of students required for an elective to run is set at 5.  
• Running a course with fewer students will be at the discretion of the Director of Teaching in discussion with the HPO and the Course Organiser.