What are the Pros and cons of 2 subjsect mod in TCD?

comebackkid

I am a mature student and am trying to sort my preferences for the CAO application. I am interested in doing an Arts type course so could current students please advise me on what the pros and cons of doing the two subject mod in TCD are.

im mainly intersted in history and geography
Thank you

steveone

i'm on a TSM at the minute, no pro's and cons as such. two different subjects alright but your time table won't (shouldn't ) be clashing. what pros and cons were you expecting??
it's no different than doing a single honours, similar overall contact time in college. the only upset might come if you try to re arrange classes and the times clash...
go ahead..do it...:D

Fad

comebackkid wrote: »

I am a mature student and am trying to sort my preferences for the CAO application. I am interested in doing an Arts type course so could current students please advise me on what the pros and cons of doing the two subject mod in TCD are.

im mainly intersted in history and geography
Thank you

One thing is that the points are alot higher for the TCD TSM.

tolosenc

Don't do TSM, but cons I can imagine would include not doing as much of a subject you really like as those who do TSM. Also, you're at the mercy of 2 departments and not just one - I have experience of that, but with 3...

Caoimhe89

I'm doing TSM History and English.

The pros would be that you get the opportunity to do two different subjects, and there are loads of different combinations of courses.

There aren't really many cons, to tell you the truth. You do have to deal with two different departments, and so you could have clashing due dates for essays. I haven't had this problem, but it is possible. Sometimes your tutorials clash, but that's generally easily fixed!

claire h

One of the cons is usually that, if you like both your subjects, you can only keep one of them up for fourth year. However, with history and geography, you can actually combine the two the whole way through (or pick one to specialise in for fourth year).

The variety can be a pro or a con - it can be tricky switching between the two subjects, particularly if you have to approach them in different ways (e.g. writing reports vs writing essays, doing experiments vs doing literary analysis, etc), though this can also be a positive thing because you're not doing the same thing the whole time.

Although the move with semesterisation and modularisation et al is towards students having more choice and flexibility in the courses they take, TSM at the moment means that you may not be able to take some classes because they're only offered to single honors students, and those may be the classes you're most interested. (That being said, I found that TSM history allowed for more flexibility and choice than single honors would have had. The system has since changed, but I think there's even more choice now.)

Depending on the subject, you might feel as though you're missing out on some things if you're not taking all the classes that others are, particularly if there are 'general' courses relating to the 'theory' of your subject, or if there's a 'general paper' in your final year. (I'm history/English TSM, and had to sit a 'general paper' in third year for English - the same paper that students who'd been single honors for four years were doing. Hard not to feel like you might be at a bit of a disadvantage! That being said, I think most courses are quite specialist and fairly self-contained.) Sometimes it helps to have another discipline you're familiar with, or there might be some overlap, though I'm not sure whether this is more or less helpful than having taken 100% of your classes in the one discipline.

comebackkid

thanks all, sorry for late reply. how much work is involved with history and geography?

Caoimhe89

Well for TSM history, it's about 2-4 hours lectures a week plus 1-2 hours tutorials in first year. There are 2 essays due during the year (one in November and one in February) and then two papers at the end of the year.

I dunno about geography though... :rolleyes: