BESS in Trinity College CAO

StephenMcL

Just wondering if anyone out there has studied BESS in trinity as I do not know anybody personally who has studied this course. I am putting it as number 1 on my CAO and I am looking for a students/ lecturers outlook on the course. I do not wish to make the wrong Decision for September and therefore I want to hear what your opinions are of this option.

ellrb

Hi, so I have been worrying a lot about this same thing. I ended up picking PPES over BESS. I was told by a BESS student last year that looking back she would have done PPES (philosophy, political science, economics, and sociology) instead of BESS because the class size of PPES is a lot smaller so it's more personal and the people in PPES tend to be a lot closer and according to her more intellectual (possibly because the entrance requirements for PPES are a bit higher, 535 vs. 490). More importantly the subjects you take are essentially exactly the same, just without the business aspect, so the difference would not be monumental but as far as experience/quality goes PPES seems better. However this is just one person's opinion and she never said she hated BESS or anything, she seemed happy enough with it, so I'm sure you'd probably be happy in either one and if the business aspect is really important to you then obviously go with that.
side note: I'm starting in September as well so obviously I don't have any experience taking either of these courses, I just thought I'd relay the information I was told by a current student.
good luck!

StephenMcL

ellrb, thanks very much for your opinion, Im going to look at PPSS now more in depth online before making my final decision!
Good luck to you too!

AppetiteFor

I've just finished first year BESS. If you've any questions feel free to ask or to PM me.

Bears and Vodka

I have just finished First Year BESS as well, and likewise, PM with any questions.

It's true that PPES is smaller and arguably more intellectual, but do you want to study Philosophy instead of Business?

crow2

I am thinking about studying BESS as well. Not sure if it a good degree

Bears and Vodka

crow2 wrote: »

I am thinking about studying BESS as well. Not sure if it a good degree

Depends on what you're thinking of doing after college. With BESS you can get a joint Business - Econ degree, and that's a great degree to have.

yournerd

Where can you go with a BESS degree though? I know it's an unique course as it's the only course in ireland that has the 3.

lauramarie13

Hi What will my French level be like if I do BESS, study French in 1st & 2nd year and do the year abroad in a French-speaking university in my 3rd year? Will I be fluent/ have a high level of understanding? Like would I be able to say on my CV that I speak French? Thanks!

jimd2

My daughter is also thinking of doing this degree. Is there any stats on the breakdown of jobs graduates get and do many go on to do Masters degrees?

EuropeanSon

Definitely pick PPES over BESS, unless you really want to do business.

hfallada

jimd2 wrote: »

My daughter is also thinking of doing this degree. Is there any stats on the breakdown of jobs graduates get and do many go on to do Masters degrees?

If your daughter works hard and gets good grades, she probably should have a job offer sometime during 3rd year. I know plenty of people that got offered jobs in 3rd year of BESS. I wont worry about your daughter not having a job after doing BESS, as long as she does well in it.

Mr Pseudonym

I'm not sure why EuropeanSon was so adamant that one should take PPES over BESS. One graduates with a single or joint honours degree in one or two of the subjects (unlike Oxford, where one's degree is a BA in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics, even though one subject is almost always dropped) - so the degree, at the end, is the same. Economics, Politics, and Sociology lectures are shared, anyway, and there's more flexibility in the second and third years of BESS.

If one had the required 40 points over BESS, and wasn't especially interested in Business, I would recommend PPES over BESS as it has a better rep on campus, one's peers are more intellectual, and there is something of a community. But, it's not that significant.

As an aside, there are many BESS students who are very intelligent and capable, as evidenced by there being several Scholars elected each year, and by placements in notoriously competitive Investment Bank internships. But the average for the course is certainly down on PPES. Regarding jimd2's question on further study: a First-class BA from Trinity would be sufficient for almost all masters programmes (relevant to the degree).


I am in neither of the above courses!!!

tyty

@lauramarie13: If you put some effort into learning French, you can definitely be fluent within a year already, plus going to France for a year will give you loads of opportunities to further improve your French. However, if you don't put in the effort, even that won't help you. A course/university can only assist you in learning a language (especially because you will have only very few scheduled hours of actual language study), but you have to do the learning yourself.

For assessing your fluency it's best to take a standardised test (like DELF/DALF for French) because this way you can actually put a result on your CV which is comparable and internationally recognised.

Nassau

Have you checked out this site to see where TCD grads go to?

http://www.tcd.ie/Careers/resources/publications/

Think 2012 is the first year that PPES graduates.

EuropeanSon

Mr Pseudonym wrote: »

I'm not sure why EuropeanSon was so adamant that one should take PPES over BESS. One graduates with a single or joint honours degree in one or two of the subjects (unlike Oxford, where one's degree is a BA in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics, even though one subject is almost always dropped) - so the degree, at the end, is the same. Economics, Politics, and Sociology lectures are shared, anyway, and there's more flexibility in the second and third years of BESS.

If one had the required 40 points over BESS, and wasn't especially interested in Business, I would recommend PPES over BESS as it has a better rep on campus, one's peers are more intellectual, and there is something of a community. But, it's not that significant.

As an aside, there are many BESS students who are very intelligent and capable, as evidenced by there being several Scholars elected each year, and by placements in notoriously competitive Investment Bank internships. But the average for the course is certainly down on PPES. Regarding jimd2's question on further study: a First-class BA from Trinity would be sufficient for almost all masters programmes (relevant to the degree).


I am in neither of the above courses!!!

Fewer BESS people get into IB than you might expect, I think. I know of only three people going into top tier S&T/IB next year, and not one does BESS, though I imagine there must be one or two.

PPES has just got many things going for it that BESS doesn't, and the opposite is only true if you care about doing business. In general I think there are much more capable and interesting people in the course than BESS. That's not to say there aren't interesting BESS folks, there are just fewer, IMO.

Mr Pseudonym

EuropeanSon wrote: »

Fewer BESS people get into IB than you might expect, I think. I know of only three people going into top tier S&T/IB next year, and not one does BESS, though I imagine there must be one or two.

PPES has just got many things going for it that BESS doesn't, and the opposite is only true if you care about doing business. In general I think there are much more capable and interesting people in the course than BESS. That's not to say there aren't interesting BESS folks, there are just fewer, IMO.

I agree: the average PPES-er, from my experience, is far more intellectual and academically committed than their BESS counterparts. My point, though, was that it's not as if BESS is a course full of morons - there exists some very capable ones!

I must confess that my information regarding IB internships is very limited: I did SMF for a year, and three of the guys on the committee (all BESS) had summered in MS, BARC, and GS respectively (at least two of them front office). Not exactly rigorous analysis, I'll admit!

EuropeanSon

Mr Pseudonym wrote: »

I agree: the average PPES-er, from my experience, is far more intellectual and academically committed than their BESS counterparts. My point, though, was that it's not as if BESS is a course full of morons - there exists some very capable ones!

I must confess that my information regarding IB internships is very limited: I did SMF for a year, and three of the guys on the committee (all BESS) had summered in MS, BARC, and GS respectively (at least two of them front office). Not exactly rigorous analysis, I'll admit!

Oh absolutely there are some good BESS people. One of the smartest guys I know (probably the smartest current 3rd year I know in Trinity) is a BESS student. My position is that I just don't think there are many good reasons for choosing BESS over PPES, that's all.

I was referring just to the current crop (current 3rd/4th years), and to front offce specifically, I wouldn't really think of anything but FO IB/S&T at a GS/JPM/MS/CS/DB when someone says "prestigious IB internship".

Mr Pseudonym

Mr Pseudonym wrote: »

I'm not sure why EuropeanSon was so adamant that one should take PPES over BESS. One graduates with a single or joint honours degree in one or two of the subjects (unlike Oxford, where one's degree is a BA in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics, even though one subject is almost always dropped) - so the degree, at the end, is the same. Economics, Politics, and Sociology lectures are shared, anyway, and there's more flexibility in the second and third years of BESS.

If one had the required 40 points over BESS, and wasn't especially interested in Business, I would recommend PPES over BESS as it has a better rep on campus, one's peers are more intellectual, and there is something of a community. But, it's not that significant.

As an aside, there are many BESS students who are very intelligent and capable, as evidenced by there being several Scholars elected each year, and by placements in notoriously competitive Investment Bank internships. But the average for the course is certainly down on PPES. Regarding jimd2's question on further study: a First-class BA from Trinity would be sufficient for almost all masters programmes (relevant to the degree).


I am in neither of the above courses!!!

I made a mistake in what I said above: a PPES-er graduates with a BA Philosophy, Politics, Economics, and Sociology regardless of what subjects s/he took in the Sophister years; BESS-ers graduate with a single or joint BA.


Adding more to what I said:

PPES is very rigid: one takes all subjects in JF (with no module choices), drops one subject in each of SF and JS, and then decides whether to continue with two subjects, or drop to one.

BESS is less rigid, and has more options: in JF, one takes five prescribed modules in the four subjects, but there is a choice as to the sixth (a language, Introduction to Law, Social Policy/Welfare State, or an Eastern Europe/Russia "Area Studies" module). From SF onwards, there are no mandatory subjects (one could concentrate on one subject, for instance), and the choice of modules is very wide: in SF one can take the same Philosophy modules as the PPES-ers, a Broad Curriculum module, a law module, and a continuation of a language from JF; in JS, one has the option to take three of the Business/Company-related Sophister Law modules (provided one took the JF and SF law options).

So, not only has it got a wider selection of options, it allows one to study in greater depth if desired.

I considered what EuropeanSon said about the desirability of having more intellectual peers in PPES. It would go unnoticed in lectures, but the weekly tutorials, which (I imagine) are made-up only of fellow PPES-ers, would likely be far more stimulating.

Unless someone says something really contentious or interesting, I won't contribute subsequent to this. Good luck to anyone who is going for either of the courses, and hopefully my posts have convinced you that it's not a case of, "I'm intelligent, therefore I should do PPES"!

andrew

Mr Pseudonym wrote: »

I made a mistake in what I said above: a PPES-er graduates with a BA Philosophy, Politics, Economics, and Sociology regardless of what subjects s/he took in the Sophister years; BESS-ers graduate with a single or joint BA.


Adding more to what I said:

PPES is very rigid: one takes all subjects in JF (with no module choices), drops one subject in each of SF and JS, and then decides whether to continue with two subjects, or drop to one.

BESS is less rigid, and has more options: in JF, one takes five prescribed modules in the four subjects, but there is a choice as to the sixth (a language, Introduction to Law, Social Policy/Welfare State, or an Eastern Europe/Russia "Area Studies" module). From SF onwards, there are no mandatory subjects (one could concentrate on one subject, for instance), and the choice of modules is very wide: in SF one can take the same Philosophy modules as the PPES-ers, a Broad Curriculum module, a law module, and a continuation of a language from JF; in JS, one has the option to take three of the Business/Company-related Sophister Law modules (provided one took the JF and SF law options).

So, not only has it got a wider selection of options, it allows one to study in greater depth if desired.

I considered what EuropeanSon said about the desirability of having more intellectual peers in PPES. It would go unnoticed in lectures, but the weekly tutorials, which (I imagine) are made-up only of fellow PPES-ers, would likely be far more stimulating.

Unless someone says something really contentious or interesting, I won't contribute subsequent to this. Good luck to anyone who is going for either of the courses, and hopefully my posts have convinced you that it's not a case of, "I'm intelligent, therefore I should do PPES"!

I'd second this. BESS is a more flexible than PPES as far as I know; this is definitely significant. With BESS, if you want to specialise in one subject and one subject only, then you can. Not being able to do this can be horrible, especially if you really dislike one of your subjects.

Also, since there are so classes that people from both courses take, it's also possible to become friendly with people from PPES, if they're your kind of people. I got to know more, or at least as many, PPES people than BESS people when I did BESS.

sueysmithers

just wondering would you be able to do this course without having done business for the leaving cert? (I'm doing accounting) I'd be very grateful if someone could get back to me!

Mr Pseudonym

sueysmithers wrote: »

just wondering would you be able to do this course without having done business for the leaving cert? (I'm doing accounting) I'd be very grateful if someone could get back to me!

Without question! It could probably be said that Business would be of absolutely no use to you! Economics would provide a little benefit, with only Accounting being of definite benefit.

sueysmithers

Mr Pseudonym wrote: »

Without question! It could probably be said that Business would be of absolutely no use to you! Economics would provide a little benefit, with only Accounting being of definite benefit.

thanks so much! and would you know about the option to do french can you only do that as far as 3rd year?

Mr Pseudonym

sueysmithers wrote: »

thanks so much! and would you know about the option to do french can you only do that as far as 3rd year?

The handbook may be of interest. The language as part of BESS is for the purposes of preparing one for Erasmus. So, it ends after second year, AFAIK. You can continue to take language options as part of CLCS, though (apply EARLY: really over-subscribed).

I don't do BESS, and only know a bit about it cause I was strongly considering it at one stage - so I'm not the most qualified to comment of the contributors to this thread. However, I'll take a stab if you have any further queries!