Creative and Professional Writing
UCAS Code: W800
Bachelor of Arts (with Honours) - BA (Hons)
Entry requirements
A level
Pass Access to Higher Education Diploma with 60 credits including at least 45 at Level 3
International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme
OCR Cambridge Technical Extended Diploma
Pearson BTEC Level 3 National Extended Diploma (first teaching from September 2016)
UCAS Tariff
We will generally make you an offer if your predicted grades are at the top of this range and you meet any subject specific requirements (where applicable). If your predicted grades are towards the lower end of this range we can still consider your application but will also take into account subjects studied at Level 3, your GCSE (or equivalent) profile and/or relevant non-academic achievements, references and your motivation for study.
About this course
Our degree takes advantage of St Mary’s London location to bring in publishing writers from the worlds of fiction, screenwriting and poetry. You will study different styles, genres and forms to help develop a core set
of skills, enabling you to write what you love in the best way you can. In addition to prose fiction classes, our professional classes in journalism, publishing and screenwriting are designed to help you turn your talents into a vocation. All Creative Writing students at St Mary’s have the option to study other subjects alongside their writing, so you won’t feel like you’ve narrowed your focus too soon. You will share work with your colleagues and hone your editorial abilities by reading and critiquing each other’s writing. You’ll spend a lot of time reading: novels, stories, essays, poems, scripts, comics... it’s all good. Because the other basic truth about creative writing is this: if you don’t read, you can’t write.
Modules
The first year offers you a chance to explore the range of possibilities that constitute the field of creative writing. You will read and critique a variety of writing forms and try your hand at exercises designed to encourage fundamental skills in these areas. In your second year you will begin to focus your attention on the forms of writing most important and valuable to you and your career. In your final year of study you will have the chance to explore specific subjects in depth in class. More vitally, you will work one-to-one with a tutor on a year-long, independent basis to develop a creative portfolio of your own design. The goal is to produce a substantial piece of work worthy of submission for publication to an appropriate venue.
Tuition fees
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The Uni
St Mary's University, Twickenham
Department of Humanities
What students say
We've crunched the numbers to see if overall student satisfaction here is high, medium or low compared to students studying this subject(s) at other universities.
How do students rate their degree experience?
The stats below relate to the general subject area/s at this university, not this specific course. We show this where there isn’t enough data about the course, or where this is the most detailed info available to us.
Creative writing
Teaching and learning
Assessment and feedback
Resources and organisation
Student voice
Who studies this subject and how do they get on?
Most popular A-Levels studied (and grade achieved)
After graduation
The stats in this section relate to the general subject area/s at this university – not this specific course. We show this where there isn't enough data about the course, or where this is the most detailed info available to us.
English studies
What are graduates doing after six months?
This is what graduates told us they were doing (and earning), shortly after completing their course. We've crunched the numbers to show you if these immediate prospects are high, medium or low, compared to those studying this subject/s at other universities.
Top job areas of graduates
The jobs market for this subject - which includes creative writing and scriptwriting courses - is not currently one of the strongest, so unemployment rates are currently looking quite high overall, with salaries on the lower side. But nevertheless, most graduates get jobs quickly. Graduates often go into careers as authors and writers and are also found in other roles where the ability to write well is prized, such as journalism, translation, teaching and advertising and in web content. Be aware that freelancing and self-employment is common is common in the arts, as are what is termed 'portfolio careers', having several part-time jobs or commissions at once - although graduates from this subject were a little more likely than many other creative arts graduates to be in conventional full time permanent contracts, so that might be worth bearing in mind.
What about your long term prospects?
Looking further ahead, below is a rough guide for what graduates went on to earn.
English studies
The graph shows median earnings of graduates who achieved a degree in this subject area one, three and five years after graduating from here.
£16k
£25k
£23k
Note: this data only looks at employees (and not those who are self-employed or also studying) and covers a broad sample of graduates and the various paths they've taken, which might not always be a direct result of their degree.
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Post-six month graduation stats:
This is from the Destinations of Leavers from Higher Education Survey, based on responses from graduates who studied the same subject area here.
It offers a snapshot of what grads went on to do six months later, what they were earning on average, and whether they felt their degree helped them obtain a 'graduate role'. We calculate a mean rating to indicate if this is high, medium or low compared to other universities.
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Graduate field commentary:
The Higher Education Careers Services Unit have provided some further context for all graduates in this subject area, including details that numbers alone might not show
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The Longitudinal Educational Outcomes dataset combines HRMC earnings data with student records from the Higher Education Statistics Agency.
While there are lots of factors at play when it comes to your future earnings, use this as a rough timeline of what graduates in this subject area were earning on average one, three and five years later. Can you see a steady increase in salary, or did grads need some experience under their belt before seeing a nice bump up in their pay packet?
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