Get degree ideas using our A level explorer tool

Sociology

Entry requirements


A level

B,B,C-B,C,C

104-112 points, to include a minimum of 2 A levels.

106-112 Tariff points from the Access to HE Diploma.

Cambridge Pre-U score of 44-46.

GCSE/National 4/National 5

3 GCSEs at grade C or above to include English and Mathematics/3 GCSEs at grade 4 or above to include English and Mathematics.

International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme

25

25 points from the IB Diploma, to include 3 Higher Level subjects.

Leaving Certificate - Higher Level (Ireland) (first awarded in 2017)

H3,H3,H3,H4,H4-H3,H3,H3,H3,H4

Acceptable when combined with other qualifications.

Acceptable when combined with other qualifications.

Pearson BTEC Level 3 National Extended Diploma (first teaching from September 2016)

DMM

104-112 Tariff points to include a minimum of 2 Advanced Highers.

Acceptable when combined with other qualifications.

T Level

M

UCAS Tariff

104-112

104-112 points, to include a minimum of 2 A levels, or equivalent.

104-112 points from the Advanced Welsh Baccalaureate including 1 A level, plus the Advanced Skills Challenge Certificate.

About this course


This course has alternative study modes. Contact the university to find out how the information below might vary.

Course option

3years

Full-time | 2024

Other options

4 years | Sandwich | 2024

Subject

Sociology

**This is a Connected Degree**

Portsmouth is the only University in the UK with the flexibility to choose when to do an optional paid placement or self-employed year. Either take a placement in your third year, or finish your studies first and complete a placement in your fourth year. You can decide if and when to take a placement after you've started your course.

**Overview**

Understand how and why the world is changing on this BSc (Hons) Sociology degree.

Step into the centre of critical debates on current social and political issues, from Brexit and Black Lives Matter, to income inequality, drone warfare, veganism and the #metoo movement. Make sense of what’s going on, why it’s happening, and what we can do about it.

On this BSc (Hons) Sociology degree, you’ll learn classical sociological theories and have the chance to specialise in what interests you most.

You'll graduate with the skills to critically engage with the world around you, aa well as the confidence, knowledge and methods to enact positive change.

**Course highlights**

- Tailor your studies to topics that matter most to you – from gender, sexuality, race, and social class, to happiness, the body, and the politics of nationalism

- Learn ways to apply classical sociological theories, such as developing policies and actions to produce social change and solutions to the pressing issues affecting the world right now

- Learn from leading sociologists whose research is addressing social issues around the world

- Hear from industry specialists on topics such as racism, asylum and gender-based violence – recent guest speakers have come from Friends Without Borders and Portsmouth Abuse and Rape Counselling Services (PARCS)

- Build competent research skills that support you to carry out your own research and analysis of issues you're passionate about – previous student dissertations were on the Black Lives Matter movement, online dating, musical taste and K-Pop, happiness and social media, becoming vegan and racism in sport

- Follow an optional media studies pathway, where you could explore topics such as digital cultures and media fandom

**Careers and opportunities**
The knowledge you gain on this course, coupled with the communication, research, critical thinking and analysis skills you learn, means you'll have lots of career options when you graduate.

In fact, 95% of graduates from this course are in work or further study 15 months after graduation, earning an average starting salary of £22,000 – higher than the national average for sociology graduates. After 5 years, you could earn up to an average of £32,000.

After the course you could also continue your studies to a PhD or other postgraduate qualification, following in the footsteps of your lecturers.

What sectors can you work in with a sociology degree?

Many of our sociology graduates go into people-focused roles, or in roles that allow them to do research, shape social policies or bring about social change.

Areas you could go into include:

- teaching and lecturing (with additional training or further study)

- research and policy

- health and social care

- advertising, marketing and media

- local government

- careers advice, human resources and recruitment

- charity work and community development

What jobs can you do with a sociology degree?

Roles you could go onto include:

- fundraising and project manager

- hr adviser

- housing strategy and policy officer

- social worker

- evidence and evaluation manager

- peer support and young person's service manager

- recruitment consultant

- senior research executive

- marketing manager

- data analyst

- fraud operations executive

To give you the best chance of securing the ideal job when you graduate, our Careers and Employability service can help you find relevant work experience during your course.

We'll also be available to help, advise and support you for up to 5 years as you advance in your career.

Modules

Year 1
Core modules in this year include:
- Developing Your Sociological Imagination
- Observing Society
- Research Design and Analysis
- Social Inequalities
- Theorising Social Life

There are no optional modules in this year.

Year 2
Core modules in this year include:
- Doing Sociological Research
- Modernity and Globalisation
- Risk and Society
- Work, Employment and Society

Optional modules in this year currently include:
- Challenging Global Inequality
- Consumer Society: Critical Themes and Issues
- Digital Cultures: Exploring the Digital in the Humanities and Social Sciences
- Emotions and Social Life
- Empire and its Afterlives in Britain, Europe and Africa
- Engaged Citizenship in Humanities and Social Sciences
- Equality or Liberation? Theorising Social Justice
- Family, Career and Generation
- Food, Culture, and Society
- Gender and Sexuality
- Gender and the Media
- Global Security
- Health, Wellbeing, and Happiness
- Intercultural Perspectives on Communication
- Marketing and Communication
- Media, Culture and National Identity
- Media Networks: Exploring Digital Culture
- Modern Foreign Language
- Nationalism and Migration: Chaos, Crisis and the Everyday
- News, Discourse and Media
- Principles of Economic Crime Investigation
- Professional Experience
- Race and Racism
- Screen Media
- Social Power, Elites and Dissent
- Sociology of Culture: Taste, Value and Celebrity
- Space, Place and Being
- The Sociology of Education
- Transitional Justice and Human Rights
- Understanding Personal Life
- Wildlife Crime: Threats and Response

Placement year (optional)
On this course, you can do an optional work placement year between your 2nd and 3rd years to get valuable experience working in industry.

We’ll help you secure a work placement that fits your situation and ambitions. You’ll get mentoring and support throughout the year.

Year 3

Core modules include:
- Dissertation / Major Project

Optional modules in this year currently include:
- Celebrity and Society
- Challenging Global Inequality
- Consumer Society: Critical Themes and Issues
- Emotions and Social Life
- Equality or Liberation? Theorising Social Justice
- Family, Career and Generation
- Food, Culture and Society
- Gender and Sexuality
- Health, Wellbeing and Happiness
- Introduction to Teaching
- Media Fan Cultures
- Nationalism and Migration: Chaos, Crisis and the Everyday
- News, War and Peace
- Professional Development: Recruiters and Candidates
- Professional Experience
- Race and Racism
- Social Power, Elites and Dissent
- Sociology of Culture: Taste, Value and Celebrity
- Studying Comedy
- Understanding Personal Life

We use the best and most current research and professional practice alongside feedback from our students to make sure course content is relevant to your future career or further studies.

Therefore, some course content may change over time to reflect changes in the discipline or industry and some optional modules may not run every year. If a module doesn’t run, we’ll let you know as soon as possible and help you choose an alternative module.

Assessment methods

You will be assessed throughout this course via a wide range of assessment methods including:

- written essays and tests
- both group and individual projects
- seminar participation
- examinations
- a 10,000-word dissertation in year 3

Examinations typically only make up around 10–20% of your final mark.

You’ll be able to test your skills and knowledge informally before you do assessments that count towards your final mark.

You can get feedback on all practice and formal assessments so you can improve in the future.

The way you’re assessed may depend on the modules you select. As a guide, students on this course last year were typically assessed as follows:

Year 1 students: 18% by written exams and 82% by coursework
Year 2 students: 17% by written exams, 17% by practical exams and 66% by coursework
Year 3 students: 12% by written exams and 88% by coursework

Tuition fees

Select where you currently live to see what you'll pay:

Channel Islands
£9,250
per year
England
£9,250
per year
EU
£9,250
per year
International
£17,200
per year
Northern Ireland
£9,250
per year
Republic of Ireland
£9,250
per year
Scotland
£9,250
per year
Wales
£9,250
per year

The Uni


Course location:

University of Portsmouth

Department:

Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences

Read full university profile

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.

78%
Sociology

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.

Sociology

Teaching and learning

78%
Staff make the subject interesting
89%
Staff are good at explaining things
78%
Ideas and concepts are explored in-depth
69%
Opportunities to apply what I've learned

Assessment and feedback

Feedback on work has been timely
Feedback on work has been helpful
Staff are contactable when needed
Good advice available when making study choices

Resources and organisation

78%
Library resources
89%
IT resources
82%
Course specific equipment and facilities
68%
Course is well organised and has run smoothly

Student voice

Staff value students' opinions
Feel part of a community on my course

Who studies this subject and how do they get on?

95%
UK students
5%
International students
20%
Male students
80%
Female students
83%
2:1 or above
16%
First year drop out rate

Most popular A-Levels studied (and grade achieved)

B
C
C

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.

Sociology

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.

£21,000
high
Average annual salary
99%
high
Employed or in further education
55%
high
Employed in a role where degree was essential or beneficial

Top job areas of graduates

16%
Welfare and housing associate professionals
13%
Protective service occupations
9%
Business, finance and related associate professionals

We have quite a lot of sociology graduates, although numbers fell last year. But graduates still do pretty well. Most sociology graduates go straight into work when they complete their degrees, and a lot of graduates go into jobs in social professions such as recruitment, education, community and youth work, and housing. An important option for a sociology graduate is social work - and we're short of people willing to take this challenging but rewarding career. Sociology is a flexible degree and you can find graduates from the subject in pretty much every reasonable job — obviously, you don't find many doctors or engineers, but you do find them in finance, the media, healthcare, marketing and even IT. Sociology graduates taking further study often branch out into other qualifications, like teaching, law, psychology, HR and even maths, so don’t think a sociology degree restricts you to just one set of options.

What about your long term prospects?

Looking further ahead, below is a rough guide for what graduates went on to earn.

Sociology

The graph shows median earnings of graduates who achieved a degree in this subject area one, three and five years after graduating from here.

£25k

£25k

£25k

£25k

£29k

£29k

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.

Explore these similar courses...

Higher entry requirements
Brunel University London | Uxbridge
Anthropology and Sociology with Placement
BSc (Hons) 4 Years Full-time 2024
UCAS Points: 112-144
Lower entry requirements
University of Plymouth | Plymouth
Sociology
BSc (Hons) 3 Years Full-time 2024
UCAS Points: 104-120

Share this page

This is what the university has told Ucas about the criteria they expect applicants to satisfy; some may be compulsory, others may be preferable.

Have a question about this info? Learn more here

This is the percentage of applicants to this course who received an offer last year, through Ucas.

Have a question about this info? Learn more here

This is what the university has told Ucas about the course. Use it to get a quick idea about what makes it unique compared to similar courses, elsewhere.

Have a question about this info? Learn more here

Course location and department:

This is what the university has told Ucas about the course. Use it to get a quick idea about what makes it unique compared to similar courses, elsewhere.

Have a question about this info? Learn more here

Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF):

We've received this information from the Department for Education, via Ucas. This is how the university as a whole has been rated for its quality of teaching: gold silver or bronze. Note, not all universities have taken part in the TEF.

Have a question about this info? Learn more here

This information comes from the National Student Survey, an annual student survey of final-year students. You can use this to see how satisfied students studying this subject area at this university, are (not the individual course).

This is the percentage of final-year students at this university who were "definitely" or "mostly" satisfied with their course. We've analysed this figure against other universities so you can see whether this is high, medium or low.

Have a question about this info? Learn more here

This information is from the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA), for undergraduate students only.

You can use this to get an idea of who you might share a lecture with and how they progressed in this subject, here. It's also worth comparing typical A-level subjects and grades students achieved with the current course entry requirements; similarities or differences here could indicate how flexible (or not) a university might be.

Have a question about this info? Learn more here

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.

Have a question about this info? Learn more here

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

Have a question about this info? Learn more here

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?

Have a question about this info? Learn more here