Business & Management

What do you come out with? BA or BSc.

Why do it? Because it will make you employable and, if you’re lucky, it might help you get rich quick.

What's it about? You learn all you need to know to become a manager. If you do the BSc in management sciences at Warwick, you get a taste of economics, accounting and finance, industrial relations, marketing, information systems and law. Bath's BSc in business administration is similar - but you have more choice. And, because it's a thin-sandwich degree, you have two six-month sessions in industry earning good money to help pay off your student loan. Many sandwich courses give you a year out in industry.

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How long is a degree? Three or four years.

What are the students like? Thatcher's grandchildren. Sharp, ambitious and focused. Some are very sure what they want to do and how much they want to earn. Kingston has a high ethnic minority population, while 30 per cent of students at Warwick, and 23 per cent at City, are from overseas.

How is it packaged? At City, the ratio of exams to coursework is 80:20; at Bath and Lancaster it's 50:50. More than 50 per cent is examined at Warwick.

What A-levels do you need? Anything goes, although many universities aren’t keen on general studies. Bath and Warwick favour a mix of quantitative and arts A-levels.

What grades? AAA at Bath (although AAB may be accepted in exceptional circumstances); AAA-AAB at Lancaster; AAB at Warwick and City.

Will it keep you off the dole? That's the idea. Students studying finance and accounting go into - you guessed it - finance and accounting; students of business studies get graduate traineeships at blue-chip companies or find jobs in management consulting. All business schools have students entering the likes of Accenture, Proctor and Gamble, Unilever, BT, and JP Morgan.

Will you be interviewed? Not at Kingston, Warwick, Lancaster or City. Only in exceptional circumstances at Bath.

What do students say? Jessica Worley, who studied business administration at Bath. "I liked the fact that the course is a thin-sandwich, so we could work in two organisations. I worked in Richmond, Virginia, USA."

Where's best for teaching? St Andrews, Loughborough, Exeter, City, Sussex and Leicester all rate highly for student satisfaction in the 2008 National Student Survey.

Where's best for research? Cambridge, Imperial and Cardiff all score highly.

Where's the cutting edge? You can become immersed in supply chain management and strategic human resource management at Bath. Similarly supply chain management at City, as well as pensions management. Small businesses started by the over-50s at Kingston.

Who are the stars? Professor John Purcell at Bath on strategic human resource management; Robert Blackburn, head of the small business research unit at Kingston; Professor Lord David Currie at City; Professor Michael West at Aston on organizational psychology.

Related courses: BSc in marketing, BAs in accounting and finance, and organisational studies at Lancaster; BSc in business information technology and BAs in business management and business administration at Kingston; accounting and finance, and international business at Warwick.

Added value: You can do a BA in advertising and marketing at Lancaster and you get the chance to spend time in America or Europe as part of a Bath four-year degree. At Kingston, everyone can do a sandwich year. City is particularly hot on e-commerce and has set up a Professional Placement scheme with KPMG with three two-month long placements in the second, third and fourth year.