University of Essex

The University of Essex is a public research university whose main campus occupies Wivenhoe Park near Colchester in the English county of Essex, with further campuses in Southend-on-Sea and Loughton. It admitted its first students in 1964 and received its royal charter in 1965 as one of the United Kingdom's new campus universities of that decade. It is a unitary campus university with a concentration in the social sciences, not a collegiate medieval foundation.

Teaching is grouped in the Faculty of Humanities, the Faculty of Science and Health, and the Faculty of Social Sciences. The institution is identified with government, sociology, economics, and human rights. The Department of Government is one of the larger political-science units in Britain. The Institute for Social and Economic Research runs large longitudinal studies, including Understanding Society. The Human Rights Centre and Essex Business School are the usual homes for graduate work in those fields.

Enrollment is about 17,000 students, and more than 40 percent come from outside the United Kingdom, from more than 140 countries. The taught master's population is large relative to many older British universities. Alumni include novelist Ben Okri and politician Priti Patel.

Graduate study is organized around taught master's degrees (MA, MSc, LLM, and related awards) and research degrees (MPhil and PhD). Doctoral students in the social sciences often take methods coursework before the thesis. The year follows a two-semester calendar. Funding includes university studentships and UK research-council awards. Wivenhoe Park is a landscaped campus a few miles from Colchester, and many postgraduates live in campus residences or in nearby villages.

In the Grad School Navigator directory, University of Essex lists 7 graduate programs across 6 subjects, all of them master's programs, with the widest choice in psychology, art and business & management.