School of Social and Political Science

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SPS course enrolment for the 2024/25 academic year is now underway. 
The deadline to submit your course choices is Friday 14 June at 11.59pm. 

As part of your degree at Edinburgh, you have the opportunity to select optional courses to take alongside those that are compulsory for your degree programme. 

Depending on your area of study, there is a large range of different courses from all over the University available to choose from.

The process of choosing your optional courses and having them added to your student record is known as pre-selection. The process of collecting course choices from students differs from school to school across the University of Edinburgh.

On this page you will be able to find information on how to choose and submit your course choices, please ensure you take the time to read this carefully. Use the quick links on the right hand side to guide you through this page.

Course enrolment for students entering Years 2, 3, and 4 will open on Friday 26th April 2024. 
The deadline to submit your course choices is 11.59pm on Friday 14th June 2024. 
If you miss the deadline you will need to wait until August to submit your choices, which may mean you miss out on your first preferences.

Before you submit your course choices, please take some time to watch our short video as well as read the guidance below.

A guide to choosing your course options
 

How to choose your courses (including DRPS guidance)

A normal year load is 120 credits (most commonly six 20 credit courses). For most degrees, your courses should be distributed evenly between Semester 1 and Semester 2.

Once you establish what your compulsory core courses are, you will be able to make your optional course selections.

When selecting your courses, always check the following:

• you meet all prerequisites of the course
• the year and level of the course are appropriate

Which compulsory and optional courses are open to you is dependent on your degree programme and your year of study. 

You can view this information using the University’s Degree Regulations and Programmes of Study (DRPS) pages. 
This is the method recommended by the school.

• Read our SPS guide on how to use DRPS
• Access the School's DRPS pages

School of Social and Political Science (SPS) draft course listings 

In SPS, teaching activities will be campus based and in-person. Any exceptions to this will be detailed on the course listings page.  

These course listings will show you the draft timetabling details for courses within SPS. 

• SPS Pre-honours course listings
• SPS Honours course listings 

These documents will not show the full details of all the courses available to you, so please ensure you review DRPS to see all of your options. 

Submit your course choices

Students on programmes run by the School of Social and Political Sciences (SPS) should submit their choices via the forms below.

Students on programmes run by other schools: please follow the instructions provided by your own school for pre-selection. SPS does not need to pre-approve your courses.

Guidance on completing the Pre-Selection form

We strongly recommend completing your form via a desktop browser (Google Chrome works best), instead of a mobile device. If you have any technical difficulties, please clear your browsing history and cache first. 

When completing the online pre-selection form, you will need to list ALL your compulsory and optional courses for each semester, including those from other schools.

Please indicate your options in order of preference, and list more than the required 120 credits, in case your first choices for optional courses are over-subscribed.

Due to the volume of forms being processed by the Undergraduate Teaching Office (UTO), no confirmation emails are issued when you have been signed up for your selected courses.

If there are problems with your selections, we will contact you via your student email address.

Please regularly check your University email account. Please also check your junk and clutter folders in case any of our communications end up there.

Priority will be given to those who submit by the deadlines 

You should make every effort to complete these course choice forms by the deadlines below to avoid disappointment.

Students can submit their course choices from Friday 26th April 2024 until 11.59pm on Friday 14th June 2024. If you have missed this deadline, you will not be able to submit your course choices until the form reopens on 5th August 2024 until 12th September 2024. Please do not send us your course choices by email, you must use the correct form to do this.

Year 1 Students starting September 2024

Guidance for Students entering Year 1 in September 2024 

Enrolment for new students entering Year 1 will be provided in August 2024.

To view details of courses open to year 1 students in SPS, please visit Schedule J on DRPS. 

Not all the courses available to you will be shown, only those in SPS, so please ensure you review the Degree Regulations and Programmes of Study (DRPS) to see your full options.

Guide on how to use DRPS to view your course choices 

PDF format: Guide on how to use DRPS to view your course choices 

Guidance notes and Frequently Asked Questions

Word format: Guidance notes & FAQs 

Year 2 Students starting September 2024

Years 3 and 4 Students starting September 2024

• Students on Politics or International Relations joint degrees (e.g History and Politics, Law and International Relations) please use this form as well as following the process of your home school.
• Honours Politics, Philosophy and Economics (PPE) Students must submit multiple forms, please find details below:

 Politics, Philosophy and Economics (PPE) Students - further submission guidance

All honours PPE students are required to submit their Politics and Economics course choices via Form B and submit a separate form to the Schools of PPLS with their Philosophy course choices. The School of Economics is not responsible for signing you up for your Economics courses.

If you are unsure of how to list your choices in Form B, please email us at sps.pre-selection@ed.ac.uk.

Frequently asked questions about submitting your course choices - currently being updated

FAQ document

Frequently Asked Questions for students entering Year 1

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Frequently Aske Questions for students entering Years 2, 3 and 4

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Course change options

Students can request a change to their optional courses up until the end of Week 2 of each semester by completing an online form. Students may be placed on a waiting list for courses that are full.

The information on this page is not applicable to 2024-25 enrolments and will be updated in due course.

Course change requests

Please note this guidance is subject to change ahead of the 2024-25 Academic Year. If you have a question not listed here, please speak to your Student Adviser or email us at sps.pre-selection@ed.ac.uk.