Bachelor of Science (Honours) - Animal Behaviour (Including a Foundation Year)

The combined 4 year programme allows students with lower academic marks, or whose qualifications are not equivalent to British A Levels, to gain the necessary qualifications to proceed to undergraduate study. After completing the Foundation Year, students will be eligible to progress to a number of University of Chester undergraduate programmes.

A key strength of this course is that it is firmly rooted in the biological sciences and adopts a rigorous scientific approach to the study of the behaviour of animals. As well as exploring the behaviour of charismatic animals, we embrace a wide taxonomic range of species and have a good focus on some of the groups less emphasised elsewhere, such as amphibians and invertebrates.

These groups have really interesting behaviour in their own right (cockroaches have personalities for example... and frogs can experience stress...) but are also a crucial part of temperate and tropical ecosystems – understanding their behaviour is vital for wider habitat conservation. Whilst the emphasis is mainly on wild animals students can study behaviour in more managed environments: e.g. determining best husbandry and conservation breeding for endangered animals in zoos; best practice pet welfare; farm animal management. The staff have real enthusiasm for their subject and bring great expertise from their research fields. This work has garnered competitive funding, been featured on a wide range of national and international media (TV, Radio) and won international awards. Hand in hand with the University's fantastic careers services we aim to help students develop genuinely valuable skills to equip them for work in a wide range of fields relating to animal behaviour, or to take their studies further.

• Minimum Level of Education Required: Grade 12 / High School
• Min GPA: 50.0%
• English Proficiency Requirements:
  For direct admission, applicant must be from an English speaking country or meet either of the following English test scores:
  • Min TOEFL iBT: 79 (Min Listening: 17.0, Min Reading: 18.0, Min Speaking: 20.0, Min Writing: 17.0)
  • Min IELTS overall: 6 (Min Listening: 5.5, Min Reading: 5.5, Min Speaking: 5.5, Min Writing: 5.5)
  • Min PTE overall: 61 (Min Listening: 59, Min Reading: 59, Min Speaking: 59, Min Writing: 59)
  Applicants interested in applying for direct admission, but are yet to complete an acceptable language test, can do so, but must provide valid results before receiving a final offer letter.
  For conditional admission, instead of submitting language proficiency test scores, applicant may complete English courses prior to the academicprogram. The length of the English course is determined based on the applicant's level of English proficiency.