If students hold a bachelor’s degree or equivalent, but don’t meet the entry requirements for a master’s, a Pre-Master’s can help them gain a place on a postgraduate degree. For progression to the 1st year of a postgraduate degree at the University of Essex. Course length is determined mainly by students English language level (UKVI IELTS score).

Students on all course lengths take a set of common or similar modules to gain a solid base of skills for university. If their course is longer than 2 terms, students will take additional modules designed to improve one or more of their English language level, academic skills, and basic knowledge of particular subjects.

Master of Science - Big Data and Text Analytics The modern world is witnessing a growth of online data in a variety of forms, including web documents, blogs, social networks, digital libraries and medical records. Much of this data contains valuable information, such as emerging opinions in social networks, search trends from search engines, consumer purchase behaviour, and patterns that emerge from these huge data sources.

The sheer volume of this information means that traditional stand-alone applications are no longer suitable to process and analyze this data. This University of Essex course equips students with the knowledge to contribute to this rapidly emerging area.

Essex gives students hands-on experience with various types of large-scale data and information handling, and starts by providing students with a solid understanding of the underlying technologies, in particular cloud computing and high-performance computing. Students explore areas including: mobile and social application programming, human-computer interaction, computer vision, computer networking, and computer security.

Students also obtain practical knowledge of processing textual data on a large scale in order to turn this data into meaningful information, and have the chance to work on projects that are derived from actual industry needs proposed by Essex's industrial partners.

More than two-thirds of Essex's research is rated ‘world-leading’ or ‘internationally excellent'.

Essex is of the largest and best resourced computer science and electronic engineering schools in the UK. Their work is supported by extensive networked computer facilities and software aids, together with a wide range of test and instrumentation equipment.

Demand for skilled graduates in the areas of big data and data science is growing rapidly in both the public and private sector, and there is a predicted shortage of data scientists with the skills to understand and make commercial decisions based on the analysis of big data.

Recent graduates have progressed to a variety of senior positions in industry and academia, and now work for global companies such as Microsoft as well as regional start-ups, as software developers, development managers and product managers.