University of Reading

Reading began in 1892 as an extension college of Christ Church, Oxford, and received its royal charter in 1926 - the only university charter granted in Britain between the two world wars. It has kept an unusually green identity for a university half an hour from London: the main Whiteknights campus is a 130-hectare parkland estate with a lake, woodland and its own conservation area about two miles from the town centre, while the Institute of Education occupies the older London Road site and Henley Business School's executive campus sits at Greenlands, a country house on the Thames near Henley. Its strongest fields are distinctive rather than generic. Meteorology and climate science at Reading is one of the largest groupings of its kind anywhere, embedded in the weather and climate research cluster that has grown up around the town. Agriculture, food science and nutrition are long established, as are archaeology, typography and graphic communication - a department with no real equivalent elsewhere in the UK - psychology, and real estate and planning. Henley Business School, created when the university merged with Henley Management College in 2008, is triple-accredited, and its ICMA Centre runs trading-floor-based finance master's degrees that draw a large number of Indian applicants. Practically, Reading prices international postgraduate tuition in two clear bands - a lower rate for non-laboratory subjects and a higher one for programmes with significant laboratory or workshop content - which makes budgeting far easier than at universities quoting a different figure for every course. Certain Henley and ICMA programmes carry a premium above those bands, so check the business school's own fee list before you commit. The town is expensive by non-London standards but sits in the Thames Valley technology corridor, with Microsoft, Oracle, Cisco and a dense cluster of consultancies within commuting distance, plus fast mainline and Elizabeth line services into central London.

At a glance

Institution

Public

Typical intakes in UK

Sep, Jan

Typically for UK universities in this band, a three-year Indian bachelor's degree is accepted for master's entry, usually at a 2:1 equivalent — commonly 60-70%, or CGPA 6.5-7.5/10, with the higher end normally asked of graduates from less selective Indian institutions, and some courses in this band accepting a 2:2 (around 55-60%). English is typically IELTS 6.5 overall with 6.0 in each band, though some subjects ask for 7.0 or a higher per-band score. This is general guidance for UK entry rather than this university's published rule — your Vibedu counsellor confirms the exact requirement for your subject, free.

Indicative for international postgraduate applicants — your counsellor confirms the exact cut-offs and English scores for your chosen programme, free.