Astrophysics with Foundation Year BSc (Hons)

University of Keele

Foundation Year

Our Foundation Year provides an excellent alternative route to Keele, providing a unique opportunity to better prepare for your chosen degree, and with guaranteed entry onto your undergraduate course once you successfully complete your Foundation Year. This extra year of study can improve your academic skills, expand your subject knowledge, give you a better understanding of higher education and, perhaps most importantly of all, build your confidence. On the Keele Foundation Year, you'll study on campus, joining our undergraduate community from the outset, with access to all the facilities and support that you'd get as an undergraduate student at Keele.

International Students

Astrophysics Combined Honours Programmes

Astrophysics is offered within combined honours programmes only. This means you will have the opportunity to broaden your knowledge by studying astrophysics alongside another subject area.

In astrophysics you will apply physics to understanding how the universe works and you could possibly explore questions like 'Is there an Earth-like planet around another star?' 'Is there a black hole at the centre of every galaxy?' And 'Why is the expansion of the Universe accelerating?'

Why choose Astrophysics at Keele?

• Professional accreditation pathway option
• Develop your practical skills in Keele's state-of-the-art Central Science Laboratories
• Gain the quantitative and analytic skills needed for analysing data and solving problems
• Personalise your degree by choosing from a variety of optional modules

Our Astrophysics combined honours programmes are underpinned by a core physics curriculum as set out by the Institute of Physics. This includes the fundamentals of classical and quantum mechanics, electromagnetism, optics, thermodynamics, solid state, atomic and nuclear physics, together with the mathematics that is used to describe them. Later in your degree you will have the option of studying topics such as cosmology, binary stellar systems and exoplanets, black holes and gravitational waves.

We have our own observatory here at Keele that students on this combined honours programme can get involved with on a volunteer basis with the potential to learn some astronomical techniques.

About Keele

Keele University was established in 1949 by the former Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University. Founded to meet the needs of a changing world, Keele has always had a pioneering vision to be a different kind of university.

We excel in both teaching and research, with some of the most satisfied students in England, and research that is changing lives for the better at a regional, national and global level.

Our beautiful 600-acre campus is one of the biggest in Britain – but all the most important services and facilities are on your doorstep, with accommodation, teaching spaces, facilities including a medical centre, sports centre and pharmacy, and a range of shops, eateries and entertainment venues – including the Students’ Union – clustered around the centre.

Accredited by the Institute of Physics (IOP) for the purpose of partially meeting the educational requirement for Chartered Physicist.