Why She Gave Up a £9,000 Scholarship to Study Marketing at Bath

Updated 2026/10/16

I’m very happy to have Sabina here today. She graduated from the Department of Public Relations and Advertising at Shih Hsin University, and she’s sharing what it was like to apply for a marketing master’s in the UK. The post is packed with practical detail, and I hope it helps you get through your own applications the way she did.

MSc Marketing – University of Bath

The University of Bath MSc Marketing ranks 40th in the world and 9th in the UK in the QS Business Master’s Rankings 2023: Marketing. According to the official website, the program suits students with a background in business, management or marketing who want to build a career in marketing, and the teaching leans toward practical experience. Bath designed the curriculum with input from marketing leaders at a range of organizations, so students learn the skills employers actually want. To prepare students for a marketing career, the program focuses on three core elements of modern marketing:

• Marketing to consumers and other important stakeholders
• Market research and analysis
• Marketing and its role in society

Students learn through a mix of teaching methods, including:

• Interactive Lectures
• Case Studies
• Seminar Presentations
• Group Project Work

Before: University and Internships

When did you know you were passionate about marketing?

In high school I realized I loved looking at all kinds of advertising case studies, so when I applied to university, advertising-related programs were my first choice. Through a series of accidents I ended up studying animation for a year, but in my second year I passed the transfer exam and moved to the Department of Public Relations and Advertising at Shih Hsin University.

The department’s teaching is built around three tracks: advertising, public relations and marketing. I found the other courses just as interesting as the advertising ones, so I decided to keep going in this field.

I was also applying straight out of undergrad. I had internship experience, but that isn’t the same as working full time, and I still didn’t understand every role in the industry well enough. So I chose the MSc Marketing, which covers a fairly broad range.

What made you want to study abroad?

None of my friends or family had studied abroad, so I’d never realized that after university there was another option besides a Taiwanese graduate school or a job. The idea only came after I interned at a study-abroad consultancy. I saw how much alumni had gained from studying and living overseas, and I started thinking, “Maybe I could try this.”

Just as that small spark was catching, my internship supervisor gave me a market research task. I was to play the role of a student, the consultancy’s target audience, visit other companies for consultations, note what competitors did well and badly, and report back to our consultants so they could better understand students’ needs and feelings.

I used the opportunity to bring my real questions about studying abroad to all these consultations. After hearing advice from nearly ten different consultants, I weighed the pros and cons seriously. I was lucky to have my family’s support, and I decided to go for it.

You were a research assistant on an arts and culture marketing project. How did you get that opportunity, what did you learn, and did it help your application or career?

The project’s supervising professor taught two of my classes, Social Marketing and Integrated Marketing Communications. I liked his teaching style and course content, so when he mentioned the opportunity in class, I volunteered, and I became his research assistant.

The project was about museums and arts marketing in the digital age. My part was mainly market research: taking a large amount of scattered information and organizing it into something structured and logical. Every time I handed in a report, the professor gave me suggestions for revising or improving it, and that training helped a lot in my internships during my third and fourth years.

Digital curation was more advanced overseas, so most of the literature and cases I looked up were in English. That made me more used to reading English texts when I prepared my application documents, and better at filtering huge amounts of information.

You did marketing internships. Did they confirm your passion for marketing, and how did they help your application?

After a year and a half of interning, saying my passion for marketing grew would be a bit grand XD. At work you see some dark sides you never imagined. What I can say is that I’m happy on the marketing path. Or put another way, right now I have no wish to switch to another field.

As for how the internship helped my application: narrowly speaking, experience in a related field definitely counted in my favor. But looking at the whole picture, if I hadn’t taken that internship, I probably would never have thought about studying abroad at all. So that internship gave me both the fishing rod and the fish, and it’s the experience I’m proudest of from my four years at university.

During: The Application

How did you show your strengths and what made you different in your application documents? Any tips for writing strong ones?

I think the order for writing application documents is: CV → SOP → recommendation letters

The CV was the hardest one for me to start. Fitting your experience and strengths onto a single page takes round after round of filtering.

What I did was list everything I’d done since my first year: events, competitions, clubs, talks, internships and so on. Then I picked a few that showed I was a good fit for the program, or that proved I had a strong interest in the subject.

Once you have the outline, dig into each item. I really recommend discussing this stage with people around you. Something you think is ordinary might look impressive to others, and the reverse is also true: an experience you’re proud of might not stand out much, so you can adjust how much detail you give it.

After I finished my outline, I talked it through with Jason for a long time. When you write your documents, try to read them as an outsider would, and don’t pad them with filler. Space is limited, so keep only the strongest points.

What was the hardest part of applying for a UK master’s, and how did you deal with it?

Quite a few of my friends study art and design, and compared with them putting together portfolios, applying to business school programs felt much simpler (interviews are another story, of course). For the documents, once you know clearly why you want to go abroad, what you hope to get out of the master’s and what you plan to do after graduating, you set the overall structure, fill in the content, and finally have a native speaker polish it (I went to Jason XD). It really doesn’t take long. What gave me more of a headache were these two things:

• Recommendation letters

When I started looking for professors, I ranked them first. At the top, of course, were the department head and the teachers of marketing courses. Unfortunately, my top choices weren’t willing to write letters for students going abroad. It wasn’t that I’d done badly at school. It felt more like having the door shut in my face before I’d even knocked 🙂

After five professors turned me down in a row, I settled for an assistant professor in my department who specializes in print advertising design, and an animation teacher I’d gotten to know well during my first year in digital media. Neither had an impressive title, but I was still admitted. So when you look for recommenders, don’t get hung up on titles. A teacher who has actually spent more time with you can describe your strengths in much more detail, instead of writing the same generic letter as everyone else.

• IELTS

I’d neglected English for all four years of university, so suddenly preparing for a test covering listening, speaking, reading and writing was really tough. You only realize how little you know when you need it 🥹. Luckily, at my IELTS class I met a group of friends who were also preparing to study abroad. We often met online and in person to practice speaking, and we even swapped ideas on application documents and portfolios. Only people in the same boat know how rough the trip is, so preparing for IELTS was hard, but at least I wasn’t alone 🥹

I also want to recommend a daily way to improve your spoken English. Two friends and I have a LINE diary group, and every day each of us records a one-minute video in English about something that happened that day. It doesn’t take much time, but English gets rusty unless you use it every day. This small habit improved my speaking a lot. When I look back at my first video now, I just shake my head 🤭

After: Choosing a School, and Reflections

You got offers from 7 UK marketing master’s programs, including a £9,000 scholarship for Lancaster’s Advanced Marketing Management. Why did you give up the scholarship and choose Bath?

Bath was always my first choice. For some reason I just found the city charming and really wanted to live there. So when Lancaster suddenly told me they were giving me a sizable scholarship, my heart still leaned toward Bath, but I couldn’t help wavering a little.

What finally made me say goodbye to Lancaster was a chat with a friend who was also heading to the UK to study. He told me, “To me, that scholarship isn’t £9,000 earned. It’s £9,000 I pay less. And by paying less, I’m surely also missing out on some experiences.”

Going back to why I wanted to study abroad in the first place: besides studying, I hoped to experience local life in the UK and the feel of Europe. Lancaster’s business school has an excellent reputation, but its location and the city’s atmosphere weren’t what I was looking for.

Bath, on the other hand, is well connected. Day to day you can enjoy the historic atmosphere of a World Heritage city, which feels warm and like home. If you want some fun, Bristol, the big city next door, is 15 minutes away by train, and London is only an hour and a half. To me Bath is a little paradise (and Bristol has an airport, so Europe is just a short hop away 🥴). In the end I chose the University of Bath without a second thought.

During your application, how did you gather information to check that a marketing master’s could get you where you wanted to go?

I strongly recommend messaging alumni on LinkedIn for a chat. Almost everyone is happy to answer questions, and one of them even messaged me two months later to ask how my applications went. I asked them a lot about the courses, the feel of the city, school resources and so on. It made my SOP more specific and tailored, and it showed me whether the program matched what I imagined.

Just remember not to expect them to do everything for you!

Settling in: Studying and Living in Bath

Studying

To sum it up in one sentence: “I’m so glad I chose Bath!”

So far I can only talk about the PSE course, but I love the overall atmosphere at the school. The phrase the teachers say most often is “We are here to help you.”

The PSE course is built around Language and Skill, with guest lectures mixed in on academic integrity, critical thinking, presentation skills and so on. I was lucky that both of my teachers are extremely dedicated. When we wrote essays, my Skill teacher’s feedback was almost longer than the essays themselves. They really put in the effort.

Besides regular classes, we have many in-class seminars, where students discuss specific questions with each other while the teacher listens and guides us.

This month of classes showed me how different teaching is in Taiwan and the UK. Taiwanese teachers mostly look at results: a blank answer means you were lazy and skipped the homework. In the UK, when a teacher gives an assignment, I often have all kinds of ideas but don’t know how to organize them. When that happens, I bring my thoughts and questions to class and raise them with the teacher, who then opens them up to other questions and invites the class to brainstorm. The whole process is relaxed, and I never feel guilty about not finishing the assignment.

Daily Life

I lived on my own throughout university and consider myself good at looking after myself, but this was the first time I’d been away from home for so long. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous.

I’ve only been in the UK a little over a month, but so much has happened and I’ve met so many people. Here are the four things I’ve taken away so far:

Have a Thick Skin

It was my first time in Europe, and everything felt new and unfamiliar. In Taiwan I was extremely self-conscious; nobody was going to see me embarrass myself in public. But in the UK there was so much I didn’t know, and the only way to solve problems was to ask. If you don’t get over the embarrassment, things only get more awkward.

When I landed at London Heathrow, my terrible sense of direction meant I couldn’t find any signs for the bus station. Dragging 40 kilos of luggage around the airport got me nowhere, so I asked a security guard nearby. I wasn’t used to native speakers’ speed or the British accent yet, and out of everything he rattled off, I only caught “Go Down.” After that I stumbled along as if I were on a quest, asking person after person until I finally reached the bus station. Another time I was at the supermarket with no signal, so I couldn’t look up a vegetable I didn’t recognize. I asked the British lady next to me, and she ended up teaching me how to cook it.

Then there’s opening a bank account, choosing a phone plan, sending parcels, even negotiating with firefighters when a classmate got stuck in a lift in the middle of the night… So many everyday things require you to speak up. Given how notoriously the British go about things, and how slowly, you simply can’t survive here unless you take the initiative 🙂

Open Minded

My PSE classmates come from Taiwan, Japan, Thailand, China, Hong Kong, India, Turkey and more. I’ve seen classmates who didn’t want to mix with people from certain countries, but talking with people from all these places has taught me a lot. When you meet so many people and ideas that clash with your old values, try to understand them even if you don’t agree. I often found that my own thinking had been too narrow.

British culture and customs are very different from Taiwan’s, and there will be plenty you’re not used to or don’t like. But you’re here now, so make the best of it. Some warm Westerners, men and women alike, always greet you with a big hug. That’s very different from what I grew up with in Taiwan, but in the UK I’m not going to push them away and shout “Don’t touch me!”

You’re going to be here for a whole year, so try to understand the local culture. If you still can’t accept something, you don’t have to force yourself, but don’t shut people out from the start. Take British food. I’d heard for ages that the food here is bad, and after a month I can say from experience that it’s no stereotype. It’s awful, and I really can’t accept it, so I’ve given up and cook at home ¯\(ツ)/¯

Also, try not to compare everything with Taiwan, or you’ll want to book a flight home right away XD (especially when it comes to prices 🥲, though I admit I still sometimes complain about the London Underground by comparing it to the Taipei MRT 🙂

Find a New Rhythm

Arriving somewhere new is always chaotic, but gradually you find your own pace and way of living in the city. I’m a self-styled romantic who loves creating little rituals. Half an hour before bed, I light a candle, write in my journal and have a small glass of red wine, and the tension from the day’s classes melts away for a while. After class I like browsing the supermarket, and walking home hugging a big round sourdough loaf keeps me happy for ages. After sunset I sometimes go to the ground-floor courtyard of another dorm to play with a calico cat that lives there. If I have half a day or more free, I head to Bristol, the big city nearby, and sit by the harbor with a beer. It’s not exactly poetic, but it’s pretty relaxing.

These small things help me split my time clearly between study and rest, so I’m not wound up all the time. Study Hard, Play Hard!

Be yourself

This is the lesson I feel most strongly about. We put so much effort and money into getting here, so don’t waste time on things you don’t enjoy and that don’t mean anything to you.

Networking matters, but that doesn’t mean you have to show up to every social event. Time goes by far faster than I expected. A month went by in the blink of an eye, and during that month I didn’t force myself to do anything I didn’t want to do. I took back control of my life, spent my time where it was worth it, and tried to be someone who takes responsibility for herself.

What advice do you have for other students preparing to apply? If you could do it again, what would you change?

Looking back on the past year of preparation, I think everything happened for a reason. Even the setbacks made me re-examine why I wanted to go abroad and how determined I was. It was really hard at the time, but honestly, there’s nothing I’d change. If I could say one thing to my past self, it would be: “You can actually do this. Stop wasting time doubting yourself and go study your English :)”

What got me through the ups and downs was a group of friends moving forward with me. We wrote our application documents together, took IELTS classes together, got our offers together, finished our IELTS exams together… and now we’re all actually here in the UK. Sometimes it still doesn’t feel real.

I hope you all find friends with the same goal to move forward with. Applying to study abroad isn’t easy, and it tests your persistence. But if even I can be here breathing British air, you can definitely do it too!

Best wishes.