Are public universities in the UK required to follow the UK NARIC guidelines in assessing the qualifications of foreign PhD applicants? I recently learned about the National Recognition Information Centre for the United Kingdom (UK NARIC). It's a UK agency that assesses international academic qualifications.
According to UK NARIC, a Master's degree from my country is at best equivalent to a British Bachelor's Degree with Honours. Thus, it seems that before I can apply to a PhD program in the UK, I will have to complete another Master's degree in the said country.
My question is, are all public universities in the UK required to follow the UK NARIC guidelines in evaluating the academic credentials of prospective PhD applicants? Or, can these universities still opt to assess PhD applications on a case-by-case basis?
Thanks in advance for your answers!
No. Universities (almost all UK universities are public) in the UK are not bound to follow any standard or rules when evaluating prospective PhD applicants. Even the requirement for a Master's degree at all is at the discretion of the admissions panel (in fact at least half of the students have supervised had only Bachelor's degrees).