What (and When) is University Reading Week? A Student’s Guide

Between all the new people and adjusting to the new level of independence, starting out at university was pretty overwhelming. Having just started my first year at university in September, it’s been a lot trying to get my head around everything—especially just trying to figure out how the semesters work.

However, with the help of some friends in older years and a lot of research, I got there in the end. We’re here to make sure that you do too, without all the effort and confusion along the way. In this article, we’ll be shining some light on one of the most confusing parts of the university academic year: reading weeks.

Keep reading to discover everything you need to know about reading weeks. From when they are, who they’re for and how you should spend them (and a few things not to do).

What is university reading week?

When you first start university, there’s a lot to figure out—and, ironically, much of it isn’t from the reading you’re assigned. For me and many other students, reading week was something very uncertain and slightly confusing because it varies at between universities.

At university, a reading week is a period where students are given time off for a week during the semester. If you’re comparing it to college, it’s somewhat like a half-term holiday—but there are some important differences.

The purpose of a reading week, as the name suggests, is to give you a chance to do reading and other work for your course. This is particularly to start or maybe finish any assignments that you have, or to get ahead of the game and get prepared for the next one.

Learn more about reading weeks in this article from UCL.

When is university reading week?

Reading weeks vary for each university and each university course. Some universities have a reading week in each semester, others only have one throughout the academic year, and some universities or courses don’t have reading weeks at all.

If your university does have one, in the first semester, this will normally be sometime within the last few weeks of October, to the first few weeks of November. For the 2024/25 academic year, some examples of semester one reading week dates were as follows:

If your university has one in semester two, this will typically fall around February. However, exactly when this will be is dependent on your university’s policies. Learn more in this article from UCL.

Do all courses and universities have a reading week?

Not all universities offer reading weeks and even those that do may not offer them to students on all courses. It fully depends on your university and their policies.

For example, I’m a student at Newcastle University. At my university, in particular medicine and dentistry students don’t get a reading week, but most others do. Whereas, when my sister went to Edge Hill University, only law students got a reading week, until they changed policies in her final year and gave everyone a reading week.

If you do have a reading week, you will probably be told about it by your lecturers and seminar leaders, as they will most likely mention it. Plus, you should be able to find out on your personal timetable.

Although, if you want to find out about other types of students, it might be best to have a look at your university’s website.

Postgraduate students typically don’t get a reading week. As reading weeks are a break from teaching, research students are automatically not given one. Taught students also usually don’t have a week off; instead, their timetables may be slightly adjusted.

For example, one of my friends on a taught master’s programme has to complete a placement while other students are on reading weeks.

Is university reading week a holiday?

The main difference between reading week and half term break is that half term is a time of rest in the middle of the school term, but a reading week isn’t. Reading weeks are not designed as holidays, but as a chance for students to actually do some work.

Rather than being seen as a holiday, reading week is more of a reflection of the independence you gain at university, serving as a period for self-study and independent work. To a degree, it’s more of an extended self-study period than a holiday.

Learn more about this by checking out this Think Student article.

Despite not being designed as a holiday, many students do use it as one. For some this is in its entirety, while others balance the period as a holiday and a chance to do some work.

As long as you can ensure you’re staying on top of your workload and can say that you’ve used this period to help with that, there’s no real problem in having this week to relax. After all, one of the best ways to avoid getting burnt out is to take breaks and to enjoy any time off that you have.

You can learn more about burnout and how to deal with it in this Think Student article.

What should you be doing during reading week?

Ideally, during reading week you should be keep the focus and continue studying. Some of the things that you can do during this time include the following:

• Do some reading: If you have required reading to do, do it. If not, you could still have a look at some recommended reading to ensure that you know a bit more about your subject area.
• Get some coursework done: If you have any assignments, it’s a good idea to get a significant amount done while you don’t have anything else on. Even if you haven’t learnt enough to finish this work, you could still start planning out your points and find sources to support it.
• Fill in notes from your lectures and seminars: In lectures and seminars, it can be easy to miss important things that are said. In this week, you have time to rewatch any recordings you have access to or just go back through PowerPoints and other materials.
• Revise content: Reading weeks fall a good way into the semester and so you’ve probably covered quite a lot of content. To help make exams and assessments easier, you can revise this content and make revision materials for it.
• Additional work: Some departments at university will also set you some additional work to complete during the week. This can come in several forms, such as formative/ mock assessments, fieldwork or other forms. For some, this will be optional, while others will be compulsory.

What do students really do during reading week?

I’m not here to lie to you and to tell you that every student is studying every minute of every day during their reading week. While you should be getting some work done to help you for the rest of the semester, you realistically aren’t going to be spending all of your time doing that.

During reading week, I personally did a lot of relaxing. While I was getting some work done, I only did a couple of hours work per day. During the rest of the day, I was either sleeping in or simply enjoying my time off.

I can’t say this is the perfect model, but it did ensure some balance between my personal life and my studies.

Even though it’s only a week, lots of students go home, especially if they’re from nearby areas. While I didn’t, most of my friends did, and I found that accommodations, the library, and other parts of campus were virtually empty.

Other students, especially international ones, may travel instead, as it can be cheaper than going all the way home. This may be around the UK, for example, one of my friends went to Edinburgh for a couple of days.

Or it could be in countries with pretty cheap flights, such as Spain, France or even Switzerland. One of my flatmates spent the week in Spain with her family.

You can look at this article from King’s College London for some travel recommendations for reading week.

Does reading week actually help?

While reading week does give you a bit of a break, it can also be challenging to make good use of it. Due to this, reading week can only be helpful if you make it so.

Look at the following table to consider some of the benefits and drawbacks of reading week:

As you can see, reading week is primarily more beneficial than not. Even if you just use it as a week off, it does still give you time to rest and better adjust to university life, especially in your first year.

You can look at this article by UCAS for more on the pros and cons of reading week.

How to spend reading week productively

As reading week can only be beneficial if you allow it to be, making sure that you spend it productively is an absolute must. However, figuring out how to do this can be very difficult, especially as a new student.

Having learnt this the hard way, after a few very unproductive days during my reading week, here are some tips for you. Check out the following list for ways to make the most of reading week and spend it as productively as possible:

• Get up on time: You don’t quite need to be getting up as early as you would for your lectures but getting up at a reasonable time, allows you to not fall out of routine too much. Plus, it means that you can make the most out of your days.
• Schedule in work: Try to set a specific time to do work, whether this is in the morning, evening or whenever you work best. It’s a good idea to have a plan for when you do work, so that you’re more likely to actually do it then and can properly balance it with anything else you want to do.
• Don’t work all day: While you should be doing some work in your reading week, doing work all day and every day will only be counterproductive and may even lead to burnout. Plus, it can be incredibly demotivating and, in my case, meant I didn’t actually do it when I was supposed to.
• Do something fun: Break up the monotonous studying routine by doing something fun. You may want to go watch a film, visit a local market or go cafe hopping with some friends.
• Treat yourself: Without the structure of a teaching week, it can be difficult to motivate yourself to actually study. Treating yourself can help boost your motivation and can be anything from studying at a cafe and getting your favourite drink to getting take out at the end of the week as long as you meet all of your goals.
• Get enough sleep: One of the most important things you can do is getting the right amount of sleep. As a university student, it can be very easy to have a messed-up sleep schedule. It can be a good idea to try and fix this during your reading week.