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parent: Educational standards: USA/Europe/College+

Re: Educational standards: USA/Europe/College+ by Kid on 2004-02-08 09:51:05

I'm not sure I quite understand what you mean (Is this part of the quiz?). That sentence beginning 'Indebting myself' and ending 'by the Brits' doesn't read to have an active verb, and as such doesn't scan as making any sense to me (Sorry, I've been reading a grammar book all afternoon).
If you're looking for an assessment of - for example - the amounts of work, and the amounts of contact time different students are expected to have...which is what I think then I can give you my experience.

Every student in the UK has different demands on them placed by a lot of different sources. Myself? I can speak for. My 3 year uni course worked like this
Year One Essentially an arse around. I had about 12 contact hours a week - but only because of 6 for French, otherwise it would have been 6 in all, I think. I didn't do Maths and it was a long time ago. In that, there were 3 essays for each of the 6 units, 2 of which counted to the end credits. Other than that, work was down to the individual except French, which relied on regular homework each week, a bit like school. All anyone needed was 36% to pass the year, and though I got 55ish%, I didn't really try at all, it was just getting used to the system.
Year Two This was where it all went wrong for me. Contact time was down to about 5 hours a week, and - to my credit - I worked a load of time outside that, about 20 in all...maybe I could've done more, but I chose some bad things, and other things didn't work out for me. Same with the essays, but they were longer than the previous year (All 3000-5000 words, and one that was 7000). Before Christmas, things were going really badly for me, and I actually failed a unit (32% - despite handing in...because we worked on it together...the same piece of work overall as two of my coursemates...now my housemates...they got 57% or something. More of this later). Nothing improved until Easter, and my overall year average was 49%. (In simple terms this is a 3rd, below a 2:2). So, ultimately, my fate was sealed at the end of this year. Little did I know until about Christmas of my 3rd year that I could have resat the unit I failed, but I went to a university that wouldn't tell us such things.
Third Year. Same as second year, but I worked less hard, knowing I wasn't going to come out of it well anyway. However, my grades picked up. The work was longer, too. A dissertation of a (poxy) 7,000 words, and I could've easily done twice that, and one piece that I actually wrote around 25,000 for and had to cut down and still ended up being my best piece of work overall. At Christmas I was averaging over 60, and would've carried that forward but the guy who failed me that unit seemed to take offence at me (I'm not bitter or angry anymore, more just upset) and arbitrarily gave me 10 marks less for every piece of work I did than everyone else. And we did actually hand in the same piece of work 3 times, and each time I came out 10 marks down.

So my experience wasn't the best. I found working hard (ultimately) is its own reward, and that it doesn't matter how hard you work if you pick the wrong things to do. Also, if this wasn't the question you wanted answering you've had a long read for no reason, so sorry.

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