to fellow uni students, particularly those in the UK

[ambientlight]

my undergrad experience:
- two courses a term (out of eight/nine final courses)
- one to two essays a week
- tutorials with one tutor and zero to two other students
- no coursework; exams count for everything

my postgrad experience:
- four courses a term (= all the courses i am taking)
- no regular essays (except coursework which counts towards my degree)
- discussion seminars with up to 20 students o_o;;
- no exams; coursework counts for everything.

i am getting the impression that my undergrad experience was an anomaly (though this isn't new to me), and that my postgrad experience actually resembles that of the standard UK undergrad, maybe. except that undergrads have exams.

thoughts? i really can't get over the facts that 1) i don't have regular essays, 2) seminars are so huge. how does one have a coherent/useful discussion in such large groups? :|

Comments

[erushi.livejournal.com]

I did four or five modules simultaneously every year (i.e. Module A on Monday, Module B on Tuesday etc), and I still am in my postgrad year. 6 modules, to be exact. We usually did one essay that didn't count to the final grade per subject module per term, though this itself could vary between modules (some might only have one essay for the entire year; others might have on eessay, and one dissertation which would count towards the final grade), and they were all usually due at about the same time. Lectures were 100-200 to a teacher, seminars 50-70 to a teacher, tutorials 10-15 per teacher. I don't think coursework ever counted for us, unless we're talking about aforementioned dissertations. We stil have exams.

[ambientlight.livejournal.com]

hm, interesting. my postgrad experience really does seem like your undergrad one, then, except that my one-essay-per-module-per-term does count towards my final grade.

did you find such large tutorials useful? i had my first seminar today and was frustrated by how easily the group were led off-topic, and by the difficulty of dealing rigorously with specific points as a result.

[erushi.livejournal.com]

i must confess that i was actually quite envious of oxfords small tutorial size. it's a little difficult to say just how useful larger tutorials are. the size does mean that you can get away with not doing your reading, but most probably think that too (and really, trying to do all the reading for 4 or 5 different modules and your tutorial reading is really a bit much), and even if you have done the reading and know the answers, you probably wouldn't really want to volunteer as well as it often feels quite odd when everyone else isn't volunteering anything. i'd say how useful they are really depends on how useful you want to make it, i guess?

though much depends on the teachers too. some teachers soldier on, and after a while, people do start speaking, so you get stuff. other times, the teacher just sort-of talks at you in between many Significant Pauses, and there is much awkward silence to be had. i've had teachers who themselves veer off-point, much to the frustration of students; teachers who just read out of a textbook and would ignore you if you brought something up relevant to the tutorial but not according to her outline plan (e.g. mentioning something that might suit point 3 when she's on point 2)... i suspect a large class creates a distance between the tutors and the students, such that it's much easier to be operating on different tracks in a larger tutorial than it would be in the conversation-like setting of a smaller tutorial.

[ambientlight.livejournal.com]

the size does mean that you can get away with not doing your reading
haha, yeah - coupled with the lack of essays (and of exams!!), there is very little incentive for me to do much reading, unless the topic is relevant to my dissertation/i'm interested in a topic/i intend to write my coursework essay on a topic. :|

the seminar today didn't have a problem with silences - quite the opposite. if anything i felt that some people were being irrelevant when they spoke, but clearly there is no nice way to say this...

"how useful they are really depends on how useful you want to make it" - but what can one do to influence large group discussions except try to contribute? ._.

[acanti.livejournal.com]

your postgrad experience sounds a lot more like my undergrad experience than your undergrad experience! and, yes-- that is why I hate tutorials because they're large and more often than not, there is no quality to them. :| I gave up on them quite quickly? I fare better having ad hoc discussions with my coursemates, instead.

[ambientlight.livejournal.com]

hee. it is so strange! though it must be stranger for those UK undergrads who have joined this course and are finding it to be more of the same.

i don't have lectures, so seminars are all i have, really. good point about ad hoc discussions, though. i need to make friends. ;_;

[onlacienega.livejournal.com]

where are you doing postgrad/what are you studying? :) i wish i could prolong being a student, but i'm now an office drone

[ambientlight.livejournal.com]

i'm doing a one-year MPhil in Politics at Cambridge, mainly to put off Real Work for a final year (and because my financial sponsor allows me to do so). how is office drone life? i have heard that some people enjoy it. ._.

[onlacienega.livejournal.com]

it is nice to get a paycheck, and nice to feel productive, but otherwise, life is dull, flat, boring, depressing, etc. help me!!!

i would love to put off Real Work. i'm assuming you were either sponsored by the government of sg or some sort of big company bonded scholarship... that's what happens in msia anyway. i refused to do bonded work because there is no way i am going back there until ready... also, thank you princeton for your financial aid.

hence, however, office drone...

tell me more about postgrad life. i wish to live vicariously through you. which college? do youhear the king's choir? i'm obsessed with chapel choirs now that i've left mine.

[ambientlight.livejournal.com]

:( well, at least you feel productive? in all my summer internships with said sponsor i frequently feel useless and surplus to requirements. :D;; i guess that's why people have non-work distractions like fandom...

yeah, company bonded scholarship indeed.

wellll, as evidenced by this post, i'm not very happy about the intellectual component of postgrad life! but cambridge has some amazing architecture, and the lifestyle is pretty laidback when one's not doing readings.

i'm at darwin college: graduate-only and very young and hence not very stereotypically cambridge-y. the college buildings are a mix of victorian (or maybe georgian) and 1960s. we have a parlour with old-fashioned furniture and a reading room with nice squishy sofas, though. also a nice location on the river, and our own tiny flotilla of punts.

i haven't been to hear king's college's choir, nope - i'm not really a choir person. i guess i probably should, though...

[onlacienega.livejournal.com]

oh my goodness, that so describes summer internships, though. i used to sit there facebooking most of the day and waiting for the hours to tick by. ....not that different from working life, except that sometimes i'm scurrying to finish things and my eyeballs feel like they're going to fall out of my head from staring at excel spreadsheets.

to be honest with you, corporate life is incredibly depressing. so not what i'm truly interested in (which would be something creative) but as an Asian Kid i feel obligated to make stacks of money so that i can buy my parents a new house &etc.

victorian and georgian? sounds lovely. i was at a grad college in oxford (the grad residence of hertford) which was also on the river (the Isis i think?) and that was lovely.

[ambientlight.livejournal.com]

haha yeah, so many hours just killing time on the internet...

i'm sorry to hear that about corporate life. maybe you could make the stacks of money quickly and then find time to do creative stuff on the side/afterwards. >_>;

so you were technically at hertford, then? did they have a nice MCR? i didn't realise that hertford had accommodation on the river, that must have been nice.

[hopei.livejournal.com]

my undergraduate experience:
- 1-4 courses a term, depending on tripos, plus ongoing coursework (if applicable)
- 5-16 (!) essays a term, not always evenly spread out, though supervisors are understanding about extensions
- tutorials with 1-3 students a tutor; occasional seminars with 7-15 students a tutor; unexamined practicals/talks with variable group sizes
- core course involves a written exam. some courses are examined via coursework, but you decide which courses to take (some people prefer sitting for exams, others would rather do coursework)

however, i don't think mine was a 'typical' experience either, because my department was small.

btw, i was wondering if you might know much about graduate life at oxford (teaching quality, academic support, social life etc), particularly in the politics and geography depts? thanks!

[ambientlight.livejournal.com]

thanks! i find the cambridge exam system pretty fascinating - i had no idea that you had separate marks each year and no real 'overall degree'. or so i've been told. and the math exam system is just... something else.

as for graduate life at oxford - do you mean mphils? i actually know more oxford dphils than mphils, so i'm afraid i can't help much. there's definitely a good graduate social scene, though, ranging from intellectual-type things to bops and the like. i think graduate teaching quality is rather suspect everywhere, to be honest.

i'll try asking around, and let you know if i find out anything useful!

[hopei.livejournal.com]

by 'overall degree', do you mean the fact that the final degree grade is based solely on the last year's results? because of the tripos system, i think people sometimes state their part one results on their cvs too. i have to say that i know very little about the maths exam system, though!

thanks for the information, and for asking around! :) i was actually wondering more about what life is like for mphil-dphils. do you think that graduate life at oxford and cambridge is pretty much the same - what are the key differences?

have read horror stories about the supervision situation (http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2008/apr/29/postgraduate.highereducation) don't know how true this is though. from what i know, much probably depends on department and supervisor/s..

[ambientlight.livejournal.com]

oh, i heard from some people that there isn't technically a final degree grade, and that people just state the last year's results if asked. i guess in practice it's the same, though.

as for the maths exam system, i'm intrigued by how you can basically choose how many questions you want to answer in the exam. :D;;

i doubt there are many general differences in graduate life in oxford vs cambridge - it probably comes down to the departments and the individual supervisors, as you point out. i don't think my oxford dphil friends (economics, politics) ever complained about their supervisors, but then again they never really talked about their supervisors at all; i get the feeling supervisors are more important for mphils, as dphils are expected to be even more independent.

about that article: college advisers aren't supposed to provide anything other than pastoral care, so the article's criticism on that point is pretty misplaced. though i guess the larger point stands: you're not likely to get academic support from anyone other than your assigned supervisor. i think that holds true in both oxford and cambridge.

[hopei.livejournal.com]

i never knew that! :p so how does marking work?

hmm, thanks for that! i get the same impression from the grad students i know, i.e. that much of graduate work is self-directed (though i think many undergrads, particularly in arts/social science subjects, would say the same about their experience). out of curiosity, what made you want to apply to cambridge instead of a london university, or even oxford again, for your graduate degree?

thanks for your opinion, i was wondering what you would think of the article. (i don't know if the article confused the role of 'college supervisor' with that of 'academic supervisor'...)

[ambientlight.livejournal.com]

i think they get x number of marks for each correct question, so you could in theory get several times as many marks as the next person. and then i think there's some complicated system whereby your degree class is determined by how many 'alpha' and 'beta' marks you get. it's quite mad.

i applied to cambridge because i didn't particularly want to stay in oxford for another year (and the oxford mphils i'd have considered were all 2 years long, which wouldn't work for my scholarship), and because london, while lovely to visit, is too much of a Big City for me. i heard later that LSE (the other place i applied to) has pretty horrible teaching for its postgrad courses, so that worked out okay.

(yes, that kind of seems the case.)

have you got plans for postgrad, then?

[hopei.livejournal.com]

ha, i never knew that!

were you set on doing a research mphil, rather than a one-year taught msc?

yes, hopefully will do some form of postgrad at some point, but it's all pretty hazy at the moment. i never knew that about lse, but what i've heard is that it's good in terms of employability (i don't know the exact reason/s behind this though). i know what you mean about london, i always have mixed feelings about it - there's so much to do and yet the crowds can just drive you mad.

[ambientlight.livejournal.com]

nope - it's sad but i'm not actually that much of an Academia Person? the taught course probably suits me better, in the sense that i have a short attention span and would probably get bored if i were left alone with a project of my own for one whole year. ^^;

ah, good luck then! as for employability, i guess it does depend on the course you do - like, some masters courses are probably seen as 'vanity masters', as opposed to something traditionally "useful" like... i don't know, accountancy or something. but it certainly won't look bad on one's CV, i guess.

london - yes, exactly.