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How big is the jump up from undergrad to Masters in terms of workload??

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(edited 9 years ago)

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Reply 1
Original post by loyan
Basically in terms of exam preparation do people usually go through a book or two and the lecture notes and then practice using past papers? Or it it much more difficult than undergrad level?

In terms of undergrad level most of my revision (same course but at undergrad level at a different uni) was done using past exam papers and lecture notes and seminar questions and was enough to get ~80% overall. The questions change from past papers but the structure and method for answering most questions are usually very similar if you know what you're doing.

I know grading at postgraduate level is more strict but in terms of the content that's likely to come up in exams, are they more or less similar to those that came in the papers before or are exams usually have completely different questions to previous ones?

Also more specific, I'm due to start the course MSc in Accounting and Finance at LSE in October and wanted some advice from people who've done the course before regarding the above in addition to how it is at other places.

Thanks.


I don't think the step up is normally that big. Masters degrees at some universities use modules from 3rd/4th year undergraduate courses, so the difficulty is essentially the same. I'm sure it varies from subject to subject and from place to place though, as does the difficulty of undergraduate courses.
Reply 2
Huge apparently. You have about 2/3 months for your dissertation o.o;
You will probably have to do a lot of your own reading and self study. A lot more assessments may be essay style so there's less spoon-feeding. They're more about your ideas, thoughts and analysis. The dissertation is certainly longer. I think masters degrees are a lot more intensive as well.
Original post by Shelly_x
Huge apparently. You have about 2/3 months for your dissertation o.o;


This is the main 'hard' part. It's not like an undergrad project that you a get whole year for, and it can be just as hard.
Reply 5
Work load - Slightly more intense than final year undergrad
Content - About the same as final year undergrad

As someone has suggested, it's really just a chance for you to explore more topics and enhance your critical/analytical thinking.
Reply 6
I think it depends on the university and the subject. The best way to know is to take graduate level classes during your last undergraduate year, so that you know what you are getting into. It also heavily depends on your background, graduate school may even be a step down in difficulty if you switch to an easier subject, e.g. economics or applied statistics after pure mathematics. Each class will demand more work, the assignments will generally be longer, but you also generally take less classes each semester of graduate study.
Can anyone tell me, are Masters more focused in subjects, and require more understanding? Because I've been rather disillusioned with my degree so far, there's still the crappy "memorise XYZ" modules which I thought I'd seen the last of in GCSE :s-smilie:

Bits of it have been about understanding and thinking, and I do well in those, but I just don't want to do these learn-by-rote modules any longer..
Reply 8
Original post by Architecture-er
Can anyone tell me, are Masters more focused in subjects, and require more understanding? Because I've been rather disillusioned with my degree so far, there's still the crappy "memorise XYZ" modules which I thought I'd seen the last of in GCSE :s-smilie:

Bits of it have been about understanding and thinking, and I do well in those, but I just don't want to do these learn-by-rote modules any longer..


Well let's face it any subject involves rote learning. You can't operate in any field without having in mind at all times the fundamentals.
Reply 9
can someone explain to me what a dissertation is? is it just a project? like a PhD? (this may sound stupid, but i genuinely don't know)
Reply 10
Original post by ReTurd
can someone explain to me what a dissertation is? is it just a project? like a PhD? (this may sound stupid, but i genuinely don't know)


It is significantly shorter than a PhD and is completed in 2-3 months rather than 2-3 years. It may or may not include original material. Basically it is a long paper about some advanced aspect of your subject. For instance it may involve reproducing some analysis on a new dataset or something like that.
(edited 12 years ago)
Reply 11
Original post by Mbob
I don't think the step up is normally that big. Masters degrees at some universities use modules from 3rd/4th year undergraduate courses, so the difficulty is essentially the same. .


Original post by ghanglish
Work load - Slightly more intense than final year undergrad
Content - About the same as final year undergrad


Don't you find it a rip-off they are doing this to people?


Original post by Ghost6
It is significantly shorter than a PhD and is completed in 2-3 months rather than 2-3 years. It may or may not include original material. Basically it is a long paper about some advanced aspect of your subject.


The two posts I quoted above are true, so this would be wrong I'm afraid.
(edited 12 years ago)
Original post by Architecture-er
Can anyone tell me, are Masters more focused in subjects, and require more understanding? Because I've been rather disillusioned with my degree so far, there's still the crappy "memorise XYZ" modules which I thought I'd seen the last of in GCSE :s-smilie:

Bits of it have been about understanding and thinking, and I do well in those, but I just don't want to do these learn-by-rote modules any longer..



And which course are you doing?
Reply 13
Original post by Architecture-er
Can anyone tell me, are Masters more focused in subjects, and require more understanding? Because I've been rather disillusioned with my degree so far, there's still the crappy "memorise XYZ" modules which I thought I'd seen the last of in GCSE :s-smilie:

Bits of it have been about understanding and thinking, and I do well in those, but I just don't want to do these learn-by-rote modules any longer..


Visit the Uni first and see how they conduct the lectures. You would know because I would think universities have their own approach.
Reply 14
Original post by Ghost6
It is significantly shorter than a PhD and is completed in 2-3 months rather than 2-3 years. It may or may not include original material. Basically it is a long paper about some advanced aspect of your subject. For instance it may involve reproducing some analysis on a new dataset or something like that.


ok, thanks. I heard that a PhD is about 60,000 characters or words ( i cant remember) which is about a book, but i know it may vary quite a bit.
roughly how much would be the range be for a dissertation?
Reply 15
Original post by ReTurd
ok, thanks. I heard that a PhD is about 60,000 characters or words ( i cant remember) which is about a book, but i know it may vary quite a bit.
roughly how much would be the range be for a dissertation?


The number of pages/words depends on the subject. A typical math PhD dissertation is only about a 100 pages long. Humanities dissertations are significantly longer, sometimes over 1000 pages.
Reply 16
Original post by kka25

The two posts I quoted above are true, so this would be wrong I'm afraid.


I suppose it depends on the meaning you give to "advanced". To my knowledge master's dissertations often consist in the application of methods learned in one of the graduate classes or some kind of literature review of recent contributions. Perhaps some combination of the above.
Reply 17
Original post by ReTurd
ok, thanks. I heard that a PhD is about 60,000 characters or words ( i cant remember) which is about a book, but i know it may vary quite a bit.
roughly how much would be the range be for a dissertation?


Most likely words, definitely not characters

My Masters thesis was 10,000 words, but I only ended up writing a bit over 7,000.

Masters theses usually range between 8-12,000 max
Reply 18
Original post by kka25

Don't you find it a rip-off they are doing this to people?


Perhaps, it depends. The idea of a Masters is to give you in depth knowledge of a particular aspect of a subject, so it might be appropriate to use certain modules from undergraduate courses. I wouldn't expect it to be exclusively like that though.

The fourth year of a science degree is the 'masters' year, so I don't see a huge problem with overlapping content. Most people wouldn't do 4 year undergraduate and then a stand alone masters on top.
Reply 19
Original post by Mbob
Perhaps, it depends. The idea of a Masters is to give you in depth knowledge of a particular aspect of a subject, so it might be appropriate to use certain modules from undergraduate courses. I wouldn't expect it to be exclusively like that though.

The fourth year of a science degree is the 'masters' year, so I don't see a huge problem with overlapping content.


To be honest, I don't see how doing a 3rd and 4th year degree would be consider an in depth knowledge in a particular subject. This wouldn't be fair to those who have done their BSc for 4 years. I can say as well it might be rather patronizing and confusing for them to repeat a structure and environment that they are already familiar with but only the content is slightly changed - so how is this fair for them? what's so advanced about it?
Once you enter a course, you would want to do the subject with the person or people who have something in common with you (which is; graduated with a degree!), and not grouped you with people who have not yet graduated and are still cliquey with their besties - I don't mean to offend anyone though. Furthermore, the 3rd and 4th year subjects might be tied with the 1st year and 2nd year subjects that the postgraduate students are not familiar with but the undergraduates of that institution are already familiar with. So, the lecturers might just skip some content and this would lead the outside new students to be confused and the home students to go faster - is this fair? No.

This one particular institution that I observed had the nerve to compare their MEng and MSc performance together. I would say of course the MEng students would have a higher probability of performing better because they are following the institution's own content, where the MSc students need to struggle and adapt to the newer content and play catch-up with the current MEng students.

Most people wouldn't do 4 year undergraduate and then a stand alone masters on top.


This only applies to most European degrees, not US or others as well.

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