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What was your jump from a levels to uni like?

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Original post by john2054
i also have mental health difficulties, and my mode average grade was a third, mainly because the lecturers didn't like me/understand/appreciate me. Good luck. I am actually considering putting a doctorate application for january, at a top london university. Do you think you could do this?


Why do you keep asking me if I think I can do what you've been doing on your degree? I see it as you're just trying to incite an argument. That's like me bringing out one of my machine design questions and asking you if you can design it using calculations and proper engineering justifications.
A-levels to first year, not too bad. Some challenging bits and some okay bits. There were times during the first few week where I wanted to give up and study A-levels again but I stuck with it and felt fine.

First year to second year... I felt a bit lost at sea, really. Some things were just too difficult for me and I lost a lot of motivation. Gutted as well that one of the units I know I'm going to do terribly is no longer compulsory, starting in in 2 years time. :sad:
Wow, all you social science people on this thread really love to throw insults. And you're the ones that spent a large part of your degrees writing essays making arguments? Yet, you can't seem to apply these skills. So let's see:
1) You're not good at doing what you're supposed to know
2) You're wrong about not seeing phenomenon making psychology unique. Physics and Chemistry has lots of things you can't see.
uni is easy compared to a levels
i don't agree with this. not at all
Original post by Ras' Al Ghul
Wow, all you social science people on this thread really love to throw insults. And you're the ones that spent a large part of your degrees writing essays making arguments? Yet, you can't seem to apply these skills. So let's see:
1) You're not good at doing what you're supposed to know
2) You're wrong about not seeing phenomenon making psychology unique. Physics and Chemistry has lots of things you can't see.


I don't think i wrote many essays for my degree. I did write a 9000 word dissertation however. Which i got a 68% for. Essays have a standard structure, university humanities. arts something else altogether i'm afraid.
Original post by Inexorably
Great this was an interesting thread then it turned into the usual STEM elite cool kids vs humanity/social sciences debate as per ****ing usual......................


STEM mustardace

Spoiler

And I'd LOVE to see you reverse engineer a machine.

I feel like I'd have much better luck understanding behavioural science than you figuring out how to reverse engineer a machine with over 200 parts. Note that reverse engineering doesn't mean reassembling.
Original post by john2054
I don't think i wrote many essays for my degree. I did write a 9000 word dissertation however. Which i got a 68% for. Essays have a standard structure, university humanities. arts something else altogether i'm afraid.


And your point is?
Original post by Ras' Al Ghul
Well I've never done a maths degree so I can't say what's harder. Further maths would be the most useful IMO but most places don't have it as a requirement just as a suggestion. The concepts aren't that difficult, unless it's an electrical module, solving the mechanics problems themselves are tricky and it requires very peripheral topics/tricks you may or may not have learnt/forgotten in a level maths.

okay. i'm scared it's going to be boring and i will want to switch to aeronautical but we'll see
Original post by tanyapotter
okay. i'm scared it's going to be boring and i will want to switch to aeronautical but we'll see


If you're scared of electical then you wouldn't want to go into anything about aero because it has significantly more electical modules than pure mech.
Original post by Ras' Al Ghul
Wow, all you social science people on this thread really love to throw insults. And you're the ones that spent a large part of your degrees writing essays making arguments? Yet, you can't seem to apply these skills. So let's see:
1) You're not good at doing what you're supposed to know
2) You're wrong about not seeing phenomenon making psychology unique. Physics and Chemistry has lots of things you can't see.


Original post by Ras' Al Ghul
And I'd LOVE to see you reverse engineer a machine.

I feel like I'd have much better luck understanding behavioural science than you figuring out how to reverse engineer a machine with over 200 parts. Note that reverse engineering doesn't mean reassembling.


I know what reverse engineering means. Just quick laying in to our degrees, something you clearly also know very little about.
I never said psychology was easy. I said it was easier than the other sciences, big difference, as in relative difficulty. I think that's a big misunderstanding you have about what I've been saying all along.

It's not a real science because things are described vaguely and exact predictions or predictions with a high degree of certainty cannot be made. Just the fact that it's called "social" science excludes it from being exact because it's not like you guys are using chaos theory to come up with your predictions in your theories, so it's mostly qualitative which is not exact and so not a real science.
Original post by john2054
I know what reverse engineering means. Just quick laying in to our degrees, something you clearly also know very little about.


So if you've been doing essay based degrees and you don't use the theory you've learnt off to make arguments, what do you do? Write back the same things you've learnt in the paper? You're not helping your case.
Original post by Ras' Al Ghul
So if you've been doing essay based degrees and you don't use the theory you've learnt off to make arguments, what do you do? Write back the same things you've learnt in the paper? You're not helping your case.


What are you talking about, of course we have had to learn theories and apply knowledge. But it goes further than that. You are expected to use your initiative, and actually develop original and interesting ideas and contributions to your thesis. Which is something that places these subjects, above pure science i'm afraid.
Reply 95
Original post by SeanFM
A-levels to first year, not too bad. Some challenging bits and some okay bits. There were times during the first few week where I wanted to give up and study A-levels again but I stuck with it and felt fine.

First year to second year... I felt a bit lost at sea, really. Some things were just too difficult for me and I lost a lot of motivation. Gutted as well that one of the units I know I'm going to do terribly is no longer compulsory, starting in in 2 years time. :sad:


What modules are you struggling in?
Did you do STEP?
Original post by john2054
What are you talking about, of course we have had to learn theories and apply knowledge. But it goes further than that. You are expected to use your initiative, and actually develop original and interesting ideas and contributions to your thesis. Which is something that places these subjects, above pure science i'm afraid.


Isn't that just making an argument for your case because surely you'll have to justify why you're doing what you're doing.

You're wrong, design in engineering requires a lot of creativity and it's not something you would find in a book so again you're talking about things you don't know about. You keep saying pure science as if you're trying to avoid engineering but it's a part of STEM too and science in general.
Original post by B_9710
What modules are you struggling in?
Did you do STEP?


No STEP :hide: it might've helped improve my mathematical ability by a lot :tongue:

I was struggling with algebra, but have been done with that since last semester.

Been struggling with analysis the past two, barely passed the first semester and not sure I'll pass the one I sat this time. Also struggled with an accounting module. I have no one to blame but myself, for my laziness and lack of interest :tongue: but oh well, lessons learnt for the future.
Original post by Ras' Al Ghul
Isn't that just making an argument for your case because surely you'll have to justify why you're doing what you're doing.

You're wrong, design in engineering requires a lot of creativity and it's not something you would find in a book so again you're talking about things you don't know about. You keep saying pure science as if you're trying to avoid engineering but it's a part of STEM too and science in general.


Yes we do have to make arguments, yes we have to justify what we are doing, have you heard of a literature review, we have to do those sometimes, which includes a review of the journals and other written publications to our research. No one is question the calibre or accuracy of your degree, but what i am challenging is your assumption that just because you are doing a male degree, makes it anyhow better than a female one. In another world i could have done a maths based degree, and gone in to this realm, however life happened, and i ended up taking sociology single honours, and then adding a theatre studies minor to it after the first year.

Again you are doing a good stem degree, which is rewarding and challenging. And degrees which are stem, clearly are more subjective and less scientifically rigorous by their very nature. All of this you can take for a given.

But what i refuse to accept is your presumption that STEM is somehow superior to English, and theatre, and sociology and psychology and the humanities by it's very nature.

Thats like saying a PhD graduate is not a doctor, because they have not done medicine. Actually a phd student is a doctor, just a different specialism. Having a phd is above a bachelor's degree. In fact any phd, assuming it's not a really pathetic one, is better than any bachelors degree, stem or whatever. Would you agree with this statement at least>?
(edited 7 years ago)
I never claimed to be a master of psychology? That's another assumption you've made. Oh statistcs is the most deceptive tool in use today. They can be manipulated to no end to suit results. Also, stats just makes correlations and never gives a causation, that's the qualitative stuff that I've been talking about. Basing theories solely on statistics is what makes the social sciences shaky.

Social science studies has so many variables, it makes it hard to do a research and make accurate predictions about future behaviour or events.

You know who has that same problem? Metrology. You know what they do? They use chaos theory which a highly advanced mathematical method of finding order in disorder. The maths is so complex it cannot be done by hand and it needs to be done by computer.

When the social sciences start using rigorous methods for making predictions about their theories only then it can be considered in league with the natural sciences. As of now, it's akin to the little sister of natural science struggling in school to understand maths.

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