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Should I transfer to an easier University to get a first/ 2.1 or stay and get a third

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Reply 40
Birmingham approach to teaching your subject, we want everyone to have solid core base after completing the 1st year, so that in subsequent years we can increase the pace.

Your university approach (given your description), we have selected the most able students for our course, therefore we don't need to spend any time going over the basics.

Since you are struggling with the material your friend will do next year, there is no guarantee that you won't struggle second time around. You may just have got unlucky with your lecturers this time round, maybe next year will be better.

Get through your exams, unless you get good grades a transfer into year 2 of a different university will be difficult. People who manage to transfer without restarting have achieved a 2:1 or better on a course with very similar content.

For some people their A level performance is the pinnacle of their educational performance and further study is a struggle regardless of quality of teaching.

Assuming you get through your exams, spend the summer preparing yourself for next year. Get a tutor, if there is stuff that is incomprehensible.
(edited 11 years ago)
Reply 41
Original post by discombobulator
What are you basing that on? I've seen exam papers from quite a few different Universities for my subject, and there are quite massive djifferences in difficulty. It's quite hilarious how people just use the "degrees are a completely different ball game" to justify how not every gets a first at an institution where people have massively better A Level grades compared to another place, when really how fast the course goes and the difficulty of exams is the real factor.


I agree with you that the pace of the course and the exams contribute to how well students perform but I don't think it's only the more "prestigious" universities that might move at a faster pace or have harder exams. Surely in order for students to end up with the same qualification they have to be assessed to a similar level overall whether their course is more from challenging at the start or towards the end? Ultimately at any university, you are only going to get back what you put in. If you work hard and make thorough notes and maintain a strong work/social balance then you are more likely to get a good grade.
As others have said, your friend might be doing better than you for reasons other than the fact he is going to a 'lesser' university. If you said he went to an ex-poly then I could see your point but I highly doubt any course at Birmingham is a 'breeze'. And even if it is slightly slow-paced, I highly doubt that the difference is significant enough for you to go up from a third to a first. I'm inclined to think that you're either not putting the work in, it has come as a shock to you that you're no longer spoon fed at university (go find your own examples if you want them) or a Maths degree isn't suited to you. I have a friend who is studying Maths and despite [almost] getting an A* in my Maths A-level, I know full well that I couldn't handle his degree. My point is that doing well at A-level doesn't necessarily mean you'll breeze through your degree. In fact, most cases there is little correlation.
Reply 43
Original post by everything
I don't know the class average and I haven't gone in to check my results because I think I'm better off not thinking about them too much (dat ironing)

I'm basing what I'm saying mostly off how I feel about exams coming up. We've had assignments throughout the year, but after my first term my original supervisor (who marked them) dropped out of the scheme and I got a new super-harsh marker, so I generally ignored the marks (because they would just make me feel bad if I didn't). He was a good teacher though, so it wasn't all bad.


How on earth do you expect to find out how you are doing if you don't check your progress as you you go along? You are missing out on valuable feedback. By not following up with lecturer and finding out why you lost marks you are doing yourself a disservice. Do you even participate in class or stay silent for fear of not being right?

Burying your head in the sand is not helpful. Perhaps you need some counselling on how to deal with unfavourable news. I treat bad marks in an assignment as a wake up call. I have on occasion had to query some marks and had them revised upwards as a result. If you can't cope with potentially unfavourable news now, how do think you will do in a work environment.
Staying on at your 'top' uni is only going to give you an advantage in the job market if you can end up turning it round and getting a 2:1. If you end up with a 3rd then forget it, it says to employers that your uni made the wrong call in letting you in. I also think the reason you've had hostile responses on here is your implication that you might be able to get a 1st at a redbrick uni when you are way out of your depth where you are. Sure you might be able to get back in the game fighting for a 2:1 but if you assume you're going to be a top performer there you might have a shock, there will be people at the redbricks that were straight A calibre at A level and would have been able to thrive at top unis but didn't apply/didn't get offered places, and these will be the ones that get 1sts.

And Rascacielos is right about A levels not necessarily correlating, I got As for Maths and Further Maths (in the days before A*s were available) but I know I could not handle a Maths degree at uni, I found some of the maths in Economics hard. You can boss the calculus, matrices type stuff that you do at A level without being a particularly naturally talented mathematician, if you just put the work in and get practice and recognise that at that level the questions follow a similar pattern so if you have done enough examples you just learn how to repeat the working out method. At university you will constantly have stuff thrown at you which is new and requires you to think of new methods to solve/prove stuff and that sorts out who has a naturally mathematical brain or not. I think unfortunately some people that are 'competent' at maths rather than natural mathematicians, end up lured into doing a maths degree because they get high A level scores, but degree level very quickly sorts out those with natural mathematical ability and the rest struggle.
I think a lot of students have a grave misunderstanding when it comes to subjective difficulty from higher/lower ranked universities. This seems even more apparent in science subjects like mathematics.

Yes, Imperial's course or Warwick's course or Cambridge's will be difficult. No, it won't be stupendously easier somewhere else; there will still be a challenge. The courses at the top 5-6 universities only vary with respect to the amount that is taught in a smaller time frame. For example, Imperial might have introduced what I learnt in second year in their first year... but this doesn't mean that I won't have to do it sooner or later just because I'm at a lower ranked university.

Students at the top 5 are expected to absorb quicker, retain for longer and adapt more smoothly than their lower ranked counterparts, and while I agree that this makes their courses harder, it does not necessarily mean that you will find a 'lower ranked' university easier. (In the same way, it also doesn't mean that a person who got 90% at Bolton could not hack a masters at, say, LSE).

All you can really say conclusively is that you find the course difficult. You can have a go at it from a lower institution, but as others have said:

- Maths at university is miles apart from A levels. The first year is there to ease you in, and then by second term in almost every uni you get into the real stuff - analysis, calculus etc. It's not the spoon fed rubbish that depends on how good your teachers are.

- Just because your friend at Birmingham is doing well on the course now, at the beginning, means nothing. Nothing at all. There are plenty of people who get high firsts in first year because the modules are qualitatively no different to what they'd learnt at A level (with the help of good teachers and possibly extra tuition). These same people, when faced with the prospect of learning material from scratch and having to learn it themselves, failed. There are at least 5 people who fit this description in my year who are on a borderline third/2:2 grade.

- You are being extremely arrogant and overconfident of your abilities, and you're underestimating exactly how large the leap is between an A* at A level and a 2:1 at university.
(edited 11 years ago)
Reply 46
Original post by Rascacielos
As others have said, your friend might be doing better than you for reasons other than the fact he is going to a 'lesser' university. If you said he went to an ex-poly then I could see your point but I highly doubt any course at Birmingham is a 'breeze'. And even if it is slightly slow-paced, I highly doubt that the difference is significant enough for you to go up from a third to a first. I'm inclined to think that you're either not putting the work in, it has come as a shock to you that you're no longer spoon fed at university (go find your own examples if you want them) or a Maths degree isn't suited to you. I have a friend who is studying Maths and despite [almost] getting an A* in my Maths A-level, I know full well that I couldn't handle his degree. My point is that doing well at A-level doesn't necessarily mean you'll breeze through your degree. In fact, most cases there is little correlation.


Fairly sure Cambridge did a study where there was actually quite a strong positive correlation between UMS attainment and how well they did on their degree.
Reply 47
If it's the same one I've seen the step papers were the best predictor... Also they interview everyone and presumably take a view on whether they're likely to handle the environment there well or not.
Original post by Nichrome
Fairly sure Cambridge did a study where there was actually quite a strong positive correlation between UMS attainment and how well they did on their degree.


However, for mathematics they said that UMS marks aren't the best indicator, thus STEP was invented.
Reply 49
Original post by cpdavis
However, for mathematics they said that UMS marks aren't the best indicator, thus STEP was invented.


Ahh right. Well then since Warwick requires STEP/AEA, I would say that supports the OP in that he is in all likelihood better at maths than his counterpart at Birmingham, and that his course is in fact far harder.
Reply 50
Original post by Nichrome
Ahh right. Well then since Warwick requires STEP/AEA, I would say that supports the OP in that he is in all likelihood better at maths than his counterpart at Birmingham, and that his course is in fact far harder.


yeah... Passing a test which is a good predictor of success on the most challenging courses (like the people there who are presumably doing fine) supports the hypothesis that it's not really the amount or difficulty of the maths he's facing that's the cause of op's problem.

People get to uni and run out of motivation, they're bad at organising their lives, some of them develop depression, mental health problems etc...
If there is an underlying problem of that sort, that's not going to get fixed just by going to an 'easier uni' and he'll find himself underperforming anywhere.
Reply 51
Original post by wanderlust.xx
I think a lot of students have a grave misunderstanding when it comes to subjective difficulty from higher/lower ranked universities. This seems even more apparent in science subjects like mathematics.

Yes, Imperial's course or Warwick's course or Cambridge's will be difficult. No, it won't be stupendously easier somewhere else; there will still be a challenge. The courses at the top 5-6 universities only vary with respect to the amount that is taught in a smaller time frame. For example, Imperial might have introduced what I learnt in second year in their first year... but this doesn't mean that I won't have to do it sooner or later just because I'm at a lower ranked university.
.



Well from experience, of looking at Cambridge Engineering and then looking at my friends Warwick Engineering and other uni's from friends who did engineering...

Point in Case a lot of 2nd year mechanics stuff I did was probably hardeer overall than some people will do in their whole 4 year MEng Degree.... FFS

The conclusion = that other unis are waaayyy more easier.!!!!!

OMG OP you should switch unis if you feel you have a better chance of getting a 2.1....
Trust me! Life would be a lot easier...

Ignore the BS, that A level students say who haven't experienced the pain of the top unis ...
Reply 52
Original post by everything
I'm really confused as to how the grading works, since obviously grades aren't equivilent from University to University (a first at UCL is much stronger than a first at Manchester Met, for example).

So my dillema is such: I am struggling at a top 5 University on one of the University's highest ranked courses (Maths based course). My friend, who is at Birmingham, is seemingly breezing through his Maths degree with maximum marks. However, I performed better than he did at Maths at A-Level.

So what do I do? Do I swap to an 'easier' University and achieve a first or a 2:1, or struggle here and potentially get a third? I read all these things about employers not even considering candidates with lower than a 2.1, so considering that even a 2.2 would be a success for me here, what would be the best thing to do?


Swap to easier uni... because its silly really ... you'll be much happier overall.
Reply 53
Getting a third would be a disaster and you should do anything you can to avoid it. Even a 2:2 would be very bad, especially since by "top 5" I'm guessing you dont mean Oxbridge.

Transferring to an 'easier' university would be one possibility but lets not overstate the difference here. If you can get a good 2:2 from Cambridge then you would probably get a 2:1 from Birmingham, but its not like you're going to automatically go from a third at Imperial to a 2:1. There are differences between universities but they arent as big as you're making out.

But apart from how 'easy' the course it, perhaps just moving city and starting again would psychologically help you? However its not obvious that another university would even accept you if you're on a third, and you would have to have a convincing story for your CV. Its also possible employers might want to see your grades from your current university, but I dont know about this.


By the way, are you actually sure you're struggling? A lot of people find 1st year hard in Math based courses, I'd wait and see what your exam results are, you might actually be doing better than you think. I mean if things are a total disaster then I guess that becomes obvious, but if you're just finding it a bit hard then you might be doing ok. Remember, to get a 2:1 you just need to be around average compared to the rest of your year, not top of the class.

Are you sure you're working as hard as you can? I mean obviously you cant spend 12 hours a day studying, but are you making sure that you do problem sheets and do a fair bit of work outside lectures, and so on?
(edited 11 years ago)
Reply 54
Original post by poohat


Transferring to an 'easier' university would be one possibility but lets not overstate the difference here. If you can get a good 2:2 from Cambridge then you would probably get a 2:1 from Birmingham, but its not like you're going to automatically go from a third at Imperial to a 2:1. There are differences between universities but they arent as big as you're making out.



You chat BS, since going to cambridge, there are ppl who have failed ( below a 3rd in cambridge, and then go to another uni say manchester and are getting starred 1st's/ top of the year over there)....

I guess ppl who don't go to cambridge top tier unis can't appreciate how much harder it is loool.
Original post by wanderlust.xx
The courses at the top 5-6 universities only vary with respect to the amount that is taught in a smaller time frame.


"I've just checked the league tables and we are not in the top 5-6 this year so we are going to slow our learning pace right down"

I can really imagine a lecturer saying that...

You can't really compare ephemeral things like who is in the top 5-6 except probably oxbridge with course structure - there's about 10 different unis in the top 5 when you let time roll out
If you don't think you can get a 2:1 and you have the opportunity to move down then I would do it. You are better off getting a 2:1 from Birmingham than a 2:2 from any uni.
Original post by ebam_uk
You chat BS, since going to cambridge, there are ppl who have failed ( below a 3rd in cambridge, and then go to another uni say manchester and are getting starred 1st's/ top of the year over there)....

I guess ppl who don't go to cambridge top tier unis can't appreciate how much harder it is loool.


can you tell us who these people are?

wouldn't make much sense considering the statistically probable distribution of intelligence and level of uncertainty in the ucas process - there would have to be an awful lot of evidence to support a claim like that, not just a one off case.


Also, cambridge would definitely have a funded PhD spot for somebody with a starred first from manchester but not for somebody with a 2.2 from cambridge so they clearly don't agree with you
(edited 11 years ago)
Universities aren't usually easier than others. It's just that employers regard degrees from a better university more highly.
Reply 59
Original post by everything
I'm really confused as to how the grading works, since obviously grades aren't equivilent from University to University (a first at UCL is much stronger than a first at Manchester Met, for example).

So my dillema is such: I am struggling at a top 5 University on one of the University's highest ranked courses (Maths based course). My friend, who is at Birmingham, is seemingly breezing through his Maths degree with maximum marks. However, I performed better than he did at Maths at A-Level.

So what do I do? Do I swap to an 'easier' University and achieve a first or a 2:1, or struggle here and potentially get a third? I read all these things about employers not even considering candidates with lower than a 2.1, so considering that even a 2.2 would be a success for me here, what would be the best thing to do?



Ohhhh stop being such a snob! You can't say anything when you're failing.

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