A Degree from the UK or USA? Which one is harder/difficult to obtain?

Where else would they take them, exactly?

Nobody takes 10 APs at the same time if that's what you're getting at. It's typical to take 5-6 classes at once.

Self-teach, then take the exam.

I know that they don't, but an AP class in any one high school year is not the equivalent of one full A Level, that's what I'm getting at.

Self-teach, then take the exam.

I know that they don't, but an AP class in any one high school year is not the equivalent of one full A Level, that's what I'm getting at.

No.

15 hours a week, 16 weeks in a semester (typically, this varies with university), 2 semesters a year, 4 years. Work it out.

So... no student who has graduated from an American university has learned any of the material they were taught?

Haven't you noticed the ridiculously long holidays that we get in the UK? The US colleges simply make better use of the year.

Well, it's fairly obvious that one AP class can't be the equivalent of a full A-level, given that APs are one year long, and a full A level is two years.

However, if you were to take AP Physics B and AP Physics C, you'd pretty much have the equivalent of A level physics; I know that it is more or less the equivalent of IB HL physics, which is quite similar to A level physics.

AP Calculus BC does specifically focus on calculus for a year; A level maths focuses on other topics that American students see in other years of high school.

Just because one AP class isn't the equivalent of a full A level doesn't mean it isn't challenging, or of the standard of an A level.

I did English literature at the 12th best university in the UK. I had eight hours a week, which is fairly average for arts and humanities subjects. There were two terms of ten weeks each. The summer 'term' was for exams.

Come on... do you really think the average student studies for 30-40 hours a week?

That would involve me digging around, and to borrow an English phraise i picked up I cba but you can compare the figures to the EU or even the rest of the developed world combined by population.

You can also consider my previous point that Stanford University alone has had more than three times as many Nobel winners than Oxford and Cambridge combined over the last couple of decades.

You can consider how business and academia can revolutionise an economy look at how the IT revolution was spearheaded by academic institutions in the America.

You can consider the dynamism, just look at how NYU went from a poor second tier University three decades ago, forced to sell off it's main campus to a leading institution today: flush with the best minds, students, and cash.

my friend did APs.

He got an average of 84% in his first year.

at LSE.

What's the 12th best UK uni?

Personally, I find this entire debate pointless because no one cares about undergraduate study in the long-term, and most east-coast US institutions are essentially British/European in everything but name.

American degrees are more expensive but the content us easier, a lot easier

King's College London (according to The Times)

Perhaps, but the implication, then, is that the Nobel Prize is the ideal, when it is clearly not; it has only been awarded since 1901 and literature is the only award which names one winner per year, for example.

Comparatively, the US has ten winners in literature and the UK has nine, excluding T.S. Eliot, and the four Irish winners (Yeats, Shaw, Beckett and Heaney) who could arguably be counted as British. I suppose you do not care much for literature or cultural and intellectual heritage pre-1901, right?

Personally, I find this entire debate pointless because no one cares about undergraduate study in the long-term, and most east-coast US institutions are essentially British/European in everything but name.

I know; I am not slagging off APs. I was pointing out that they are different, but no less rigourous than A levels.

I didn't claim it was ideal. It is however a useful indicator; particularly in science/R&D. I also made mention of several others on the thread.

Right, I don't care at all on this thread since we're discussing contemporary education. Comparing Britain's education system when it was the preeminent superpower a century ago, with the modern United States wouldn't make much sense.

Do you have any proof for that claim?

King's is 27th for English, that's not all that brilliant..

Actually, the Nobel Prize is not a particularly good indicator of achievement in science because the award cannot be awarded to more than three people at once, which is incredibly problematic given the nature of contemporary academia and research, and there is a popular assumption that the award is given more often to academic discoveries rather than inventions and theories, which is obviously problematic for other reasons.

Actually, in some ways it would make more sense to compare British education (achievement) in the nineteenth and early-to-mid twentieth centuries; the assumption being that they are equivalent superpowers etc., etc.. Nevertheless, if you only want consider contemporary education: Toni Morrison won the literature prize in 1993 – there have been three UK winners (+ Heaney) since then, in fact, three since 2001! Is the US culturally degenerating, then?

Again, my argument is not that Europe or the UK is better than the US, but rather that it is easy to draw skewed conclusions when you do not acknowledge the full picture, or for political reasons you insist on isolating yourself; remember what happened last time a country indulged in splendid isolation!

On-topic, realising that I have not even attempted to answer the question thus far! I would suggest that America places far more value on education because of its greater social inequality, but the UK is more intellectual.

However, its people are becoming more disenfranchised with higher education because of the increased number of students from the 1980s onwards and the failure to finance the industry properly, which negates the potential for social mobility by burdening graduates with massive debt. For example, it is all well and good suggesting that students coming from poorer backgrounds do not pay anything to attend Harvard, but the reason Harvard are able to invest so heavily in scholarships is because the majority of its students do not require said scholarships; likewise, the maintenance grant at Oxford is far higher than at other universities because it too does not have that many students from poorer backgrounds, so it can afford to be generous.

Anyway, as I mentioned in the postgraduate forum last week, when someone arrogantly suggested that Harvard was better than Oxford for graduate study (in English), the latter receives almost twice as many applications than Harvard, when you negate the population difference. But Harvard's acceptance rate is around 10% lower, which would suggest it is more competitive, right? But the cost of studying in the US is higher than in the UK, which could explain the difference. Notice the endlessly circular argumentation?

Find somewhere you like and get your head down; do not pay any attention to anyone else!