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If you don't go to Oxford or Cambridge then your Uni is crap.

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Reply 40
Original post by majmuh24



There's no way Cambridge is better than the French Ecole Normal Superiore (something like that I think).

Apparently even IMO people have struggled there o_O

France has the most Field Medals after all, they have to have some secret :colone:

I would argue hat Cambridge is better for undergraduate maths, as this has more to do with the teaching methods than groundbreaking research.


Original post by majmuh24
Compared to STEP (at least for maths) they are a joke.

Compared to A Level maths they're a joke. There isn't even any trig, calculus or solving quadratics that don't have rational roots. It's basically GCSE maths. STEP is in another league.
Original post by alow
I would argue hat Cambridge is better for undergraduate maths, as this has more to do with the teaching methods than groundbreaking research.



Compared to A Level maths they're a joke. There isn't even any trig, calculus or solving quadratics that don't have rational roots. It's basically GCSE maths. STEP is in another league.


True, some of thr teachings methods there are intense from what I've heard :s-smilie:

LOL, I guess so :lol:
Original post by clh_hilary
Orientals all the way!

UCAS and the British Council have pointed out that an A in GCE A-level equals to merely a C in Hong Kong A-level.


Yikes. Must be pretty tough in Hong Kong then. Sometimes I wish I'd be born there
Reply 43
Original post by clh_hilary
Well then you're saying that postgraduates who don't go to Oxbridge are only going to crap universities then.


It was largely jovial, as I though the reference to willy waving might suggest, but obviously if it's not something to be mega proud of for undergrad nor is it for postgrad. At least when I was there it was the same as any uni, people go there drink and shag a lot and try and work some studying around that. We just did it in pretty buildings and did slightly more of the studying on average.
Original post by suzylemonade
Yikes. Must be pretty tough in Hong Kong then. Sometimes I wish I'd be born there


It certainly is, especially when you consider how we don't have lower grades even with more challenging examinations and curricula.

With AAA, you can go to Oxford; but with what's translated as a CCC, you aren't going anywhere close to HKU (but they do give international applicants with GCE results lower conditions I believe). And this is with most of our students coming only from Hong Kong, with British universities getting most students from Britain or even the EU (way bigger pools).
Original post by Robbie242
So much snobbery in this thread. Yes the SAT papers are a joke but have you actually looked at the university teaching itself?
Can't believe some people have the audacity to agree with a guy like Tarquin...


Just stating a fact. I don't necessarily agree with everything else he says in his post. And yes, what they do in the first year of uni is basically A-Level work. The papers they take to get into uni are barely GCSE standard. I took the facts and came to a conclusion, this all.
Original post by Pullman
It was largely jovial, as I though the reference to willy waving might suggest, but obviously if it's not something to be mega proud of for undergrad nor is it for postgrad. At least when I was there it was the same as any uni, people go there drink and shag a lot and try and work some studying around that. We just did it in pretty buildings and did slightly more of the studying on average.


Not all universities are the same. The materials used and standards expected are different.

If they are the same, Oxbridge would be giving out firsts to everybody as their intakes are supposed to be people who are academically more competent. Of course you can say that exam results and interview performance don't mean that they really more academically able on degree level, but then you would be discrediting the entire education system altogether before that point.
Original post by Tarquin Digby
I think you mean "If you don't go to Cambridge then your Uni is crap".

Oxford is plebeian tier and people need to stop putting it in the same category as Cambridge.

Yes! My sister went to Cambridge and she's always calling me a pleb for having wasted my time at Oxford, so it's great to see this being confirmed and on a scientific basis! :five: I always suspected she might be right.

Original post by Tarquin Digby

Harvard and MIT are also massively overrated and full of dumb (Sorry, I mean, "well rounded") Americlaps.


Tarquin Digby. You are a wise and sensitive commentator. I like your posts. :cool: Americans are generally overrated and this is yet more evidence.
Original post by suzylemonade
Just stating a fact. I don't necessarily agree with everything else he says in his post. And yes, what they do in the first year of uni is basically A-Level work. The papers they take to get into uni are barely GCSE standard. I took the facts and came to a conclusion, this all.


Can you post a link to this uni work then? I doubt they would waste time going over A Level work, except maybe as a (very brief) recap of more complicated A Level topics.
Original post by majmuh24
Can you post a link to this uni work then? I doubt they would waste time going over A Level work, except maybe as a (very brief) recap of more complicated A Level topics.


My friend's dad went to an American university. So he made comparisons between the two. I think he went to MIT.
Anyways, they don't do A-Levels in America. They do SATs or whatever it is they do, which is obviously at a lower level to A-Levels. However, I could be wrong. It's just something I've heard from a couple of people who went to American unis from England.
Original post by majmuh24
Compared to STEP (at least for maths) they are a joke.


Maths in SAT is a joke (but the English and subject tests certainly aren't)

STEP is only for a special group of students - on the other hand SAT and the alternative is for all college bound students in the US <== so then its not a joke.
Reply 51
Original post by funtimes1
LOL. Do you go to Yale or something?


Nope. I just hate pretentious Harvard students and grads... besides, Yale has the Skull and Bones, Harvard doesn't.
Reply 52
Original post by Fullofsurprises
Yes! My sister went to Cambridge and she's always calling me a pleb for having wasted my time at Oxford, so it's great to see this being confirmed and on a scientific basis! :five: I always suspected she might be right.


Of course she was right. The uni rankings go like this: 1) Cambridge. 2) Yale. 3) Princeton 4) Stanford. 5) MIT 6) Oxford 7) Everything else.
Original post by Tarquin Digby
I think you mean "If you don't go to Cambridge then your Uni is crap".

Oxford is plebeian tier and people need to stop putting it in the same category as Cambridge.

Harvard and MIT are also massively overrated and full of dumb (Sorry, I mean, "well rounded") Americlaps.


LOL, the most retarded post I've seen all week.

I hope you're trolling.
Original post by suzylemonade
It's a well known fact that Americans are pretty dumb/not as intelligent as British students. Their first year of university is what we do at A-Level. And have you seen those SAT papers that are supposedly 'hard'? They're a joke.
You might want to rethink your point :lol:


SATs are more like iq tests, they aren't supposed to test breadth of knowledge so much as the ability to think logically.

A-levels are so dumbed down that they are practically worthless, which is why universities like oxford and warwick need to replace them with more sophisticated exams.
Original post by DarthVador
SATs are more like iq tests, they aren't supposed to test breadth of knowledge so much as the ability to think logically.

A-levels are so dumbed down that they are practically worthless, which is why universities like oxford and warwick need to replace them with more sophisticated exams.


I've done a couple of SATs papers. You can barely call those IQ tests.
Reply 56
Original post by suzylemonade
It's a well known fact that Americans are pretty dumb/not as intelligent as British students. Their first year of university is what we do at A-Level. And have you seen those SAT papers that are supposedly 'hard'? They're a joke.
You might want to rethink your point :lol:


LOL pretty sure I'm not dumber than you.
Reply 57
Original post by DarthVador
SATs are more like iq tests, they aren't supposed to test breadth of knowledge so much as the ability to think logically.

A-levels are so dumbed down that they are practically worthless, which is why universities like oxford and warwick need to replace them with more sophisticated exams.


Compare FP2&3 to the embarassment that is AP Calculus, then you'll see how easy the Americans have it.
Original post by funtimes1
LOL pretty sure I'm not dumber than you.


Your schooling system certainly is.
Original post by suzylemonade
It's a well known fact that Americans are pretty dumb/not as intelligent as British students. Their first year of university is what we do at A-Level. And have you seen those SAT papers that are supposedly 'hard'? They're a joke.
You might want to rethink your point :lol:


Isn't that more because they study more subjected for longer than anything? If people in the UK did 7+ subjects in sixth form, it wouldn't be to as high a standard or in as much depth as we do now.

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