College Culture (America vs. Britain)

One comment to shady lane - you did an undergraduate degree in the US (Stanford) and then came to Oxford to do an undergraduate degree in the UK (Is that right?)

Because if so surely it stands to reason that you will find the second one easier - you've been working at level 3 (or 4 - whatever they call it in the US) then when you start the new degree you are bac being marked at level 1. You are in the style of academic writing so should find it easier to get to grips with it. This is going by someone in my cohort who had done a degree before (totally different subject) and she found it easier to start with as had a head start.

If you had studied int he UK first and US second I expect you would have found it the other way round - plus from some comments you are studying the same/similar materials

What age do Americans finish school and what age do they finish college? My American friends do seem to have finished their 4 year degrees at the same age my British friends finished their 3 year ones.

I did a six month study abroad program in Oxford. I didn't do undergrad there. And now I'm doing postgrad at LSE.

What are you planning next?

Off to Canary Wharf to figure out how finance makes the world go round (and hopefully not work myself to death). I want to try for a job at the World Bank and need 3-5 years of work experience before I can even apply for an entry-level position at the headquarters.

Interestingly, I know barely any eighteen year olds at Durham who are freshers, most are at least nineteen if not twenty

I think that's a bit of an aberration due to top ups fees, quite a lot of people took deferred entry in my year to avoid the top-up fees, making them 19 when they started. In contrast, almost all of my friends in Durham were 18 when they began their degree.

How did that help them avoid top-up fees? I would have assumed studying sooner would help; surely the fees only increase and do not go back down?

I think he means... they took a gap year as appose to applying during the gap year, because if you applied for deferred entry, as appose to applying on the gap year your were exempt from the increase in fees. But I have to say, i'm not really sure exactly what he means.
He could also be referring to an increase in gap years so that people can save a few thousand to actually pay the fees.

I've found it to be very much the opposite, so I think categorizing either group of young adults is slightly inaccurate. College in the US tends to be slightly less independent, with most students always living in halls on campus, rather than living 'out' with friends (although some do, and it depends on your college as to what percentage composes this group), so perhaps this cultural difference leads to a slightly less 'exposed' graduating class.

But as I've said, I've found it to be the total opposite to what you've described, so I wouldn't call it a universal lack of comparable maturity, moreso one's individual experience. Did you say it's your friends in the US that seem much less mature?

Well when people in the UK start working as lawyers and doctors when their contemporaries in the states are still studying or joining the very junior rungs of the work ladder it certainly seems even more that way to me.

That's not true.

Law in the UK:
3 year LLB OR 3 year BA/BSC
(1 year GDL)
1 year LPC
2 year traineeship
Years to full qualification: 6-7.

Law in the US:
4 year BA/BS
3 year JD (bar exam taken during/shortly afterward)
Years to full qualification: 7


I have friends that are lawyers in the US, UK trainee lawyers do much of the work that paralegals in big US firms do.

The traineeship is working full time for quite a high opening pay, it is not comparable to spending 3 years on the JD. Also it is quite common for people to spend time working before even starting the JD; whereas if you get a training contract you go straight into the LPC with a job waiting for you at the end. However much the work may be similar there is a qualitative difference in status between paralegals in the US and trainees or 'article clerks' as they used to be known. And you cannot start working as a full time paralegal while you are doing your JD, so you can only get part-time work experience during that degree which is totally different from full time employment. The fact that you can formally qualify at a similar time is immaterial, because your starting position at a law firm after completing the JD is lower than that of someone who has just finished their far more vocational training working for a city firm for three years.

A qualified British lawyer is at the end of their practical on-the-job training, whereas a qualified American lawyer has only had part time work experience and further academic study (unless they took even longer by spending years a paralegal before doing the JD); they are about to start their practical training and if the American system validated its lawyers at a comparible stage in their progression it would be several more years before they gained full lawyer status. It is just a cultural difference; alternatively if British lawyers fully qualified after part-time work experience and after their academic work and exams where concluded (which is essentially when Americans are given full lawyer status) then it would only take 4 years and their traineeship would not be included. I know a huge number of lawyers qualified in practically every common law jurisdiction.

If you simply think about it logically how can tacking on a 4 year pre-law liberal arts or pre-med program when British students start studying a vocational degree from the outset not result in a disparity in the stage they have reached at any comparable juncture?

You are actually disproving your point in this thread. If it takes longer to qualify as a lawyer in the US, and if many Americans take time off to work between BA and JD, and then do summer associate work at firms (you have to do this to get a decent job offer at the end of the degree), then I don't believe that would make the American more immature or "child-like." Why would a 23 year old working at a New York firm as a paralegal and applying to law school be more immature than a 23 year old trainee at a Magic Circle firm? Because the work for the British person is (supposedly) at a higher level? Doesn't make sense.

College here is about finding who you are and what you want to do with your life, whereas by the time you get to college in Britain, you seem to know what you already want to do.