The Official Durham Fresher's Thread 2014

That's a huge relief

Yeah, is there a UMS thing at Durham or is just a percentage of raw marks?

Are the only exams at the end of the year? For some reason I thought there was January exams.

Me too, I went to an interview at Manchester and I hated it, it went well-ish though. Yeah, so I ended up doing AS Biology, worst decision I've ever made!!! Which stats, I did S1 and S2, I hated S1 so much but I found S2 to be quite enjoyable at times. What's FP2 like? We never got to look at that.

Nope, no UMS, just six modules per year...

Hey! Anyone know where the Facebook page is? :/

Oh right I didn't bother applying to Manchester- they asked for such high grades and most people want to go there for physics just because Prof Cox lectures there :P
Haha how did you do in Bio though? I didn't mind it at GCSE but had no real interest in it :L
It was S1, I could of easily fallen asleep in like every lesson of it hehe, mechanics is waaaay more interesting
FP2 is mixed- some of it's alright but there's definitely some tricky bits, there's a lot of graphs
Have you decided what 20 option credit module you're going to do? I'm planning on doing the Introduction to Astronomy choice but don't know whether it would be better to do the 'Maths toolkit for scientists' option because I haven't done much further maths hmm.

Nope, no UMS, just six modules per year, equally weighted and you get a percentage for each back at the end of the year, the average of which is your mark. You get the occasional double module and the years are weighted 2 : 3 : 4 for second, third and fourth year. Mark allocation within modules can be more complicated but usually isn't in Physics.

The downside to the exam system is that its all a black box, papers go in, marks come out and nobody's really sure what happens in between, the appeals process is a bit toothless too.

And no, no January exams in Physics, there are sometimes collections exams which don't count, and not everyone even turns up for because they insist on setting them on Saturday mornings!

You guys can already thank all current Physics students for the war we've waged with the department over summative weekly problems for the last few years - they've finally made them formative for people starting this year which should make the whole experience of taking the degree much more manageable. My advice is spend your time during the year understanding the content and making good notes rather than fighting with the problems for endless hours, then fight with the problems in the month before exams.

I'm sorry this post ended up sounding very negative, consider it a list of things to watch out for! Durham Physics doesn't score as highly in student satisfaction as places like Leicester or Lancaster and for good reasons, but it is ranked third department in the country - you wouldn't expect them to spoon feed you information. If you are prepared to work hard it is arguably the best undergraduate education in Physics available in the UK, so congratulations!

Does 6 modules translate to 6 exams, or does it vary on the module? Hm, is fourth year mainly the big project then, a little worrying it counts so much.

What's a collection exam? I'm assuming this means the weekly problem sheets are optional now? I think I read somewhere that they counted towards 10% of the years grade actually.

It didn't sound too negative How similar are the exams to the problem sheets? Also, are there many essay style questions? Also, on the DUO how important is the environmental sustainability thing, I scanned it in like 10 minutes but I'm wondering if I should go through it properly?

Collections is the exams you have in first year over christmas, they act as preliminary exams and have questions of a similar standard you would get in the main exam in summer. They are worth ~6 weeks worth of homework, or a few % of the grade. Weekly homework still counts for 10% also.

In first year you have 1 lab module and 4 'exam' based modules + 1 optional (which will probably be exam based).

Will these be in January then, after the time off?

Yep the first lectures back.

This is the page with the most members https://www.facebook.com/groups/278595435624807/?fref=nf

Some colleges have individual groups too

I'm on the same course aswell! ..I'm also staying at stephenson

I'm at queen campus, but staying at stephenson..studying accounting and finance. Btw, have you recieved a letter from your college or university itself yet?

Does 6 modules translate to 6 exams, or does it vary on the module? Hm, is fourth year mainly the big project then, a little worrying it counts so much.

What's a collection exam? I'm assuming this means the weekly problem sheets are optional now? I think I read somewhere that they counted towards 10% of the years grade actually.

It didn't sound too negative How similar are the exams to the problem sheets? Also, are there many essay style questions? Also, on the DUO how important is the environmental sustainability thing, I scanned it in like 10 minutes but I'm wondering if I should go through it properly?

Has anyone heard anything about their accommodation yet? When I log into the occupancy page it says that I haven't been allocated a room yet :/

Yeah, I got an offer of A*A*C so I didn't even insure them in the end. I scraped an A, it was so close, I think I was like 2/3 UMS into an A. I hated it so much, every lesson felt like 6 hours. I hated mos of S1, I got bored in the S1 exam. That's the only exam I've ever switched off in and started doodling when I was only half way through I'll probably have a quick look at FP2 the day before I go up, our teacher said S2 was easier so we did that. I preferred mechanics, some of the M2 questions were quite interesting. I think I'm best taking the 'Maths toolkit for scientists' since I haven't done A2 further maths. I'm not sure what's on it though. I'm hoping there'll be more information when we get there, I'll probably choose it now and possibly change depending on what they say. Have you started the Maths Workbook thing?