The Student Room Group

What are seminars like at uni?

Just thought I'd ask out of interest. Are they set out like lessons you'd have at school/college?
They are very much like lessons at school except that there is always a large amount of group discussion and you don't have kids playing pranks on the teacher.
Reply 2
Original post by paddy__power
They are very much like lessons at school except that there is always a large amount of group discussion and you don't have kids playing pranks on the teacher.


Thanks, how many roughly in a class 20-30?



Thanks, ah I'm doing Law aswell:tongue: Did seminars help you make a few coursemates?
how much people in seminars is it like a class with 30 people ormore/less?
Depends. I've never had any with as many as 30. I think 10 - 20 is much more likely.
Reply 5
Theres 20 maximum in our seminars. Usually around 15.
My tutors are lucky to get about 10 people turing up to seminars in 3rd year! Classes were about 15 people in 1st/2nd year. But people tend to avoid any timetabled classes that they can without getting kicked out about mid way through 2nd year. Seminars are a bit like A-level classes - small numbers + disscussion.
Reply 7
There's like twenty people in my seminars but that does tend to go as low as ten some times. In my statistics seminars we all just sit with our heads down while doing sum (it's even more boring than it sounds) while in marketing we just talk about anything and everything and it's really cool.
I don't find seminars useful.
For most of my seminars (international relations, criminology, social anthropology), the format has been the same: seminar leader stands at the front, tries to engage people in useful conversation (with varying levels of success) and there may be an activity of some variety e.g. looking at newspaper clippings.

For my economics seminar, however, we are expected to sit there in silence, supervised and fill in a worksheet :s-smilie: I rarely go to those ones - frankly, they're pointless.
There are usually around 10 people in my seminars, some of them are more like 5. I personally don't find them that useful, but occasionally it can be interesting. I prefer practicals and labs, so you're actually doing something and aren't just sat there falling asleep.

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