College Culture (America vs. Britain)

shady lane

You brought up academics when we were talking about partying. And you made the most ridiculous comparison between UK and US universities I have ever seen. If you didn't care about superiority you wouldn't have claimed a 2:1 = 4.0 when any American who has applied for grad school in the UK knows 2:1 = 3.3-3.6.

I go to LSE now, if I though UK education was bad I wouldn't be there.

Just because that’s what UK uni's ask for or specify as equivalent does not mean that is intellectually equal in real terms. There is a similar misunderstanding by UK uni's of how IB results equate with A-levels, though in that case it prejudices IB candidates. Still there is no equivalence that can be accurately discerned between two such different systems in purely intellectual terms.

Reply 21

shady lane

16

pendragon

Just because that’s what UK uni's ask for or specify as equivalent does not mean that is intellectually equal in real terms. There is a similar misunderstanding by UK uni's of how IB results equate with A-levels, though in that case it prejudices IB candidates. Still there is no equivalence that can be accurately discerned between two such different systems in purely intellectual terms.

Yes but if it were that off, that is 2:1=4.0, the universities would have adjusted by now, don't you think?

Reply 22

pendragon

13

shady lane

Well there is an economics tutor in Magdalen that told me if I were an Oxford student, I'd be on track for a 1st. And my African History tutor from St. Ant's gave me insanely high marks, encouraged me to apply to Oxford for grad school, and wrote my recommendation that got me into LSE. So unless you think your academics enjoy lying, I'd say that although there is a lot of demanding work at Oxford, the marks I received for the quality of work I produced were much, much, higher than I was used to at Stanford.

I'm also doing very well at LSE right now, despite not working nearly as hard as some of my fellow coursemates. So maybe Stanford just gave me an awesome education.

Or maybe it held you back and you would be soaring if you had had a proper 1st degree.

What I am saying does not preclude the existence of a few bright Americans, but as you have pointed out your system obviously didn’t give you the chance to excel.

And LSE is not particularly hard for to get into for postgraduate. Any Oxbridge grad with a 2.1 is pretty much guaranteed a place.

Reply 23

pendragon

13

shady lane

Yes but if it were that off, that is 2:1=4.0, the universities would have adjusted by now, don't you think?

How they determine it is in relative terms, to get the right proportion of the best US candidates. It does not reflect an absolute assertion of intellectual equivalence between the two. There can be no such equality between systems designed to measure such different things.

Reply 24

pendragon

13

shady lane

Well there is an economics tutor in Magdalen that told me if I were an Oxford student, I'd be on track for a 1st. And my African History tutor from St. Ant's gave me insanely high marks, encouraged me to apply to Oxford for grad school, and wrote my recommendation that got me into LSE. So unless you think your academics enjoy lying, I'd say that although there is a lot of demanding work at Oxford, the marks I received for the quality of work I produced were much, much, higher than I was used to at Stanford.

Did you?

Reply 25

arkbar

12

Well there is an economics tutor in Magdalen that told me if I were an Oxford student, I'd be on track for a 1st. And my African History tutor from St. Ant's gave me insanely high marks, encouraged me to apply to Oxford for grad school,

Zzzzzzzzzz.....

Reply 26

shady lane

16

pendragon

Did you?

No--social life in Oxford is pretty bad, and I wasn't keen on doing a 2 year MPhil degree.

Reply 27

shady lane

16

arkbar

Zzzzzzzzzz.....

He made a comment, I responded. If you don't like it, don't post.

Reply 28

Dann

15

shady lane

He made a comment, I responded. If you don't like it, don't post.

But then in the same way, you made a comment, and responded :confused:

. Albeit onomatopoeically.

So you could say, if you didn't like his post, then by your own admission, you shouldn't have posted. :rolleyes:

Reply 29

shady lane

16

Zzzz is not a discussion point or adding to the conversation.

Anyway...back to college culture. Who's drunker, US or UK? Discuss.

Reply 30

elizabeth_

i've been talking to my friends at US and UK unis...
and apparently my US friends are finding it more of a slog than the UK ones...as many people have said, the latter end up going out drinking and partying all the time and then working during the holidays. The us students on the other hand are perpetually studying.

And i'm not talking about some random community college in the US vs a Uk uni with most admits through clearing. I'm talking UCL/Oxford etc. vs Harvard/Princeton etc.

Also: drinking in the US seems a lot more....rare. Maybe it's just that my friends to go the *ahem* more 'studious' unis so there is more focus on studying and less on partying (tho there is definitely a party crowd it seems). It is done with less frequency and getting blind drunk and staggering into your room, having puked all over the floor is not seen as a "good night out" (not that all drinkers end up doing this...).

Okay this is only my take on the matter. Please don't get on my back for making my thoughts known - i'm not saying this categorically.

Reply 31

arkbar

12

I'd say the UK was drunker than the US, although I don't really think that higher alchol consumption in the UK was detrimental to my work levels. US drinking culture appears to be more sporadic and heavy, whilst in the UK I tended to drink reasonable amounts, quite a lot of the time.

Reply 32

shady lane

16

pendragon

And LSE is not particularly hard for to get into for postgraduate. Any Oxbridge grad with a 2.1 is pretty much guaranteed a place.

Hmm well in response to this and the guy who goes to King's:
My LSE conditional offer: 3.5 GPA
My King's conditional offer: 3.2 GPA

Reply 33

EconLou

12

Slightly random question: do they publish the mean/median value for the GPA of graduates from unis in the US from certain colleges, or even for certain majors at that college?

Reply 34

Symplectic

It's amazing how quickly a comparison degenerates into a competition.

Reply 35

shady lane

16

Louise_1988

Slightly random question: do they publish the mean/median value for the GPA of graduates from unis in the US from certain colleges, or even for certain majors at that college?

I've never heard of one.

Reply 36

shady lane

16

Symplectic

It's amazing how quickly a comparison degenerates into a competition.

It's just annoying that people with no experience make insane claims. If you haven't done a degree in the US and the UK, and at somewhat equivalent universities, I don't think you can really claim that one country's education is better than the other's. It's silly and stupid. Yet on TSR there is never a shortage of people who say that US university education is crap and easy and UK universities are the best. It's not true. Oxbridge, LSE, Imperial and maybe UCL are equivalent in the quality of students and the toughness of the degrees as the Ivy League, Stanford, MIT, Duke, and UChicago, at least. Making any argument to the contrary is not only ridiculous, it's unfounded. Look at the world rankings and it will tell you a similar story to the point I am making.

Reply 37

Symplectic

pendragon

But the standard for getting a 1st in UK undergraduate exams is much higher than the standard for getting an A on a US undergrad course. A US A is like a British 2.1. for undergraduates at least. Lots of Harvard academics say there is massive grade inflation there. More regular and consistent work at a lower level is hardly more academically impressive. At Oxford very few people get a 1st at the end of their degree. My Professor at LSE says she spends ages cleaning up the mess of the US system when people do their junior year abroad - she said a lot of Americans from good US colleges cannot after 2 years in the US system write a decent essay.

A British student can get a PhD in 6 years if they do not do a masters (which is unnecessary especially for an Oxbridge student with a 1st who can conceive of a research topic) - 7 if they do a masters. It takes an American arts student at Harvard 5 years on average just to do the AM-PhD. That is 9 years of study, and can easily be 10. 6-7 vs. 9-10. That is a huge difference. Maybe as my American professor at Oxford suggested to me American PhD's are more thorough. But is being more extensive to this degree being smarter? I really doubt it. And we should remember that you can get a top job in London with just a good 1st degree, a masters is unusual and anything beyond that is confined to people who want to become academics.

I'm not interested in getting involved in yet another inane "my education system is better than yours" flame war, but this seems unfair. Yes British students can get a PhD in 6 years, but it seems to me that the price is very narrow training. In fact AFAIK the average time to a PhD in continental Europe (and maybe Canada) is also 8-9 years, so the time to completion for a British PhD seems to be one of the lowest in the industrialized world. Note also that the US education system has 12 grades prior to university, not 13.
I do share some of your reservations about the length of US PhDs though, especially in the humanities.
The issue of academic standards is blurrier. In the US, standards are usually dependent on the institutions and individual instructors since there is no external review of exams or second marking, so they tend to be more variable. Yes, there does seem to be plenty of inflation at places like Harvard, but other demanding institutions like Caltech, MIT, Reed and UChicago have reputations for low to nonexistent inflation. The British system itself also seems to be suffering from inflation these days anyway, given some of the figures I've seen. Don't 80+ % of students recieve 2:1's at Oxbridge? That doesn't suggest that the standard for a 2:1 at Oxbridge is the same as that for an A at Harvard (at the hight of grade inflation, Harvard was awarding As for around 40% of courses I think). The average GPA figures that I've seen at several US universities are usually in the 3.0-3.2 range, which corresponds to a low 2:1 in a British university (the average British degree classification as far as I know), so actually the standards appear to be pretty similar overall, unless you want to argue that it's much easier to get a 3.0-3.2 at a US uni than it is to get a 2:1 at a comparable British uni (in which case I would ask for compelling evidence, not anecdotes or quotes from professors).