Studying Schedule

Hello,
I completed by undergrad studies in an American University and so the education system is a bit different and I would appreciate it if you could help me understand the following:
1- I am enrolled in a postgraduate program and it is 180 credits. if I am doing it full time, do I choose which 4 modules (15 each) i can take per semester?
2-How many hours do students typically study in the UK? ( i know its subjective but in an American system, you need to study more or less 1 hour for every credit we take -we take 15 credits per semester)
3-What is the schedule more/less be like? i haven't found any info about timetable of classes for last year so do postgraduate class usually held in the mornings or afternoons?
4-Will i have the option of sticking all classes in one day for three days a week?
5- Grading: is 2:1 the highest grade? is that pass with distinction? I read online that i should not expect to get over 80s so what grades range do students who pass with distinction usually get?

Reply 1

Anonymous #2

Original post by Anonymous

1- I am enrolled in a postgraduate program and it is 180 credits. if I am doing it full time, do I choose which 4 modules (15 each) i can take per semester?
The electives would depend on the individual degree course. There would be mandatory modules to preserve the integrity (for a lack of better word) of the degree subject, and then you might get 2-3 electives in your second semester.

2-How many hours do students typically study in the UK? ( i know its subjective but in an American system, you need to study more or less 1 hour for every credit we take -we take 15 credits per semester)
When I was doing a 180 credit postgrad, I was spending 60 hours per week.
On the other hand, I knew people who were barely scraping by on 30 hours per week.
If you are doing 10 hours of study per week, you are asking to be shot.
The mandatory requirement tend to be 24 hours of lecture per module per year + 12 hours of seminars per module per year. Outside of this, it's pretty much up to you how much you study.

3-What is the schedule more/less be like? i haven't found any info about timetable of classes for last year so do postgraduate class usually held in the mornings or afternoons?
This would depend on the individual degree. Most of my lectures didn't started at 9am, thankfully. A number of them were fortunately in the afternoon.
The main thing is the university department would try to squeeze in certain lectures and seminars where they can find slots for.
Most lecturers would however expect the majority of students to fail to attend early lectures and seminars, so I would doubt they would intentionally set most of your lectures and seminars in the morning.

4-Will i have the option of sticking all classes in one day for three days a week?
No. I have not heard of such system for any degree at any university. You would typically be handed a schedule and expected to stick to it.

5- Grading: is 2:1 the highest grade? is that pass with distinction? I read online that i should not expect to get over 80s so what grades range do students who pass with distinction usually get?
No, a 2:1 is not the highest grade. The highest grade is a first class for an undergrad, which is at 70%. A 2:1 by comparison is a 60%. If you want to, you can think of 1st class as A, 2:1 B, 2:2 C, 3rd D.
With your master's, I think they follow Distinction (70%), Merit (60%), Pass (50%) - if they do merit at all.
Getting 80 or higher is exceptionally rare. Your work would need to be on calibre of that of senior academics (or something so good that it's worth publishing in academic journals) to achieve something as high as that. For example, in one of my group presentations, I asked the lecturer who marked it how I can get better than the 70% that I have got, and his answer is that it's incredibly difficult and you need to have something incredibly polished; he jokingly said someone like Milton Friedman (the late economist) would be lucky to have scored 83% in his assignment.
The grade distribution is usually normally distributed (if you have covered this in stats). The majority of the people would have grades around 60%. Whilst the distribution of marks above 70% and below 50% would vary from uni to uni and course to course, you can somewhat guess about 15-20% of students fall above and below this range each. To get the actual distribution to gauge how difficult the individual unit is (I would make this explicit, as I made a similar mistake and people presumed I was trying to be competitive), you would need to ask the individual lecturer teaching the unit.

Reply 2

martin7

Original post by Anonymous

Probably not. Your programme structure is likely to be fixed, with specific modules taught in specific semesters. Some modules will be compulsory, but it's likely that there will be some choice of modules from a set of options -- e.g. "you must take modules A, B, C, D; plus 4 more from E, F, G, H, I, J, K".

2-How many hours do students typically study in the UK? ( i know its subjective but in an American system, you need to study more or less 1 hour for every credit we take -we take 15 credits per semester)

For undergraduate students (i.e. students studying for a bachelor's degree), the expectation is that you treat it as a full-time job -- i.e. that you'd spend 35 hours a week engaged in studying. (Obviously not everyone spends that much time studying, but it's a good guideline.) I can't see that a master's degree wouldn't expect a similar level of commitment.

3-What is the schedule more/less be like? i haven't found any info about timetable of classes for last year so do postgraduate class usually held in the mornings or afternoons?

Timetables will change from year to year. Timetabling depends on availability of the teaching staff, the students, and the lecture rooms, and the students -- teaching staff can't be in two places at once, neither can students, and you can't put two activities in the same room at the same time. So you can expect your classes to be whenever the timetabling system can fit them in, just the same as for undergraduate students.

4-Will i have the option of sticking all classes in one day for three days a week?

No; you'll need to do whatever the timetable comes up with.

5- Grading: is 2:1 the highest grade? is that pass with distinction? I read online that i should not expect to get over 80s so what grades range do students who pass with distinction usually get?

1st/2:1/2:2/3rd (first class; upper second class; lower second class; third class) is the grading used at undergraduate degree level, normally mapping to 70+/60-69/50-59/40-49 respectively. How your final classification is worked out will be specified in the university's regulations. I suspect that 70% will be the level required for a distinction, but the specific rules as to how that's awarded for the final degree classification (possibly not purely working from an arithmetic mean) will be spelled out in the regulations.

A mark of 80% for an individual piece of work would be considered exceptional, and anything significantly beyond that would be very unusual indeed. As a guideline for how marking on taught programmes works at one particular university (the University of Bristol, though I suspect the criteria would be similar anywhere), see table 1 ("Generic Marking Criteria mapped against the three marking scales") at https://www.bristol.ac.uk/academic-quality/assessment/regulations-and-code-of-practice-for-taught-programmes/marking-criteria/