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As an uncle told me many moons ago: Do more in college. Write a rock opera, spend a week curled up in the union learning about black holes, be good enough to t
by Balgair 4y ago
As an uncle told me many moons ago:
Do more in college. Write a rock opera, spend a week curled up in the union learning about black holes, be good enough to tutor.
Don't just graduate with nothing but a taste for bad jazz and cheap beer.
- OJFord 4y agoOr, as cousin Melchior put it, 'anything other than a first or a fourth is wasted'. (Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh. Not sure how internationally read it is, but a worthwhile classic. British degrees are classified from firsts to thirds (via upper and lower second class honours) - but the story is (initially) set at Oxford, which at the time awarded fourths.)
- Balgair 4y agoThanks for the reccomendation! I am a bit confused though. Is 'a first' the top score on an exam or like a suma cum laude? Free link to the book here: https://gutenberg.ca/ebooks/waughe-bridesheadrevisited1945/waughe-bridesheadrevisited1945-00-h.html https://gutenberg.ca/ebooks/waughe-bridesheadrevisited1945/w...
- OJFord 4y agoPeople sometimes talk about it in terms of exams in the sense that they'd achieve a first overall if that exam was 'it', or that it brings their average up etc. - but strictly speaking you can only achieve first class (or any other) honours for the degree as a whole. It's commonly (but not necessarily) >70% overall. Equivalent to achieving some high GPA range.
- zinckiwi 4y agoAmerican translation: graduating with anything other than a 4.0 or a 1.0 is wasted.
- OJFord 4y agoOr rather between them, yes. (Or a bit lower than 4.0, that's perfect right? Or do you not have to get full marks on every exam to achieve that?)
- antasvara 4y ago4.0 would mean that you got a letter grade of "A" in every class. In the US, that usually means you got a final grade of 95% or higher in every class.
- TylerE 4y ago95? I have never seen that. 10 point seems to be the most common (A=90+).
- AlchemistCamp 4y agoAt my school, 90, 91, and 92 were considered an A- and worth only 3.7 grade points.
- TylerE 4y agoThat’s a little more normal. In my state Grades 1-8 ran on a 7pt scale. A was 93+, B was 85-93
- wombatpm 4y agoIn high school maybe. All my stem classes in college were graded on a curve. First exam freshman year was physics. I walked out thinking I failed. There were questions I did not answer. Later that night they posted raw scores. Mine was 48 pts out of 100. I was ready to withdraw and reconsider engineering as a major. Later still they posted the cut offs. 40 was the cutoff for an A. Avg was 36 and the cutoff for a B. My 48 was the 4th highest score. I would have preferred the British system
- zamfi 4y ago
- cperciva 4y ago"First" means "first class honours" aka. the highest designation of degree. The US equivalent is summa cum laude, yes.
- OJFord 4y agoIt's not quite equivalent in that it's more standardised and every university uses it. I think it's more accurately equivalent to 3.x GPA or above; probably you could find graduate entry requirements (though most are probably fine with at least a 2:1/upper second) stating exactly that as their equivalent admissions criterion.
- cperciva 4y agoLet me rephrase that. An Oxford first is equivalent to summa cum laude from an Ivy League. Yes, the standard for graduate admission around the world (and also other things, like undergraduate research awards in Canada) is upper second.
- zamfi 4y agoNot the same — Oxford first means top third of the class, roughly. Summa at Harvard is top 5%, a much higher bar.
- lawtalkinghuman 4y agoFirst = highest undergraduate degree classification in the British system. Universities in the UK treat a degree from the US with a 3.7 or 3.8 or higher GPA as equivalent to a first according to Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_undergraduate_degree_classification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_undergraduate_degree_c...
- Turing_Machine 4y agoI think it's reasonably widely-read in the United States, though I haven't read it myself. Probably more are familiar with the British Granada Television adaptation, which was shown here on the Great Performances series on PBS. I don't know how well that conformed with the book.
- cutler 4y agoThe BBC's serialisation of Brideshead, starring Jeremy Irons (Charles Ryder), Diana Quick and Anthony Andrews, was a huge hit with students when it aired in October 1981. The TV room in the Students Union was full every Sunday throughout the whole series. As for Charles's cousin Melchior John Gielgud, who played Charles's father, delivered some classic lines including this rejoinder to Charles's request for a loan - "Hard up? Penurious? Distressed? Embarrassed? Stoney broke? On the rocks? In Queer Street? Your cousin Melchior was imprudent with his investments and got into a very queer street - worked his passage to Australia before the mast."
- OJFord 4y agoSeconded, and now you say it I'm wondering if the line I quoted might actually be (only) from the series. The book is excellent, but it's not so funny, or with such snappy dialogue (of course, really, of course TV writers have to add that sort of thing). '[Puts book down, objecting to Charles also occupying himself] I do think you might talk to me - I've had a very exhausting day. Entertain me. Take me out of myself.'
- WWLink 4y agoA lot of CS students need to be told this as well. If you take the bare minimum CS so that you can double major in business, don't come crying on here that CS didn't teach you anything about programming lol.
- rnk 4y agoDouble major in business, bleach. I was math & cs and I wanted to do physics too.
- khalilravanna 4y agoLove this thought. I’d also throw in that doing well in college can be as simple as trying tons of new experiences with the absurd low risk entailed with being a kid with almost total freedom and almost 0 real responsibility. Make friends, make memories, but most of all: make lots of mistakes!
- ethbr0 4y agoMaking mistakes is one of the most important parts of college, but sadly another one that's being torn down by over-zealous administration and campus policing. My father went to a small, rural school whose local police force generally took the approach that as long as it didn't hurt anyone "At worst, a night in jail and no record of the arrest." Even for what would be considered distribution of hard drugs now. When I went to school, students got a slap on the wrist for burning a hole in their dorm floor with thermite. 10 years after I went to school, a student was charged with a terrorism offense for making a dry ice pressure bottle and tossing it out of their dorm window as a joke. And as near as I can tell, it's gotten stricter since. See: bitching about Harvard's dismantling of independent fun. "Make lots of mistakes" isn't feasible if it ends up on a permanent record.
- khalilravanna 4y agoIt’s a bummer cause it’s so short sighted in how it cripples creativity and open minded thinking. Fear has never been a motivator for almost anything good. Dumb example I’ll share for a laugh is when I went to university (graduated 2013) they would put you on the sex offender registry for peeing outside and even for going in the wrong gendered restroom. One time I got obliterated and desperately needed to puke. But I was in a dorm where every other floor had your gender’s bathroom. Given my luck I was on the wrong floor. So my choice was potentially end up a sex offender for puking in a girl’s restroom stall or puke in the stairwell thus stinking it up for weeks. Guess which choice fear motivated me to make. Sorry about the stairwell, guys.
- waynesonfire 4y agolol what? this isn't high school bro.