A quick and dirty guide to the British education system part 2

[gemnoire]

or why Eames may have read at university and would be happy with a Damien but probably not a Douglas or a Desmond

Comments

[duckgirlie]

Regarding Law (should it be relevant): The post-graduate course is (as far as I know) only for those who want to be a barrister, and is a vocational course that teaches things like advocacy and client interview skills, and is only available in about 10 Unis. Solicitors have a separate accreditation body.

[gemnoire]

Thank you, I fully admit I know nothing about law degrees, not having done one myself.

But yes, that raises a nice quirk about our legal system - we don't have just lawyers, we have solicitors (who do the office-based legal stuff/research) and barristers who present the case in court.

My contribution to this.

[eleveninches]

Warning for pretentiousness.

I've read a lot of fics where writers put Eames at Cambridge or Oxford, so I'd like to point out at Oxbridge, degree names are a bit different. A Master of Arts/Sciences at other unis is a Master of Studies (MSt), and a PhD is called a DPhil. So, for example, Eames would have read for his DPhil at Cambridge, not his PhD.

Re: My contribution to this.

[fides]

Also, at Oxford (and possibly Cambridge but I've been to more Oxford graduations) you graduate with you bachelors and then after a specific period of time (wikipedia tell me 7 years from matriculation) you can get your degree 'upgraded' to a MA (Oxon) without any further work on your part (I believe a nominal amount of money may change hands here for historical reasons).

Re: My contribution to this.

[fit_haver]

I think at Cambridge you can just 'buy' a masters degree straight away if you want, but it's kind of pointless because everyone knows that a Masters from Cambridge means absolutely nothing. Also, everyone graduates from Cambridge with a BA, whether they did an arts or science subject.

Re: My contribution to this.

[surexit]

Not true, there's a waiting period. I don't know quite what it is because I haven't got there yet. :D It's worthwhile doing because it means you retain borrowing rights to the University Library, I belieeeeve, but I'm not sure. Oh, and you can't get it if you've been divorced or been in prison.

[tamzinrose]

I am a second year humanities student (Eng Lit) and we have about 8 hours contact time (annoyingly, this semester mine's all early mornings; I am the least morning person ever).

[gemnoire]

Thank you, I didn't know many humanities students at uni so I wasn't certain of the exact comparison.

Psychology we had about 16, I hear biologists are about 20ish and physicists are 35+ for comparison.

Part 1

[fides]

A number of universities in the UK have started offering 4 year courses without an industrial year but with a masters year tacked on the end instead. This is mostly a funding weeze and you are more likely to find it occurring in science subjects (I think

Part 2 - The Viva

[fides]

Having created your thesis you submit (at least) three (softbound) copies. One goes to your supervisor, one to your internal examiner (your 'Internal') and one to your external examiner (your 'External'). The Internal will be from your department and might well have previously examined you on your subject but will not have worked with you closely (although they could well be someone that you have drinks with on a Friday night depending on how social your department is). The External will have been selected as someone appropriate by your supervisor and Internal (they might have consulted with the candidate for ideas on this but not necessarily). Obviously there are all sorts of academic hierarchies and networks for being external examiners.

Having submitted your thesis everyone gets a chance to read it before they examine you on it. I believe the minimum time is a month from submission to viva but that might not be an actual rule. Equally they try and not make candidates wait too long after submission but you do get rare cases where

Part 3 - Post-Viva

[fides]

Having been put out of their misery the candidate will be told just what changes (there are normally some even it is just typos) need to be made to actually finish. At the high end it will just be minor corrections which the Internal examiner can sign off on and the External won't ask to see. More significant (major) changes and the External might want to sign off on them as well. This goes all the way to the examiners demanding an entire re-write and/or another viva. The candidate will also be given a period of time in which to make these changes (1 month for minor changes, 6 months for larger changes etc). When all this is agreed on the candidate is released (normally to find their friends and celebrate although it is not unknown, especially if celebrating on campus, to buy/be bought a drink by your examiners or even to go out to dinner with them - networking ftw). At my department it was traditional for the supervisor or the candidate (depending on the supervisor) to send out an email to the department post-viva to invite everyone

Re: Part 3 - Post-Viva

[gemnoire]

Thank you.

I could have gone into reams on PhDs, but to be honest I really couldn't bring myself to do it - so thank you for doing it for me.

Although, I too couldn't comment on humanities ones - in fact I can only relaly comment on Psychology - these things vary so much from subject to subject.

[surexit]

Cambridge is also wierd and I will cover it later on when I deal with Oxbridge.

I ENTIRELY agree that Cambridge is weird, but you seem to be specifically saying that it is weird about electives? I am le curious, I didn't notice any specific weirdness around that area.

[gemnoire]

Not so much on electives but on course structure since it uses the Tripos system so you don't tend to study a single subject (rather if you are doing physics for example, you'd do Natural Sciences and specialise in Physics). But again, since I haven't been to Cambridge I am mostly going off what I've heard from friends who have.

[surexit]

That's really only true for the sciences - all scientists do NatSci, as you say. Everyone else, it seems pretty standard. I suppose the NatScis are quite a big group of people, though. :D

[gemnoire]

Don't you have the same with POlitics/Sociological/Psychology - or at least there was when I was looking at applying (which is why I applied to Oxford - you couldn't do psychology as a single subject at Cambridge).