Cakestoppers exam results...

vitesse169

mr_si wrote:

DCowling wrote:

Am I the only person on a bike that only got CSE's

No but this is a self selecting survey

....erm, I got 8 cse's in '76. All between grades 2-4.
Joined the Army as a junior - got some City & Guilds.....
Left and joined the rozzers in '89..... retire next year and am returning to college.
Uni of life has helped me along the way - rather than loads of education....

redddraggon

freehub wrote:

Is it true at uni you only fail if you're a lazy bum that does not want to succeed and actively tries to fail?

Yes, if you put the work in you'll get the appropriate level of result. No admissions tutor will except you if you are probably going to fail anyway.

1footedninja

redddraggon wrote:

freehub wrote:

Is it true at uni you only fail if you're a lazy bum that does not want to succeed and actively tries to fail?

Yes, if you put the work in you'll get the appropriate level of result. No admissions tutor will except you if you are probably going to fail anyway.

Like in all walks of life / employment, you get ar5eholes who are in control of the outcome of what they see as your works 'potentiality', all this means is it absorbs little ticks and goldstars and then they either give you little pats on the backs and applaud you etc etc (you have become assimilated - welcome to hivemind),or if they don't like you they can then score your work 'output' lower and pretty much make things as miserable as sin for you whilst all your trying to do is make better of your sh1tty life, by either educating yourself more (cos everyone knows educated people get good jobs right??) or just saving your hard earned beans to buy burritos with(do not pass go , do not collect 100 dollars- welcome to un-hivemind). These people take great delight in playing 'god' with your life. These people are ar5eholes of the highest order and hide behind superficial power whilst earning 'suspect' large amounts of income for doing nothing except pretending to look busy. They will make out they are living highly stressful lives etc, yeah right! My grandad was a miner at one point in his life, now that was stressful. I just love watching stressed out middle management types as they eat their muffin and drink their latte then dishing out the work to their minions whilst they earn more for basically doing less -but oh yes I'm sure the doublespeak will come out soon that they usually come out with to try and justify their jobs when its their balls on the chopping block and not one of their 'employee's' that sadly they have to see 'go' cos of the downturn in the economy - me bitter! never! - heres your lovely card signed with all the people you never knew existed in your job , and oh! we had a whip round for a basket of fruit - don't you feel loved! - now please leave quietly, please don't make a fuss, clear your desk on the way out, and thank-you for wasting lots of your valuable time on this planet stuck in a very boring monotonous routine which, here's the kicker, you can never get that time back...ever.

Now whatcha gonna do??!

I'm all for education, I learned very early on the best education you can get is the one you give yourself - not what other people think your education should be.

And those in positions of power who wield that power unruly with no thought for others except their own gains.... don't they not get it... out there in the real world , none of it means diddly.

Anonymous

Suffolkwheels

Nothing to do with elephant impressions by the way....

1footedninja

jim453

I actually agree with the ninja.

However,

Many of us work for 'the man' we have mouths to feed. And from experience I've learned that you can't eat principles. Even if they do seem like a tasty idea.

You can't eat shoulder chips either. Last time I tried.

Ollieda

redddraggon wrote:

freehub wrote:

Is it true at uni you only fail if you're a lazy bum that does not want to succeed and actively tries to fail?

Yes, if you put the work in you'll get the appropriate level of result. No admissions tutor will except you if you are probably going to fail anyway.

They probably will actually, lots of unis are desperate for money at the moment and will accept people who they don't expect to pass. Once the student drops out there are ways record the drop out so the uni's reputation isn't harmed. (This more applies to newer unis, OxBridge / Redbrick unis are a little more careful about this sort of thing)

Cleat Eastwood

redddraggon wrote:

freehub wrote:

Is it true at uni you only fail if you're a lazy bum that does not want to succeed and actively tries to fail?

Yes, if you put the work in you'll get the appropriate level of result. No admissions tutor will except you if you are probably going to fail anyway.

If your face fits regardless of your intelligence you get a higher/ lower grade. Hard work has nothing to do with it. The point of university , I'm talkng about the social sciences here, its bound to be different for the technical / scientific disciplines, is to learn certain theories and be able to spout them parrot fashion.

I had on efriend at uni given a third simply because one course leader took exception to her fathers job.

Another friend given a first for organising a seminar with Phil Redmond as guest speaker....and surprise surprise it was phil redmond whom the uni were courting to sponsor a new media building, which latterly he did.

The one good thing about uni is the variety of people you mix with and the world of ideas an dexperiences that present themselves to you.

Ollieda

Cleat, maybe you had a bad time at uni or your friends went to a particularly bad one but you seem to have a very soiled view of the whole thing.

Unlike the "parrot fashion" learning of GCSEs and A levels, uni is all about trying to get people to push themselves further and look outside of the box. Simply repeating what has been taught parrot fashion will almost certainly get the student either a 3rd or a fail. Most of the time you would only be looking at scores in the 1st region for students who have done further reading that what was expected and talked / written about issues that were linked to the question but not discusses in class.....showing that they had done more than simply read and repeat their course notes.

Also a large amount of universities are now using anonymous marking schemes so lecturers who bear particular likes / dislike to students can't mark them up or down.

I've had friends who were good people and got on well with lecturers and ended up getting bad marks, likewise we had a bloke in our class who was an absolute kn0b and constantly disrupted lectures and annoyed everyone, he got a high 2:1

tebbit

I went to an Institute of Higher education in my twenties to do an unfashionable subject at not to high a level (HND), I worked hard enjoyed it and had a great time, since then i have gone onto further study and hopefully complete a masters this year. I benefited from the experience, though I didn't have great expectations of the out come, what I expected to learn was how to use surveying equipment, learn how different types of buildings fitted together and some basic management. For me it was a good experience and I gained from it.

PBo

Rick Chasey wrote:

PBo wrote:

Runoutofgears wrote:

Rick Chasey wrote:

Maybe I should qualify:

teachers are getting better and better at getting their pupils to achive good grades at A level...

Fair comment, but if you subscribe to the, "get your ticket" system we seem to live in.

It seems to me that the biggest single difference that is definitely true and definitely an advantage that today's pupils have over my A levels 20 odd years ago is the modular nature, and the higher number of shorter exams.

My cohort usually sat 3 A levels, all at the end of year 2, with mostly written exams lasting 3 hours! If you were unlucky you had 2 x 3 hour exams in a day. And if you blew it, you needed to stay on the next year to retake.

Gaining an A level, via AS and A2 papers, taken in 1.5 hour exams, with much more modular nature (so can take staggered exams in jan, june, jan, june over the 2 years) is a massive advantage. More chance to resit most of the papers too.

It's always tougher in days of yor... :roll:

I bet the grade entries for university places and the number of people you are competing with was plenty less than it is now.

On the whole, getting into university is much more competitive than it used to be, and given the 'grade inflation' that people talk about, what you do alongside your A levels counts for a lot more.

Good students are not just getting the grades, they're doing lots of other stuff alongside.

I doubt it's any easier to get into a good university.

To be honest, I didn't mean it in a "4 Yorkshireman - I used to lick road clean wi' tongue!' kind of way, although looking back I see that it can come across like that.

I just feel that it devalues the efforts of today's kids to just say "A levels are easier/dumbed down" when it may just be that the different structure makes it easier for them to demonstrate what they know, and to achieve this in small steps - rather than making the task of showing their learning/undertsanding a bizarre form of torture...surely this is a good thing? My other point is, this different structure definitely and demonstrably exists, it's not just hearsay, or Daily Mail opinion. Truth is, unless one works for an exam board/regulator, or maybe have worked in education for 20-30 years, you're not in a position to know whether the are objectively harder or not...

So less of the rolling eyes please

nolf

Cleat Eastwood wrote:

redddraggon wrote:

freehub wrote:

I

The point of university , I'm talkng about the social sciences here, its bound to be different for the technical / scientific disciplines, is to learn certain theories and be able to spout them parrot fashion.

I love that contrast, social sciences are about memorising and spouting certain theories parrot style, whereas the study of undergraduate Chemistry is...?

I find the notion that the evaluation and analysis of a wide range of qualitative data is somehow more open to parrot spouting, than "proper" undergraduate science, that uses fixed experiments (already carried out thousands of time) to present you with a set of qualitative data, slightly odd.

As far as I can tell the majority of undergraduate chemisty is based around about 4 textbooks and some preset experiments. Whereas my History degree is based around many hundreds of books and articles, a wide variety of largely unread archive material and a take on subject matter never looked at before (a requirement for my dissertation).

I would wager there's more room for individual interpretation in the social sciences.

schweiz

nolf wrote:

Cleat Eastwood wrote:

redddraggon wrote:

freehub wrote:

I

The point of university , I'm talkng about the social sciences here, its bound to be different for the technical / scientific disciplines, is to learn certain theories and be able to spout them parrot fashion.

I love that contrast, social sciences are about memorising and spouting certain theories parrot style, whereas the study of undergraduate Chemistry is...?

I find the notion that the evaluation and analysis of a wide range of qualitative data is somehow more open to parrot spouting, than "proper" undergraduate science, that uses fixed experiments (already carried out thousands of time) to present you with a set of qualitative data, slightly odd.

As far as I can tell the majority of undergraduate chemisty is based around about 4 textbooks and some preset experiments. Whereas my History degree is based around many hundreds of books and articles, a wide variety of largely unread archive material and a take on subject matter never looked at before (a requirement for my dissertation).

I would wager there's more room for individual interpretation in the social sciences.

Yes, a chemistry degree will, in the first two years probably focus on experiments that have been carried out many thousands of times with sell documented expected results in order to teach the techniques required, just as when I learnt about history at primary school we started with the Dinosaurs at age 6 working through Stone/Bronze/Iron ages, Romans, Tudors, Stuarts etc. ending up with the Victorians at age 11. Then on to secondary school where we started again with the Stone Age but were taught how to analyse the evidence (who, what, why, when, how) rather than just accept what we were taught. Again, teaching the methods that allow novel research to be undertaken. For example, my sister’s Microbilology thesis was looking at water quality in the River Trent, the techniques used to gather the data were certainly standard, but the interpretation of the data is where the real science is. The same can be applied to my Software Engineering degree, we spent the first two years writing generic programs but my thesis, and the theses of my class mates were all something that were not spouted verbatim from a text book.

IMHO, all degrees should result in the final year student proposing their own ideas/solutions in a theses supported by other academic studies as well as the results of their own investigations. This is what allows them to go out into the world and work in their subject field and advance the knowledge in that field.

On a separate point, the poet you quote in your signature is Alfred Lord Tennyson, not Ternsyon

nolf

schweiz wrote:

nolf wrote:

Cleat Eastwood wrote:

redddraggon wrote:

freehub wrote:

I

The point of university , I'm talkng about the social sciences here, its bound to be different for the technical / scientific disciplines, is to learn certain theories and be able to spout them parrot fashion.

I love that contrast, social sciences are about memorising and spouting certain theories parrot style, whereas the study of undergraduate Chemistry is...?

I find the notion that the evaluation and analysis of a wide range of qualitative data is somehow more open to parrot spouting, than "proper" undergraduate science, that uses fixed experiments (already carried out thousands of time) to present you with a set of qualitative data, slightly odd.

As far as I can tell the majority of undergraduate chemisty is based around about 4 textbooks and some preset experiments. Whereas my History degree is based around many hundreds of books and articles, a wide variety of largely unread archive material and a take on subject matter never looked at before (a requirement for my dissertation).

I would wager there's more room for individual interpretation in the social sciences.

The interpretation of the data is where the real science is. The same can be applied to my Software Engineering degree, we spent the first two years writing generic programs but my thesis, and the theses of my class mates were all something that were not spouted verbatim from a text book.

IMHO, all degrees should result in the final year student proposing their own ideas/solutions in a theses supported by other academic studies as well as the results of their own investigations. This is what allows them to go out into the world and work in their subject field and advance the knowledge in that field.

On a separate point, the poet you quote in your signature is Alfred Lord Tennyson, not Ternsyon

+1.
I do agree, I was just reacting to the dismissal of undergraduate "social sciences".
Not just in reference to academia but in work as a whole, I would think those are the valuable skills that university should be building. In that sense I think that all undergradute degree subjects share a core result.
It's then the entering the world of work or going onto post-graduate degrees that sharpens that base into something more specific.

finchy

I was a thoroughly unmotivated pupil at school, and got 1 A, 3 Bs and 6 Cs at GCSE.

B in Politics, C in Ancient History and D in French (which I now speak fluently) at A-level. My biggest regret is Ancient History. I got As in nearly every essay and exam I did throughout the whole course, but when it came to the final exams I somehow messed them up and ended up with a grade C instead of my predicted A. If the qualification had been modular rather than based 100% on the final exam I would easily have got an A. One day I'm going to re-take the A-level and get myself an A.

Then onto uni to get a 2.1. in Politics. I'm now far more motivated and doing a BEng with Open University. I've just today got 100% in quantum mechanics. 8) .

Slapshot

Schools is a terrible time to gain good qualifications because your mind would rather be on other things.

Anyway..
8 O Levels (proper old Scottish ones)
6 Highers English Maths Physics Chemistry Biology and History ( 6th year timetable filler)
3 SYS Certificates Physics Chemistry and Biology
Bsc (1st) Physics, MSC thermodynamics

Regrets yeah would much rather have done History

tebbit

Last exam I did was measurement, I was having a pint afterwards with another lad who sat it, we were talking about the exam, two questions one a "take off" measuring the components of a new build house, the other a civil engineering question about a new build road way, again measurement. This bloke was on his fourth resit of the subject:

"So which did you measure, the building or the civils?" He asked

"You had to measure both."

"Oh crap"

I passed but with the suspicion that as you never get to see their marking they can give you whatever mark they please and don't have to justify it.