epic fail

This is dird. "fail" and "epic" appear to seemlessly gather around him.

y h8 =[

exams should be done with before christmas break. you suck.

for pussies and primary school ye.

In here university exams happen early january, and the end of the semester's lessons end on 24th december. So basically we have less than two weeks to study beforehand and it includes christmas and new year's eve.

We not pussies.

That's incredibly retarded, start earlier.

Why is it retarded ? We have our own reasons to work like that, and it was certainly not made randomly.

Because of this: "So basically we have less than two weeks to study beforehand and it includes christmas and new year's eve".

I personally think that it precisely gives students a lot of time to study, since when else are you going to get two weeks (sometimes three) without classes prior to your exams?

pretty shit when they have a 10 days to schedule and stick 3 exams in a row though :<<< am dying right now!

perfect practice for chinese working mentality!

=(
planned to revise 12 of 16 key pages tonight but only managed 11.5~ :(

Yeah, well it depends on when you begin the semester after the summer break. Of course in itself it's good to have several weeks before final exams, more important though for me usually, given you at least have a week from when classes end to the first one, is the time you then get in between exams.

we here have a different system at severeal unis.

All exams are written in the summer and spring breaks (~6 weeks) between the semesters. On the plus side, if you plan well and have a bit of luck you get one complete week before each exam.
Negative part is that the professors and assistants know that, too, so they raise the bar accordingly and you really need that week :(

So, yeah. At first I thought it wasn't to have the exams spread out for better preparation. But in the end, I guess having them all stuck into two weeks is preferable from the students point of view.

Here we like to keep the summer and christmas vacations sacred. Me this year:

Aug 27th: Classes start
Nov 25th: Classes end
Dec 3rd: Exam #1
Dec 11th: Exam #2
Dec 16th: Exam #3

Vacation

Jan 4th: Classes start
Apr 9th: Classes end
Apr 28th: Exam #1
May 4th: Exam #2
May 10th: Exam #3

Vacation

Aug 27th: Classes start

lazy bums :)

Well most all students work during the breaks. :)

overpaid bums then?

:P

let's just settle on "bums"

fine with me


<3

Here it is:

Oct 1st: classes start (+/- 1 week - that depends on uni)
Dec 23rd - Jan 2nd: Christmas break
Jan 20th: classes end
Jan 22nd - Feb 3rd: exams period (1st try)
Feb 4th - Feb 13th: vacation
Feb 14th - Jun 5th: second semester
Jun 6th - Jun 19th: exams period

Some profesors allow students to write exams before exams period (for example on the last lecture, if they were able to finish whole material earlier) - so in the best case you can have almost whole June free (thus almost 4 months of vacation). Unfortunately, if you fail any exams during spring/summer semester, you have to retake them in September (or even late August), unless your profesor is very student-friendly ;) That thing is not nice, but students pay for their mistakes :P (not learning/preparing properly)

I might go to some Scandinavian country for an exchange (through Erasmus) that year so schedule in Sweden or Iceland is pretty cool for me - I would be at home before Christmas and have over 1,5 free month till last semester, which starts around 15th February :P

same in norway (:

Same in Sweden (::

Ya, we copy everything from DA/NO.

we prolly copied :DA

it also really depends on the subject :p

i have to write papers/theses during the summer and spring breaks and essays during the terms. that can be hard on those who have to work or do interns during the breaks, i'm lucky to have job(s) at the university.

we have to do internships and papers, too, obviously.

But it usually turn out that people either only go to a few of their lectures and/or take semesters off to write papers and possible repeat two or three exams.

In the end that just means that almost now one finishes in the 'regular' time. At my uni the average extra time for engineers is only about 2-3 semesters, while for architects and computer scienctists it's ~4 semesters.

ah, same here :)

it's like there's the official way of how things should be run and then there's this completely different way of how things are done in the end. bachelor/master didn't change that much, just made it harder for most during their terms. the only good thing imo is that the work load for the final exams is much less now.

yeah, I keep hearing that from the Bachelor/Master students.

Which just a bit weird considering that take pretty much the same classes we did and I know from friends who actually prepare the exams that they aren't harder than or that much different from the ones before.

Then again, we also were convinced that our studies were harder than those ten years ago ;P


The only bigger difference that I have noticed is that people have to show results sooner. But in reality, those that didn't pass some of their exams in the first semester usually ended up quitting sooner or later.

you actually get study leave? LUCKY!!! I don't get any time off before exams (I go to Erasmus Rotterdam Uni or whatever it's called). Just during the week of exams, we don't have classes or lectures. And we have 3 exams in 4 days... new subjects and exams every 8 weeks. 2 weeks study leave would be soooo luxury :(

Bleh, my exams start next week :( GL with the last one Dird!

well... if you only have 8 weeks of lessons, its not that hard either, there shouldnt be such a huge quantity of material as if you had 15 weeks ;)

yeah true :) Only about 400 pages per subject :)

owell, if you wanna have an university degree in europe, they're all gonna be same hard, be it in NL or BE, or wherever, there's no easy way... ;)

what? unis completely easy

not all. But what is hard then ;)

medical school...to be a doctor only i guess...nurse must be easy

erm. I usually tend to think these studies are overrated.

I have a lot of friends in this so...

everythings easy then

I my studies at my uni only about 20%-40% (depending on the year) actually graduate. Some just don't like the field, but others are simply not talented and diligent enough. And that's even though roughly the top half of German are eligible to enter university.

And there are both some other universities and some other fields that are tougher.


So yeah, university is certainly doable but 'easy' doesn't really fit.

it does when you dont include the wasters (those who dont turn up to a lot then talk during the lectures they do come to...slack with coursework to score shit there)

are you sure you didn't simply pick an easy subject or an easy uni and now try to see one as the general rule?

I know people who went to all the lectures on a subject and studied 2 weeks right before the exam and still failed.

Btw, where are the good old stereotypes?
It seems odd that people now assume that so many Germans are slackers. :P

easy subject? well i said i guess most are easy except like training to be a doctor~
easy uni? all exams here have the same grading system & final year exam papers have to be externally approved & marked. the amount of students achieving the top mark here is way below the national average (3-4/80 instead of 10%) so cant say easier uni

i wasnt referring to germans as slackers...i was referring to general slackers on any course...on my course they mainly tend to be indian guys/girls (british born ofc...the only real indian is the god of our degree...he rejected micrsoft when it came to placements $$)

In Germany medicine has the lowest average drop-out rate compared to other fields. So yeah I agree, 'guess' is the correct term ;)

About the slackers, complaining about the lack a stereotypes, obviously wasn't completely serious. But you have to make up your mind, either an overwhelming number of German engineering students at my uni was bored with the subject or slackers or the subject is simply not 'easy'.

busy raging while playing ut i guess :P
they dominate it though so i guess its worth the price of failure~~

good excuse :P

<3
last one is a fucking hippie module...gonna have us sketching interfaces etc =/ such a joke module :<

It's really nice you find it so easy. You should definitely go for your masters / phd... it will pay off in the end :)

i find it easy...i didnt say i find it interesting.
dont wanna be a lecturer so phd is no point and companies in uk dont normally ask for master...just 60%+ average

anyways, did you not read the journal about me moving to china in july? :P all about those 550 euros per month~!

Good luck man :)

With a bit of luck you'll be eating dimsum in Asia within 12 months!

6 months :P
exam 1=2ez

huh

exams@may

jan + may

I have two exams in the next 7 days, and then one semester where I have one class per week for 8 weeks and 16-ish weeks to write my thesis.

I don't even care what my remaining 3 grades are as long as they're at least C, because my GPA can't possibly go low enough to stop me from getting cum laude :D (only two requirements I could still fail is having no grades below C and getting an A for my thesis)

Last year of Master's = fuck yeah.

You might as well try getting Magna Cum Laude, no? :p

There's no distinction between types of honors in my country, everything above a 4.6 GPA is just cum laude and everything below that is nothing. :P

how high does GPA go to there?

To 5.0. A = 5, B = 4, C = 3, D = 2 and E = 1. I thought this system was pretty standard across the EU.

we dont use GPA & its always "cum laude" unless you fail some modules

here its 40% for pass, 50% next grade up, then 60% and finally 70%+ is highest grade. "cum laude" unless you fail 1/2 modules in the final year...then you can just take it without "cum laude" or repeat those modules next year to try to obtain the cum

Oh. Totally different then, we have:
A = 91%-100%
B = 81-90%
..
E= 51%-60%
And everything below that is fail and retake.

Seems relatively easy to get a cum laude with that system, how do you tell between the top students and just good students?

well only around the top 10% get above 70% (national average)...on our course at our uni its lower (2-4 students) because this is a shit one xD

if by "cum laude" you mean "honours" then yes...its the norm...recruiters do it based on the average...many ask for 2:1 (60%) or above

If 70% is the "national average" then surely more than 10% of students get more than that :p

At my uni 12/20 = pass (12/20 - 14/20 = satisfactory), 14/20 - 16/20 = cum laude, 16/20 - 18/20 = magna cum laude, 18/20 - 20/20 = summa cum laude. The average grade must be around 13 - 14... In my department a handful of people get magna cum laude and 1-3 get summa cum laude, out of more than 100 students (I think last year when I received my Master's degree there were around 150 students graduating total).

`-`

I wish grading system was somehow unified (at least in Europe/European Union).

Here (at uni level) we got something like this:

2.0 <60% (not passing)
3.0 60%-70% (lowest grade you can pass with)
3.5 71-79% (like 3+)
4.0 (C) 80%-89%
4.5 (B) 90%-94%
5.0 (A) 95%-100%
6.0 (A+) - very rare grade, when your knowledge exceeds that level of education

At least it looks like that at my uni (in case of most courses). Sure - some schools use a bit different system, for example the best "normal" grade - 5.0 - might be given for >= 90% (never seen less, though). Same with that rare grade - some universities don't use it at all, most have it, but like I mentioned before, it's not given very often. Also, as far as I know, you need 60% to pass (get 3.0 grade) everywhere.

That's why it sucks - every country got its own system :( In my opinion it should be either 1-10 or 1-5 everywhere (at first 1-10 seems to be better but average would be hardly comparable, as some mean teachers could give a lot of grades close to 1 :>).

should be 4.0 gpa like US...i guess most others already get compared against it~

Yes the lack of consistency between grading systems is VERY annoying, especially if you're submitting an application for a program in the US, since they have absolutely no idea how your uni's grading system works. The ECTS letter system is supposed to help but universities can still grade however they want. I received straight A's everywhere (which I guess would get me a perfect 4.0 GPA in the US), I graduated first in the department with the highest grade average and with summa cum laude, yet my average is "only" slightly above 18/20 which is a 3.6 in the U.S. If the guys reviewing the Ph.D. applications don't take their time to study the point system we use here, I'm basically fucked (I already started my Ph.D. here anyway but it'd be nice to get accepted in the U.S. since I'm interested in studying American foreign policy). I had to pay a fortune to get certified translations of all the papers explaining in detail our point system, but I'll be very surprised if they take the time to read them in-depth...

I think it would it give the illusion of comparability.

Because exams and subjects are just way too different between countries and often enough even between universities form the same country.
And at least here in Germany personell managers already consider this as they don't simply consider the grade but also which university it is from and sometimes even what classes were taken.

So, even if you hade the same grading system for all countries a standard personell manager will consider what country it was from.


And last but not least, students tend to overrate grades, anyway.

I wrote my final paper in the company I work for now. I was pretty much hired on the spot, noone even asked for my grade average.

Of course :) It's quite obvious that, in general, having good grades for a student of e.g. political studies is easier than for someone who attend university of technology (ommiting aspect of personal interest and talent). Same with grades from worse and better universities (of the same field).

Anyway, I've talked with someone from human resources department of one of so-called Big Four audit companies and university is not very important for them, as long as it's some known institution. I mean that you can graduate from the best university of economics (which is, in that case, in Warsaw) as well as from some other which is ranked 2nd or 3rd, and they treat you pretty much the same (not if you finish some small private school nobody ever heard of).

If you apply for a job or internship in one of those international companies, you usually have to include list of your grades (at least those somehow connected with job), also including name of your teacher.

I would say that students used to overrate grades - most don't do that anymore, at least here :P It's one of less important factors when it comes to finding a job. Still, having good grades is useful in some situations - like I mentioned before - applying to some companies, student exchange programmes, scholarship programs etc. :->

It's quite obvious that, in general, having good grades for a student of e.g. political studies is easier than for someone who attend university of technology

I disagree. It may be easier to get passing grades, but I don't think it's easier to get good or high grades.

Why?:P

hang in there bro! ESR is right behind you! (no trollin!)

am eating noodles while listening to music & reading ESR...not the greatest way to memorise the 16 pages of guaranteed success :f

memorizing shit is not that hard

it is when you try to memorise 16 pages in 10 hours~ :P
that shit was anyways

module for tomoz going fine although i have the same number of pages to remember & less time...mainly cos of having diagrams & equations to remember instead of lines & lines of text for a good bulk of marks ;o

16 pages isn't exactly a lot.

depends on the content & thats when just coming back from another exam (fatigue?)...for the module i just had i had 8~ hours to revise it & it was fine...for some reason most of that stuck better from the revision a week or so ago than the other

I have to agree with becks here. Last semester I had to read through and memorize 200 pages of material in two evenings because I was too stupid to start with it earlier :P

obviously you didnt pay much attention into the probability of certain things appearing if you had 200 pages of revision for 1 module

Nah, the probability for everything appearing was pretty equal. It was the most badass, hardcore teacher I have ever had in 4,5 years of uni. He flunked two students for talking at the exam even after the respective students had handed in their exam papers, and refused to accept homework brought in 2 minutes past the deadline.

we had 1 like that in 2nd year....slides with heading only so we were writing the entire class...guy was fucking awesome with his quotes

even then it was like 28 pages i think

edit: and i still dont believe you really required 200 pages of notes for 1 module

Notes, fuck no. You couldn't get by with notes with this guy if you wanted to get an A. You literally had to know the 200 pages from the 350-page book. (Specific examples/problems about each situation came one after the other and you could expect any of them to appear at the exam).

More braindead stuff from my school experience:

* Oldschool teacher using a slide projector (you know, with the black text on transparent sheet), you had to write down (essentially word for word) the stuff on the projector while she talked about the topic. Just god damn put the text on the internet?!?!

* Guy who wrote the textbook we used. My fucking god. The exam consisted of 50-ish choice answer questions in the style of "finish this sentence from the 189th page of my book". And it's not like the choice answers were that much different from one another that it was easy to tell which one it was.

* Doing practical assignments for the entire length of the semester, then, at the end of the semester saying: here's 100 questions, 10 of which will be at the final exam. We haven't covered 85% of these topics in class, but you should know these things, so go find some books about the subject or something and prepare for what's at the exam.
(This guy I actually don't fault that much, as I think students should cover the book material in large part on their own time, but this was still somewhat crazy, most of the topics hadn't even come up in class at all)

Just god damn put the text on the internet?!?!
Some teachers don't do that because... students wouldn't attend lectures :P Good lecturers shouldn't have this kind of worries, though.

Talking about some weird things to learn - I study finance and one of exams after the first semester was mathematics. You always need at least 60% and "excercises" (things to solve) were only 50% of points, the other 50% was pure theory :D So you HAD to learn whole (or most of) theory to get even the worst (passing) grade. Some theorems were quite wicked, some looked similar so it was easy to make a mistake. Don't know the point of that - one year later I don't remember most of them :-P

I study finance as well, and I'm glad I had to study a bunchload of maths and statistics. Theorems just help you understand and remember the underlying concept, even if you don't later remember how to prove them.

Well, I am not denying usefulness of mathematics and various quantative methods in finance, I am well aware of their importance :P

so the sixteen pages were your own summary?

In that case it's a little more understandable, but still on the low side.

erm my own summaries were 26 & 19 pages but for both i prioritised 16 pages as being the most crucial.

i guess it depends on the exam structure as well...with the worse one (26 page...2nd exam) we had to answer any 3 from 5 questions....with the one today there was a compulsory section then answer 2 from 4....with that you can guarantee a question on some kind of encryption so thats 1-2 pages leading to a lot of marks.

with the worse one you could get by well enough memorising 8-9 key parts~

you can have my notes if you want & see how well you can remember 10 hours later :p

I don't have to take real exams anymore, so thanks, but no :P


But Iguess my mistake is that I was comparing what you did to my exams, which doesn't make too much sense since the professors expect us to have about a week completely free to prepare for them.

For some technical subjects, like maths and thermodynamics we also had a very different style of exae, nicknamed "luggage exmas". You are allowed to bring whatever pieces of paper, books, notes you wanted.
Sounds like a piece of cake, doesn't it?
Well, the difficulty of the questions was raised accordingly, and you barely had time to look stuff up if you didn't know where to find it exactly. In thermodynamics, you only had to get 33% of the points to pass and still 70-80% failed it each year. :P

So yeah, I guess it's not really possible to compare our exams. Just that memorizing 16 pages isn't all that much in general terms.

yea ours is 40% and you still get people failing when 16 pages could score high...epic slackers

Well here, in the Mechanics of structures course last year there was 398 people doing the exam, only 13 got aproved. Professor is a fucking idiot, gives 3h to complet the exam, but even he says that he strugles to complet it in 3h. Anyway, i got aproved, just barely... In the cinematics and dynamics courses it is almost the same... THey like to fuck up students here, and they even troll us with their ironies, fucking sadists.

Do you have their MSN, they sound smashing?

I hate the maths department at edinburgh uni so, so much.....

they have pretty much the same thing here; if you didnt pass "then you didnt study hard enough".......

Over 60 percent of the year fails first year maths first time round, I mean come on. Not over 60 percent of the class are slackers...I have never got above a D in any of my maths courses here :(

Maths for engineering is taught here by the maths department, not engineering. As such they just treat it as an aside, and we get all the seriously bad lecturers and its just; well it makes me angry.

It's also a heavily research based uni, so people are hired for their academic/reasearch ability rather than their teaching ability; not a mixture of both.

For communications engineering we have a chinese lecturer who literally cannot speak english.....I'm sure she is very adept at research and knows her stuff but when it comes to lecturing she is just beyond bad :(

What annoys me most is that this degree could have been top notch just by changing a handful of lecturers; as it stands it is unbearable in certain aspects :(

Rant over, my apologies :)

In my opinion, the first year fails are often due to people coming from school expecting it to be a bit easier or not knowing how to learn well.
Was like that for me: In my uni career I failed three written exams, two of them were in the first year. Third one I just hated the topic (ergomics)

Seconded. My grades were horrible during my first semester, and even in the first year. After I got used to how uni works and got a better idea of what my field is, my grades skyrocketed.

Yeah, I will have one exam like that - you can bring original (not copied :P) book, but nothing else. It's a common mistake - students think that passing is somehow guaranteed if you got the book but, like you say, usually there is no time to read it (if you want to fill whole test). Having a book is useful, though. You can check thiings you are not sure about and last but not the least - you don't have to remember some stupid things you will never use again (ranges of some numbers etc.).

I agree.

And personally I agree, cause I always hated memorizing stuff just for the sake of memorizing, so getting more difficult problems to solve while being allowed to look up all the formulas and own notes suited me fine.
And in the end, it's at least somewhat similar to the actual job you are studying for. (Except we usually pay someone else to calculate stuff :P)

Think I should start reading my econometrics book which consists of 400 pages :D

doesnt mean anything when 70% is useless :P
the book tied to this last module has > 600 pages...sif im reading more than 2 chapters though

so you can pass exams in with 16 pages of text? nice university.

s'all about being efficient in your note taking :o

no

yes. 4-5 modules per term...16-25 pages each (but only 16-18 crucial)

maybe i just chose an easy course~

so you got what, 70 pages of text per term? nice university.

8 modules this year + final year project

next term ill have game dev which is all coursework/labs so only 3 exams \o/

you better get on it then, 130 pages to learn in a year is no joke.

i know rite

You're so smart and handsome.

You're not boring and you have interesting things to say.

Switch arms.

murked

:DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD

Well done!

<3

maybe tell this shit to ur friends?

done already...one slightly beat me i think =( but my 2nd year average is higher so im still $$$

I must say, moderately impressed.

http://www.esreality.com/?a=post&id=2015965#pid2015965 `-`

shit course shit uni

tru dat