Am I not bright? 3rd in my degree.

[OnTrain]

A thread kind of about a thread. More about a post in a thread! Someone slagging off Carol Vordeman because she only got a third in her degree. Saying she wasn’t bright.

I got a third, tbh I’m just glad I passed but I also thought I was bright! Do I need a reality check? Am I a thicko?!

Bangor is a good, 'traditional' university isn't it?

Not R.G, but good reputation. It's hardly 'Essex uni' is it?

You have a 2/2 OP so be proud (and relieved)

There's some very nasty comments on here, hopefully from paragons of academic quality who have never made a mistake.

@OnTrain I'm sure you'll be a good teacher. Teachers should have empathy and understanding with the full range of students and be able to teach that full range of abilities. You'll do just fine.

For some people academic success is important and so going to university and the resultant degree classification is important and based on this, one's 'brightness' is given a value.

Degree classifications are not a holistic assessment of a persons potential or current ability though and don't necessarily take into account the different starting points each person comes from or the struggles they faced during higher education. Also, a person
with a third may have other qualities which they have refined that more academically successful graduates may not possess.

Ultimately your qualifications are good enough if they help you achieve whatever it is you want to do.

Thanks athena

I’ve always just been proud of going and completing uni. I’m the 1st ever in my family, and my mum made such a big deal of it! Now it’s been poo pooed on

It's strange to me that you say Carol Voderman has poo pooed all over your 3rd class degree by referring to herself (probably jokingly) as "not bright".

Yet when @Bluntness100 pulled you for the "thick/thicko" references being unpleasant, your answer was, "well, I'm only referring to MYSELF."

Isn't Voderman only referring to herself then?? She's not casting aspersions on anyone else, just that she regards HER 3rd class degree as an indicator of "not brightness".

Oh do behave @Athena51

No-one is being 'nasty' ... just simply baffled that someone who posts like the OP does, in the manner that she does, does not know what level degree she got at university, could possibly be a secondary school teacher.

ontrain that doesn’t surprise me as often many of the postgraduate teaching students I came across were quite immature. I think there should be a minimum age entry of around 25+, but I still think a higher minimum academic entry is required. I understand the U.K. struggles to attract potential teachers to its training programmes so perhaps that’s why the standards for entry are low. If you were studying to be an accountant, I wouldn’t be worried as it would be your employers responsibility to monitor your work, but when it comes to young people’s education, you only get one opportunity and if your knowledge of your subject is lacking (based on your Third class result) that will have a devastating impact on all the young people you teach. Empathy is great but you’re tasked with imparting knowledge. Maybe a role as a guidance counsellor would be better.

It is wendy it’s also bilingual so you can choose which medium to do your whole degree in. Mine’s in Welsh.

Congratulations on your 2:2! That ties in perfectly with your grades being C grades. In the UK (I’m a uni lecturer) grades tend to follow this pattern:

1st = 70%+ = A grades overall/average
2: i (or 2:1) = 60-69%=B grades overall/average
2.ii (or 2:2)=50-59%=C grades overall/average
3rd = 40-49%=D grades overall/average
Pass tends to mean they have passed enough units to graduate but have irretrievably failed a unit
Fail=

She didn’t say it butchy someone on another thread did

What is my manner like tree?

I also wouldn’t worry too much about the uni. I’ve attended 3 Russell Group unis and taught at two. I now teach at an ambitious ‘new’ uni and our students do just as well, if not better, in securing good graduate jobs.

Thanks lelly that makes sense

She didn’t say it butchy someone on another thread did

Reading fail!

Well, whoever said it, perhaps they perceived Voderman (who I think has joked about her 3rd) as being academically bright and were surprised by the third?

A more charitable reading of Voderman's mark would be that she choose the wrong subject, had personal issues, other mitigating circumstances, etc. That would be how I'd tend to interpret it.

a lot of A/A people going to top 3 unis e.g. carol voderman get 2:2s, 3rds etc. because the course, grading etc. is a lot harder in top unis.*

@loka, they don't, though. Very few people get 2.2s at Oxbridge, and even fewer get thirds, because Oxbridge (out of what might be vanity or might be concern for its students, and opinion is divided) puts a huge amount of effort into not awarding the lower classes.

Well I wasn't expecting THAT update. Congratulations on your 2.2.

@MyDcAreMarvel Edge Hill as a University? What an odd thing to post

@MaidenMotherCrone

Apologies, would North, Mid and South Wales have been more understandable for you?

Even the OP with her third/2.2 didn’t struggle with that as a concept 🤨

@OP Bangor is/was a decent Uni, I’m guessing the pastoral care wasn’t exactly fabulous as they failed to explain the basic marking system to you.

In regards to your teaching career - good luck, sometimes it’s the people who have experienced difficulty that know how to teach the best - some of the academically brightest people fail miserably when explaining the simplest things.

If it's any helps:

We got our results in the form of handwritten marks from our exams with a handwritten average and then a class. Mine said X, Y, Z, 68%, first class. I had thought that it was odd that I got a first with 68%, but I was on the results lists as a first too.

It took me 17 years to notice that whoever wrote the average down calculated it wrong. It was a degree requiring numeracy, so I was pretty stupid not to notice.

In 1995 I graduated with a ‘Pass’ engineering degree. 40.2% so not even a 3rd.

But I have the degree (BEng) and it allowed me on to do a PGCE, which I passed.

This allowed me to get a teaching job which I left after 3 years to work in an engineering company running training.

Which all became irrelevant when I became a SAHM then retrained as an accountant...

I don’t claim to be super intelligent but I don’t need to be. I’m good at what I do and that’s enough for me. If strangers on the internet want to make statements that people with 3rds are thick, that is very much their problem.

Honestly?

A third in astrophysics isn’t the same as a third in say, History of Art, IMO.

A third in the former and id probably still be mildly impressed. A third in the latter and I’d wonder why the degree holder had wasted three years, and that much money.

@TheSheepofWallSt - really? This isn't my area, so I bow to your knowledge, but I had the idea that astrophysics as a degree course was something pretty odd - I've heard of it (or 'astrophysics with physics' and similar) at not very well-ranked universities, but I thought in general if you were good you'd not do it? So it's a bit like forensic science - sounds good, but actually not the degree you'd take if you wanted to be taken seriously?

As I say, though, could be wrong.

It’s just when I have to learn something new, be critical and put it on paper I do have to put alot of effort in in order to produce an average paper.

Have you ever tried to not put in a lot of effort to see what you'd get, OP?