why does it matter where you do a degree?

[ssd]

me again (sorry)

I've been learning all about the degree process here and its been an eye opener for me

but something I keep reading confuses me

posters have said its important to do the right degree at the right uni

and that's what's confusing me

I've looked up a certain degree at the 4 uni's local to us

the entry requirements are as follows

first uni; AAAAB

second uni;AAAA/AAABB

third uni;AABBB/ABBBB

fourth uni;BBBC

now they all state the same qualification at the end of the course, so why are the entry requirements so different? is it just not worth doing the degree at the fourth uni even though you will have a qualification at the end of it? will employers poo poo the fourth uni degree?

honest answers please!

@ SSD:
Basically go for the uni with the highest entry requirements that he can meet, assuming that he also basically likes the Uni and doesn't strongly prefer any other Uni. It's not a precise science and you don't just go on prestige, anyway. Most Unis publish their employability stats after graduation, too.

ssd. There won't be one 'right' answer. You will find a batch of Universities that fit his criteria and that are all much of a muchness. This is when Open Day visits become so important. My DC found some Universities that looked right on paper but when they visited their gut reaction voted against.

I was talking to someone yesterday whose DS is studying on a very presitgous course at what happens to be a former Poly and doing very well. The status of the University is not the problem. The disappointment has been the lack of contact time. Yes it is good to be left to figure things out for yourself, but too much can be isolating and leave some students adrift.

So another vote for looking closely at course contant and style of learning. What suits one student may not suit another.

does each course let the students know how much contact time they get with the tutors then?

yes look at the unistats info - there is usually a link from the university's own course pages

Yes - if you look at unistats it gives you the percentage of time spent in formal contact and percent you're expected to be independent learning for. The data can be somewhat dodgy though as it has to make assumptions about what individual modules a student might take, and includes dissertation supervision which will be low so makes the overall contact time look lower than you might expect.

And a lot depends on how much of a self-starter a student is, so contact hours will only suggest how suitable a course is for a particular student. Some of the well ranked Universities with great research will expect students to get on with it to quite a large extent, but provide challenging lectures and good tutorial guidance when needed.

Sort of, SSD. They tell you what's happened in the last 1-2 yrs wrt Contact Time. The courses can be redesigned each yr & sometimes last minute.

Student Room is an excellent resource & very valuable for your son to go on there & just start asking questions. No such thing as a too 'dumb' question.

Don't assume that high contact hours = good teaching/ good course.

University is not school. For each hour of contact time, my institution expects our students do 3-4 hours preparation & independent study. So for a 3 hour seminar, they need to spend around about a day & a half in prep and study (9-12 hours). In my modules, they probably need to spend at least a day a week reading primary sources, and maybe 2 days a week.

Indeed. My son has just finished a history degree at Oxford. 8-week terms, no more than 5 hours contact time a week (often a lot less) - but he's had access to some of the best libraries in the world and his contact time has mostly been in very small groups, so he's had a lot of interaction with academics and lots and lots of detailed feedback on his essays. A student on a course where most of the contact time is in lecture halls with hundreds of other students would have had a very different experience.

ssd does your DD/DS have favourite areas of study, are they wanting a course with a job at the end or to study something for the love of it?

Is the location a consideration?

Gasp0de exactly. One or two hours intense face to face teaching is probably tougher and more effective than double or triple those hours in large lectures. No way to hide in those small tutorials ...

Funny how there's never parental or government anxiety about the "lack of" contact hours at Oxford or Cambridge!

I always laugh when anxious parents ask me about contact hours, or are even quite shall we say "assertive" of their assumption that there's a lack of contact hours because it's an humanities subject - I did once ask a parent if he asked the same question at Oxford, where you get one or two tutorials, and optional lectures each week (compared with where I teach where they get 10-12 hours a week). He'd started his question with a somewhat disparaging comment about his assumptions about (lack of) contact hours.

mmm... or do Oxbridge effectively end up selecting for kids who are likely to do well in their system and deselecting for kids who don't?

august, I'd say he wants to do something that will lead to a job and it will probably be in Scotland.

YeOldeTrout, yes, I think they are absolutely upfront about that. Their interviewing process is designed to see how applicants cope with an interview that is quite like a tutorial or supervision. It wouldn't suit everybody. That doesn't mean those students are any less able, a point that isn't often enough understood.

what subject to study, SSD? Math, English, history, chemistry?

Definitely matters where you do your degree. Employers know where is good and where is not. All degrees are most certainly not equal.

not sure trout!

Whether or not Oxbridge select students who are likely to do well in the tutorial system doesn't alter the point that not all contact hours are equal. I'm pretty sure that most students would benefit more from X hours of small group tutorials/seminars/problem classes than 2 or 3 times as many hours of large audience lectures.

ssd by 'something that will lead to a job' do you/he mean a vocational course (than can lead directly into a job/career in that area) or an academic degree which develops skills that are useful in a range of jobs/careers? Although in either case his interests/aptitudes should still factor in the decision.

What was the 'certain degree' you looked up at your local Unis?
Has he actually started Highers already?

yes, done highers and done well

actually, he'll make up his own mind, he always does, I'm just trying to educate myself here, incase he needs some help from mum I wish

thanks so much for all advice here

Ummm dapoxen there has been research done in the U.S., which shows that large lectures 200+ as opposed to small classes (eg Tutorials) has no effect on student outcomes or satisfaction.

The other thing to beware is there are ways to manipulate "employment" rates statistics, so always be willing to ask more questions - like exactly where graduates from that department are employed after six months.

Ssd do encourage your son to do something he loves - rather than just thinks will get him a job. He will do better, and sometime the seemingly "more obviously employable" degrees are do not well match employers needs (I'm thinking of one Scotish institutions "Computing" degree some years ago).

If you're doing science or engineering, then apart from lectures and tutorials (the first essential to cover the stuff you really need to know, and the number of students is fairly irrelevant), then you have the third vital element of practical work. That can give more valuable 'contact time' and also cover a lot of the calculation/problem aspects.

Courses/institutions which rely heavily on tutorials, it's always seemed to me that it must be hugely dependent on which tutors a student gets - not just how good they are per se but whether you hit it off.

I'm not saying that lectures aren't a good mode of teaching (and learning...). I'm arguing that X hours of (a subject appropriate mixture of) lectures, tutorials and problem classes etc. is better than X+Y hours of lectures. And (as PP have said) a single 'contact hours' number is not a good measure of teaching quality.

mummytime do you have a link? I'd like to see the details of that study.

From unistats I didn't get a sense of which courses have more tutorial as opposed to lecture time and how small tutorial groups are. Is that info availble?