Domain-specialized classes become an increasing proportion of your overall classes after the first or second year (when you choose a major) though never 100%. So while the school can get some idea of demand based on what people put on their application form, typically what you put on that form has little to no impact on whether you are admitted and doesn't actually bind you to a particular program.
I actually think this is a pretty good system, and was glad my own kid chose a US university (which luckily we could afford) rather than the free university education he could have chosen in either of his mother's or my countries. The theory is that you can get a broad foundational education to prepare you for a variety of possible futures, and also that there is more to education than simply work skills. Of course the reality isn't quite as utopian. It also means professions like law and medicine require whole additional degrees.
I kind of like the fact that in the US, doctors usually have some exposure to science outside of memorizing facts for their next test at med school. It makes them more likely to be able to understand studies, for one thing.
I might hazard to guess that if you study philosophy before going to law school (a very common path) you will be a better lawyer, but I can't attest to that with any first-hand knowledge.
Maybe courses in the US are generally longer?
(Although they are not that far from a few other majors, it is an interesting read in any case.)
After I took the LSAT, and scored pretty well (99.6 percentile), including a perfect score on analytical reasoning, I was in the supermarket and saw at the magazine rack, down in the section with the crossword puzzle magazines, a magazine of logic puzzles just like those from the LSAT. Based on the ads in it, the main audience for this was old ladies.
I bought it, and decided to start with a puzzle marked as hard, figuring it would be easy for me--I had just aced these things on the LSAT, after all, a test designed to make distinctions among the brightest students in the country. Obviously, anything old ladies could handle I could handle almost in my sleep.
It completely kicked my ass. So did all the medium puzzles. I think I was able to do a couple easy ones, with a lot of effort.
Lesson: don't underestimate old ladies!
> The heads of Bletchley Park next looked for women who were linguists, mathematicians, and even crossword experts. In 1942 the Daily Telegraph hosted a competition where a cryptic crossword was to be solved within 12 minutes. Winners were approached by the military and some were recruited to work at Bletchley Park, as these individuals were thought to have strong lateral thinking skills, important for codebreaking.
It looks like they've consolidated it somewhat in the intervening years, now it requires only 186 units: https://www.seasoasa.ucla.edu/curric-14-15/21curchem-14.html
E.g. someone with a French baccalauréat or enough British A levels can usually skip the first year or two of university in the US.
There are two main differences.
Firstly, in France, this choice is available to everyone. Every student is able to go to a high school that offers it. It is not some unusual special thing that exists in rich neighborhoods.
Secondly, for people not enrolled in it, there are meaningful vocational options (bac technologique, bac professionel...), so they are still doing something useful. Contrast this to the US system, where your choice is between semi-serious academic work that kinda sorta approximates a European standard, and non-serious, waste of time babysitting.
This is because there's, for the most part, only one type of high school in the US. It's not split into academic vs. vocational. The US is one of the only countries in the world like this. I believe it expresses the idea that everyone has the ability to succeed if they try hard enough, so we shouldn't be sorting people into more and less prestigious tracks. This is a false myth, but it's so deeply implanted in the bedrock of American culture that saying common-sense things like "it's possible to figure out who the good students are well before age 18, and allocate resources appropriately" shocks a lot of people.
No need. Study on your own then specially request the AP exam; it's what I did for the CS one, since my highschool didn't have a class for it. Ended up being the 3rd or 4th to succeed at my school, out of around 600 graduating students per year for over a decade.
That said they did limit some popular classes to only people accepted to those subjects but Compsci wasn't one last I checked - though first year Compsci in my fourth year had tripled in size from my first year.
International students are moneymakers (they got £75k off me) so I'm pretty sure they also over-admit.
When I went to university graduating in 2007, so just before the crash but not really very long ago, everyone was pretty chilled out about their courses. Nobody did internships. As long as people weren't failing they were relaxed and enjoyed themselves. Getting a 2:2 was a bit of banter rather than a serious threat to your ability to ever get a good job.
Now when I see students they are laser focused on absolutely doing the best they can in order to survive in a much more competitive world. I'd be working harder now as well.
That's what you put on job application forms. We don't use a GPA.
A 1st is good. A 2:1 is fine. A 2:2 is a problem. A 3rd is a failure.
Some people use cockney rhyming slang - a 2:2 is a 'Desmond' (Desmond Tutu, two-two).
In some cases you can get a double 1st, or triple 1st, but these are very specific to your university and are about what courses you took.
Perhaps these things go in cycles. When I was in university in the late 90s, almost everyone tried to get some sort of internship over the summer, and some were very competitive.
The telecoms were booming back then and I was turned down by one of the big companies (Nortel) before landing a co-op at a smaller network equipment maker.
I was definitely influenced by the on campus CS culture (big "top 5" state school), which encouraged summer internships. However, I could also see how people who entered college after seeing and experiencing the economic pain of 2008 would have a more focused approach to how they spent their time in university.
No, a full third of GCSE exams are fails.
I went to Swarthmore (referenced in the article) before CS enrollment surged (www.swarthmore.edu/computer-science/alumni) and there were some people in my CS classes who decided to start on a CS major their junior (year 3 of 4) fall.
Somehow someone from the US has done maybe 1.5 years of that and gotten the same degree?
(This doesn't count requirements outside the CS department, like math, or other graduation requirements like "some total number of classes, at least three humanities classes, at least three social science classes" etc.)
Most non-US universities don't work like this. You get a programme that you follow, sometimes with alternatives that you can pick from. You don't have a target number of classes or credits or hours to complete. Everyone takes the same classes (except for the alternatives) at the same time in one big cohort all the way through the degree. There's not much flexibility for a minimum or maximum - there's just the one set path.
I took CS classes during all 4 years, but wasn't considered a CS major until the end of my 2nd year.
In addition to the department (Computer Science, say) requirements, there are required classes for the college (Natural Sciences) and the university. A typical bachelors degree would be 120-130 semester hours, divided up into approximately 1/3 departmental, 1/3 college and electives, and 1/3 university and electives.
Someone like me (and I know I was) would go into CS and take 1-2 CS classes per semester the first couple of years, then more after they have requirements out of the way and have the prerequisites for higher classes.
Someone who didn't choose a major initially would take all the general requirements and electives until they did decide on a major.
A semester hour is one hour of class time per week for a 14-15 week semester; most classes were three semester hours.
It's more useful to refer to the CS curriculum standards across ABET accredited schools.
That said, we don't have anything like a comprehensive undergrad final exam for CS schools that would validate this.
The other notable difference is an undergraduate degree in the US is typically a 4 year program. Many in the UK are 3 year programs.
This is largely based on the fact that admittance is done mainly done on what people do in 5th year of high school rather than 6th year A-levels.
Where I did my CS degree, any student in the major was always going to be able to get their core courses on a proper schedule that allowed for on-time graduation. Sometimes that meant the college would add entire extra courses if there were more people needing something than expected.
Did I get every elective (not all electives were taught every semester, some were only taught once every year or two, there was a large rotating selection - You had to take a few from different areas) that I was interested in? No, but I got most of them.
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However, if you were a non-major looking to take some CS classes (beyond an intro one specifically intended for non-majors), you would have a tough time getting in. You were only allowed to register for those after all the students majoring in CS registered.
On day 1 of term 2 there were 40 and we fit comfortably.
US colleges' approach to admissions is more like selling aeroplane tickets but not asking people where they want to go, then be surprised when they all get to the airport and try to cram on the one plane going to the same place.
In other places you buy a ticket for a destination. Yeah some flights might be a bit overcrowded in some cases, but it's not as bad as not knowing how many people want to go to each destination at all.
Universities regularly "admit" more students than they can actually allow to "enroll". If a university can physically support a freshman class of, say, 1000 students, they will "admit" a number higher than that, say 1300, knowing that only a percentage of the students that they admit will actually end up enrolling (because very simply some of them choose to enroll at a another university that they were also accepted into).
Here at the university I work at they refer to this "admittance/enrollment" ratio as "yield" or "yield rate". The yield is tracked from year to year and the number of acceptance letters sent out is based on this historical data.
Sometimes, though, the University is surprised (like this past year here) and gets a much higher yield rate and ends up with more students than dorm rooms...
I think it's a value judgement. Is a lowered price of the majority of instances of a thing (flying or taking a class, in these examples) a worthwhile trade for the reward being a probability rather than a guarantee? Is the severity of the minority case (getting bumped) worth the trade? What actual probabilities for happy vs. sad path are acceptable to you?
Those are subjective questions with no inherently correct answers.
Did you go to Edinburgh? They have a US system unlike the rest of the UK.
No I didn't go to Edinburgh.
The school doesn't care if students drop out because they already got their $$. The school doesn't care if students who can't hack CS switch majors because then they take more money making 100 level classes in their new major.
You cant just rock up at a university and say id like to study X with out any previous education - this is what the Raspberry Pi was made for originally.
I mean they will want good grades in maths (and decision maths covers some parts of the CS curriculum) but little else, perhaps Physics - but other than that just good grades.
The thing is that the Computing A Level wasn't widely available and the quality differed between qualifications and exam boards as well - whereas Maths is pretty consistent and is run at every school.
I was fortunate enough to be able to study Further Maths as well, which honestly I would consider a better preparation.
I liked coding for fun but really had almost no idea what CS was when I applied. So maybe the US system would have been better for me in that I could have dipped into a bunch of 101 courses and changed my major.
In the UK system, most people don't go to other subjects' lectures and if you don't like what you're doing, you have to apply from scratch. There's usually no way to change course at the same university or even get any kind of help or advice about finding an alternative elsewhere.
One of these years I'll work out what I should have studied and do that instead... actually, I probably won't, now it costs £30k+. I'm glad there are MOOCs so I can satisfy my urge to sign up for random things, watch one week's worth of lessons, and then never go back again, all for free.
I chose Physics though in the end - I think the subject that really gets let down is Engineering, I had no idea what that meant.
The UK (and the rest of the world) really needs much better access to education - there is no reason it should cost 30k when huge parts can be delivered MOOC-style and the remaining exams and labs done in person.
Even the Open University costs a fortune these days! I hope Corbyn's National Education Service idea might fix it - if he gets elected and Brexit doesn't wreck everything...
Back in the day I tried to switch from a HNC stream mech eng to a Maths Stats and Computing but it was 99% pure maths (no CS maths) and the computing element was nugatory and ancient.
You might not be able to get into a top flight oxbridge university, but show a history of interesting projects and maybe attending hackathons, competitions etc many universities will fight to have you
Worked for me.