I don’t think those ratemyprof sites are that popular here. I’m a prof myself (in organic chemistry, thanks to superstar teacher mentioned above) so maybe I should check 
General student feedback and course assessment is massively more important nowadays, certainly. This could go part of the way to mitigating a really poor college tutor, if they were receptive to criticism. You’d still be stuck with them though. At least that was the system I went through in the 90s.
The idea that you have lectures that nobody goes to is astounding. Why don’t they change the system?
Why are you a “hack” if you really do want to study political science or economics? I can understand someone being an English major or a philosophy major or even a marketing major and being perceived as someone who is just there to get a bachelor’s degree and who doesn’t really have a career goal in mind. I knew someone who was a psychology major who ended up working in a travel agency – there are a lot of employers who won’t even give you an application form or an interview if you don’t have a bachelor’s degree.
When they tell you to go off and study your subject on your own, do they give you a reading list, or make you figure it out on your own? How many hours a week do you spend honestly studying, as opposed to putting on plays or, you know, drinking?
It sounds like there is no such thing as an undecided major in the UK. What if you really don’t know what you want to study? It sounds like English “high school” students (I know you don’t call it that there) are directed into a program while they’re still in high school. Do you feel you get a sufficiently-rounded education that way?
It just seems like you have to make major life decisions while you are still in your early teens, and that it’s just way too hard to make a change later.
I’m gathering from earlier posts that UK students have to decide fairly early in high school (or whatever they call it) the general direction of their college studies? How early?
Too early!
Actually it’s better than it was. Back in the 70’s when I was going through it you essentially had to choose between arts and sciences at 13. At that point you decided which eight or so “O levels” you would do and this would mean dropping some subjects. Then at 16 you decided on 3 “A levels” and these would almost always be either 3 sciences - say Maths, Physics, and Chemistry - or three arts subjects - say English, History, and French. This would lead on the a three year degree in a specific subject chosen before you started at university. The advantage was a pretty high level of knowledge in a subject like physics before getting to uni but the downside was a ridiculous specialisation and god help you if you made the wrong choice at any stage - very hard to go back and start again.
These days bright kids will continue to do the whole range of subjects to 16 when they do their “GCSEs”. They then choose five subjects to do for the next year at “AS level” - at my kids school they were encouraged to keep on with one arts subject if aim to do science at uni or a science if aiming for an arts degree. They can then drop one or two of the subjects to end up with three or four “A levels”. They will still choose their degree subject before they start at university. So better but not much.
(Should say this is for a standard state secondary school. Some of the top “Public” (fee paying) schools will cram their pupils through to doing five (or even six) subjects right up to A levels at 18. Something most state schools - with larger class sizes and and much more academically mixed intake - can rarely manage.)
Class sizes is another thing. In addition to somebody giving a lecture to a nearly empty room, you’re meeting with a tutor for one hour a week? What is the instructor-to-student ratio? Most of our lower-level classes here at Northern meet either MWF for 50 minutes or TTh (or sometimes MW) for 75 minutes, and generally have class sizes of around 25, unless it’s a gen-ed (general education) class like Intro to Oceanography, or American History or College Algebra, where you might have 100 or more students. Then as you work your way up into the upper-level, more specialized, major requirement courses, the class sizes are typically smaller.
Suppose you just don’t take the GCSE for some reason or you didn’t do well on it. Then, after five years of driving a truck all day, you think you might want to get a degree after all. How do you go back and take (or retake) the GCSE?
Insn’t there one at Oxford? Hoy Ghost or Jesus? What is the function of colleges like this?
There are local “Colleges of Further Education” that do part time courses preparing students to apply for degree study (as well as vocational courses for hairdressers, electricians, plumbers, etc). These can be GCSEs and A levels but there are other alternative qualifications that are accepted by universities (though whether they would do for Oxbridge I’ve no idea!).
The alternative is to go for the Open University which does distance learning courses and does not normally require any prior qualification.
Are you thinking of All Souls? All Souls is a research institution. It has lots of academics but does not take undergraduates.
It’s not ‘the GCSE’, though ‘General Certificate of Secondary Education’ does make it sound like a high school diploma.
GCSEs, multiple, are discreet qualifications in individual subjects. So you might fail, say, history, but pass 10 other GCSEs. It’s what you take when you’re sixteen, though you can take more at any age for the qualification or just for the knowledge.
It’s A-levels which get you into university (and AS-levels - officially half an A-level - but they are, to an extent, counted towards university applications). As explained above, people usually take 3 or 4 A-levels. Like, I did English, economics, business studies and German because I was doing mine in a kind of odd way and those were the ones I could do; my friend who was planning to be a doctor did maths, physics, chemistry and biology.
As with GCSEs, these are discreet qualifications in individual subjects. You can take them later in life, an individual A-level or a whole course. But if you fail one A-level you still have the other 2 or 3 A-levels.
One advantage is that it is actually very easy for someone to go back and retake GCSEs or A-levels - they just find a local college (not a university college - a ‘Further Education’ college) and either do a full-time course and get all their qualifications in a year or two, or take the individual courses they need. And if they don’t already have a degree, the courses are free.
Here’s a followup question. How well practically integrated are the colleges with their University? E.g. is it practically possible to fall out of grace with the University (e.g. expelled for misbehavior during a University exam) while remaining enrolled in your College (e.g. because the misbehavior occurred off College premises), or to fall out of grace with your College but remain enrolled in the University? Do students frequently, or ever, end up as pawns in political wranglings between their College and their University?
E.g.:
University Administrator: "Now, Mr. Smith, I see that Jesus College expelled you for sassing your Math tutorial instructor too many times. I also see that all your applications to other Colleges have been rejected. Even though your offense is considered a minor matter in terms of University discipline and does not in itself warrant expulsion from the University, we cannot allow you to remain enrolled in this University unless you gain admittance to a College within the next 3 weeks. If you do not, you will be expelled from the University until such time as you gain admission to a College and then reapply to the University.
[Oxford Graduate in Chemistry here]:
I would say that it is generally not possible to be caught up in a battle, such as the one that you describe, between one’s College and the University. In general, one’s continued presence or absence at Oxford will be determined by the College, although if the transgression is more at the University level then the latter may put considerable pressure on the College to deal with the problem in a specific way. But a student who gets rusticated by their College cannot, for instance, sneak in and sit University exams.
Surely, no discussion of the inhabitants of All Souls can be complete without mention of the elusive Mallard, the hunt for which takes place every 100 years – presumably one of the least-frequently observed of any of the clearly-defined rituals of any society on Earth.
I love that the status of the duck has evolved over the years. Oh, Britain, never change. “Should we get a wooden duck this century?”
From the wiki article: