Entrance Requirements

Even for British students, the variety of courses and qualifications can be overwhelming. The real choice starts at 16 after they have taken the general Certificate of Secondary education (GCSE) examinations, with require a basic level of school education. Most 16 year-old take between six and ten of these exams.

For most 16 year-old who want to continue in education, the next challenge. A-levels, comes at 18. Good passes at A-level are the most common requirement for entry into higher education. Pupils usually take between two and four A-levels or at a further education college.

For those with firm ideas about their future career, many universities and higher education colleges offer Business and Technology Education Council (BTEC) qualifications, which are vocational courses in fields ranging from catering to computing and engineering to agriculture.

Entry to the institutions of higher education is by selection , usually based on examination grades, and is competitive in most subjects. Applying for higher education courses in Britain seems to be a simple process because the only thing the boys or girls have to do is to fill in the application form and to send it to the university or college of their choice, usually to several. The choice of courses has to be set down at least nine months , before the A-level examination results are known. This arouses the frantic dashing around, which goes on when next summer this or that boy or girl finds he/she has not got the number of A-levels or the grade to get him/her into the chosen place: many universities and colleges expect not a mere pass, but quite high marks, and the enlistment goes through selection and interview in person.

Part 2. Teaching and Study Methods, Assessment.

For many new students, the style of teaching at university level may be unfamiliar. Lecturers and professors tend to guide students towards knowledge, suggesting topics and reading matter for private study and research. The general pattern of teaching and learning on full-time courses of higher education remains a mixture of lectures; prescribed or suggested reading; seminars and tutorials; essays, exercises and tests and where appropriate, practical work or work experience.

A lecture given to a large group of students, sometimes up to 200, is a talk on a certain topic of study which lasts about an hour and is designed to present you with ideas for further study. The titles of lectures are usually available at the beginning of each term, so that students have a chance to find out about the subject about the subject before the lecture. The style and format of seminars and tutorials can vary widely, but they usually consist of a group discussion of ideas and opinions about a particular field of study. In many cases, a student is asked to present work on a specific topic to the rest of the seminar group, who will then discuss and debate the students findings. Once or twice a term, students will have a tutorial. This means that they see a tutor alone to discuss their work and their progress. In Oxford and Cambridge, and some other universities, the study system is based entirely round such tutorials which take place once a week.

Unlike school, most of the work is not done in class but in the rooms or in one of the libraries. Universities have no doubt always been trouble of their libraries, but in the older days they tended to regard them more from the professional scholars point of view than from that of ordinary undergraduate. But with the modern developments of scholarship and the increasing domination of the book it became obvious that oral teaching had to be more largely supplemented by the printed word and, as a result, the libraries began to be more extensively used.

Other study activities include:

-fieldwork-to link a theory of a topic to its real-world practice

- coursework-most students are required to produce written work on a regular basis. Depending on the area of study, this work can range from short essay to a report describing the results of laboratory work.

-dissertations and projects- on many courses students have to write a dissertation which is an extended essay based on their reading and research, this work usually counts towards the final mark of the course.

Each university and department has its own method of assessment. Most universities and colleges still use some form of written examinations. These can last up to three hours, in which time students have to answer three or four questions in essay form. Very few institutions, however, use examinations alone. In general, progress is measured through a combination of coursework, dissertation and finals (end-of-course examination).