INTRODUCTION

Universities here in the U.K. are different from those in America, in Europe, and in the rest of the world.

Unlike in the U.S. and mainland Europe, U.K. universities only infrequently offer liberal arts degrees. New students are required to pick one subject, or maybe two subjects in rare cases, and then study that one subject in depth for two, three, four, five or six years. Recently there has been a move to reduce the time that it takes to two years to reduce the cost. Alternatively, you can change a three-year course into a four-year course by adding on a work placement, starting with a foundation year or you can extend it even further if you want to add a master’s year in the end. Degrees in medicine and law can be six years long, and you can start these at 18. There is no need to do a separate undergraduate course beforehand; you can do law or medical degrees straight after Senior School.

The applications are all made via a centralized system, known as the UCAS system. If you want to apply for medicine, veterinary science, or any course at Oxford or Cambridge, that needs to be done by mid-October for a September start the following year. If you are going to apply to other universities or subjects, then that needs to be done by January for starting in September the same year.

Tuition fees are paid yearly in the U.K. At the moment the fees for home students are up to £9,250 a year. For international students, they can range anywhere between £12,00 for a lecture-based course up to £20,000 a year for a practical or a lab-based course. The teaching is going to be a mixture of lectures, with class sizes ranging from a few students up to a couple of hundred students. Small tutorials with a professor will be smaller, and are going to be probably less than five students. In some cases, your degree will include practical work, where you are going to be in a large lab with students and a few post-graduate student supervisors. Some examples of practical work projects include lab time for a computer engineering project, a mechanical or civil engineering project, or an architecture project.

There is no extensive scholarship system in the U.K. The universities are very, very popular, so they do not need to use scholarships to entice people to come to them. Teaching is generally for thirty weeks of the year and usually Monday to Friday, but this does vary from university to university. Oxford and Cambridge, for example, teach on a Saturday but have long holidays. Conversely, some universities are having shorter holidays so that the overall length of the course is shorter, thus making it cheaper. Oxford, Cambridge, and Durham also have a collegiate system, where you apply to a specific college that you wish to attend, not the overall university. With this system, most of your time is spent in the college, not in the broader university environment.

The final grade you are going to get at the end is either going to be a 1st, a 2:1 (upper second), a 2:2 (lower second), or a 3rd. This is going to be based on a mixture of things, but mainly your end-of-year exams. Your first year will not count for too much, so only about 10% of your first-year exams will go to your final grade—but you will need to pass your first year so that you can progress on to the second year. Your second-year exams will count for between 20 and 40% of your overall grade, and then your final-year exams, whether that is your third or your fourth year, will count for anywhere from 50% to 70%. Universities will generally provide you with accommodation, but only for your first year. After that, you are expected to go and find lodging with friends.