Reply to HYP and Oxbridge: Are students taught differently?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Very different system at Oxford from US. I studied at both. Oxford is very major focused. There are no outside classes, no liberal arts. Lecture and tutorial system. It's also exam based with first year exams and 3rd year exams for final standing.

I like the US system for undergrad and maybe do a 2nd BA at Oxford or Cambridge which will mature to an MA (do they still?).[/quote]

I've never heard of this before so looked it up.  I've got a kid who is a D.Phil candidate at Oxford now.  He has mentioned only the Americans there getting M.Phils (a lot of them are biding time since American law schools want to see some maturity after college before coming to law school.  So, there's a lot of LSAT prep going on in the grad dorms).  Anyhow, the second undergraduate degree is available in medicine, it appears.  I don't see any automatic elevation offered to a M.Phil.  Check also to see if your federal (US) student loans can apply to that.  My kid's Parent Plus loans were applicable to an Oxford D.Phil but I don't know if the U.S. feds will pay for a second undergraduate degree.  The literature here says that British funding and loans are not applicable to the second undergraduate degree.  https://www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/undergraduate/applying-to-oxford/second-undergraduate-degree[/quote]

B[b]ut, as a warning to other Americans, DPhils are not considered as rigorous as a PhD. I personally think it's BS as the reason is DPhils have to be completed in 3 years whereas American universities can force a PhD to be a student for a decade. So while I think it's total hogwash, there will be that discrimination coming back to the US.[/quote][/b]

Actually the difference isn't "rigor", it's pedagogy.  In the U.S. the doctorate program can drag out for many years during which the applicant tutors undergraduate students and is allegedly "taught" how to teach.  That doesn't happen in the U.K. system.  It's assumed already that you are smart enough to teach.  You are there to take advantage of the libraries and to write a "brilliant" thesis of 75,000 words which you usually have to defend.[/quote]

That's what American professors think, though, that a DPhil isn't as rigorous and isn't equivalent. I'm not saying that I agree with it, that's just the consensus among people who have a vested interest in keeping foreigners out of academia. It's the "mob" as far as I'm concerned (obviously I think academia is corrupt). [/quote]

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