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Should we change universitys

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DMW

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Hi

My friend and I are currently studying at University of Kent, England. We have both just finished out second year at said university and both of us are well on track for firsts for BEng in electronic and communication engineering.

We both would like to do a postgraduate course of either MEng or MSc, now the UKC [university of Kent Canterbury]t has just opened a MEng course allowing us to transfer from our Bachelors to the MEng.

Our problem arises, as we would both prefer to do an MEng however we think we would also rather have a qualification from a better university, which would mean doing MSc's.




We are really looking for advice whether to stick at Kent and do the MEng or try and get a place at a better university to do a MSc?

My main problem is that I don't really have in mind any specialist area of electronics I prefer and so thought the boarder MEng would be better.

Any opinions?
 
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:eek: Asking people in electronics forums to make a life-changing decision for you is a definite bad idea. I have a friend studying at the university of kent, but he's a second year student and studying computer science so that's probably not helpful to you :D
 
How is the college you're prestently attending not good enough?

What do you envision the advantages of transfering to a different college?

What are the costs assicoated with transferring? Money, time, effort?

I don't know anything about your college. If you're interested in changing because one school has more prestige than the other, it might not be the best idea. The more important thing is the quality of the instruction you're getting. How many classes are bieng instructed by professors, as opposed to TA's??? What support is there for students? How many students attend the classes? ( class size ) etc. Presonally, I think these are more important concerns.
 
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Oh im not asking for anyone to make them for me, but just any helpful advice, which is seen as a better qualification in the industry, MEng or MSc etc?
 
Your best bet is just to see how the content varies between the MEng and the MSc, and as brownout suggests, consider the quality of instruction etc. you're currently getting. How well the environment helps you to understand the material, and how relevant and interesting to you the material is, is more important than the reputation of a particular university, in my opinion.
 
How is the college you're prestently attending not good enough?

What do you envision the advantages of transfering to a different college?

What are the costs assicoated with transferring? Money, time, effort?

I don't know anything about your college. If you're interested in changing because one school has more prestige than the other, it might not be the best idea. The more important thing is the quality of the instruction you're getting. How many classes are bieng instructed by professors, as opposed to TA's??? What support is there for students? How many students attend the classes? ( class size ) etc. Presonally, I think these are more important concerns.

Well we personally question the course integrity, I got 99% in one of my second year exams, enough said? Theres also people on my course who should go back to do GCSE maths, my second year project failed - i had finished my part 2 months before the demonstration, one guy finished his 3 days before the demonstraiton, another finished the night before, and another decided he couldn't do his part and just gave up 2 weeks before the demonstration leaving it to me to find an alternate method. Which ment we had zero testing and of course thus it dident work correctly.

The quality of the teaching is fine, though its the level of students and exams we question we are worried if any employer is in the know they outright would never employ someone from this uni, but somehow it is still IET accredited :S

All the lessons are done by professionals though often practicals will have 1 pro and several TA's. We have about 30 students on our course about 20 turn up for class, i dont know how this compares to other unis but to other subjects with 250+ students its quite poor.
 
One more thing. Some universities teach they students, and some filter their students. Many of the "prestige" universities fall into the second catagory. I prefer to attend one that teaches. When I was in college, my Electro-Magnetics professor had a collegue at MIT, and they would both give their students the same exam and compare results. The brainy MIT students scored slightly higher then we on average, but not as higher as you would expect from the "elete" students in the country. For us average shmoes, we were better off attendig a teaching college.
 
I have pretty much a good balance between the two. I attend king's college london, which has a good reputation, though not as good as the "oxbridge" universities; I find the content to be interesting, challenging, and very well explained.

I'd recommend concerning yourself with your own progress rather than that of other students, though I admit being let down by other students would be rather annoying. I've just completed my first year of university and over 120 people dropped out of my course throughout the year; I'm happy to say I'm not one of them.
 
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I have pretty much a good balance between the two. I attend king's college london, which has a good reputation, though not as good as the "oxbridge" universities; I find the content to be interesting, challenging, and very well explained.

My daughter starts at York this October, so we've been looking at Uni's for the last couple of years - Oxbridge weren't even considered, they offer the lowest number of lectures, and apparently many of those don't actually even take place. All the students we know who have gone there have moved elsewhere for postgrad, not impressed with it at all.

Melissa visited Cambridge (amongst many others), it was the only one she said she definitely wouldn't even consider, the buildings are beautiful, but the atmosphere and the people weren't friendly or welcoming. They appear to think they are doing you a favour by allowing you to apply, when it's really the other way round.

It's been a bad year for Uni applications, too many applications, many students are been refused places :(
 
I've found that the oxbridge universities are overrated. I know someone who was declined by them with 44 points at the IB out of a maximum of 45 (in UCAS points it's equivalent to AAAAAAA or something equally ridiculous at A-level), and took a gap year to reapply after she appealed her IB results and went up to 45/45. Thanks to that decision, she's at a disadvantage to the rest of us who continued straight to university :). Personally, oxbridge were eliminated from my list of potential universities immediately. I visited KCL and immediately liked the place in general, and after my first year I'm glad I chose it.
 
Well personally I don't trust any qualifications nowadays, be it GCSE's, A-levels or even degrees, years ago the average person would have gotten C's and only the very best would have got A's, nower-days so many people get A's its worthless, thats why universities need entrance exams because other qualifications are virtually obsolete and why employers prefer experience over qualifications.

It used to be "over XX% and you get an A"
now its "we don't know the grade boundaries because it depends on what scores people get" which is obviously just BS

But Im not interested in Oxbridge anyway
 
Well personally I don't trust any qualifications nowadays, be it GCSE's, A-levels or even degrees, years ago the average person would have gotten C's and only the very best would have got A's, nower-days so many people get A's its worthless, thats why universities need entrance exams because other qualifications are virtually obsolete and why employers prefer experience over qualifications.

As you've been through the modern education system, you know how much work is involved - some kids put massive amounts of work in to it, Melissa wasn't one of them :D

It really depends how 'clever' you are, Melissa is very clever and can get by on little effort - although she had to move up a gear or two when she moved to sixth form. But she's not competitive, she and a girl called Fiona were the top two at the previous school - Melissa NEVER did any homework at that school, Fiona did 6-7 hours every night. I really admired Fiona's work ethic :D

In the event Fiona topped Melissa by one grade in one subject - Statistics - but only because her brother (who had done the exam two years previously) coached her in it. They had no school tutoring in it at all.

Only very few uni's do entrance exams, Oxbridge been the common ones with their 'step' exams.

Anyway, back to your original question :D

Kent is ranked 39th overall in the UK, so it's a reasonable uni, I would suggest sticking there - assuming you like the place?. You could always do Postgrad afterwards, and move elsewhere, as many do.
 
I've been wanting to say this for a whole day now. Yes, change universitys to universities.

Sorry, it just built up until I couldn't resist anymore.

Mike.
 
I've been wanting to say this for a whole day now. Yes, change universitys to universities.

Sorry, it just built up until I couldn't resist anymore.

Mike.

Don't worry, I am usually a huge spelling/grammar nazi. I have to bite down on a rubber toy to stop myself correcting all the bad spellings, uncorrected typos, and ill-conceived sentence structures on these forums :D
 
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Don't worry, I am usually a huge spelling/grammar nazi. I have to bite down on a rubber toy to stop myself correcting all the bad spellings, uncorrected typos, and ill-conceived sentence structures on these forums :D

You'll probably find that I often am guilty.:)

Mike.
 
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