Freshers

Find Quality Courses Through Clearing – 10 Top Tips

For those of you reading who aren’t yet at uni and are awaiting your A-Level results, I hope you get the grades you’re looking for.

Photo by Brian Auer

Photo by Brian Auer

But whatever happens on Thursday, be sure not to panic.  If you don’t get what you need to be accepted at your chosen uni course, the game ain’t over yet.  Rather than drown your sorrows, pick yourself up and tell yourself that you’re on a mission to find a great course at a great university.  Put everything in to the mission.  Prepare yourself for the Clearing Quest!

You want some help on this quest?  Here are 10 tips to get you the place you want through Clearing:

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Hazing in the UK: “I’d like a pint of vodka with my cup of tea…and I’ll drink it naked.”

Hazing is a term known in the US, but not generally one used here in the UK. It’s all about initiations into clubs and societies. It’s not usually pleasant and it has occasionally involved death.

A report has been released that suggests over half of all college students in the US have experienced hazing when involved in clubs and societies.

But what’s it like in a British uni?

From my experience, the nearest you’d get to an initiation was drinking until you’d collapsed and/or running around campus naked. And it wasn’t exactly compulsory. It may have been encouraged and frowned upon if you didn’t join in (peer pressure, here we come), but it rarely moved towards out and out bullying.

Maybe I’ve lived a sheltered life…

Of course, sometimes it went too far. Yet the same can be said for drinking games, nights out, and so on. Most of us have, at times, gone a bit too far when having fun, joining in, getting over excited, and being pressured by peers. It’s not good, but it isn’t known for doing much harm in the long run.  What are your thoughts?

Wherever in the world you’re reading, have you experienced hazing, organised any initiations, or heard any stories of pranks that went wrong?

Some related articles:

10 Steps to Active Learning

I was looking through Stella Cottrell’s “The Study Skills Handbook” the other day and came across a piece on ‘Active Learning’. I believe this is one of the most important factors in studying at university. After going through GCSE and A-Level experiences, there is too much emphasis on passive learning.

With passive learning, the student waits to be given what is supposedly important. It’s more a case of take the information that’s put in front of them and try to remember it, or copy it down without really knowing what the overall picture is.

Active learning, on the other hand, is about engaging with the subject and taking on the bigger picture. The student gets involved with the information and seeks out further ideas for development.

Another kind of active learning! (photo by EUSKALANATO)

If you’ve ever heard a student say, “I couldn’t answer the question because the teacher didn’t teach us that,” then you’ve seen an effect of passive learning. Maybe you’ve said that yourself in the past. The learning tends to be in isolation.

When you get to university, you’re propelled into a setting that relies strongly on doing your own work, conducting your own research, using your own initiative. This is why active learning plays such a strong part in studying toward any degree in Higher Education.

So I’d like to share with you 10 strategies that Cottrell suggests to take your learning further and my thoughts and agreements with the suggestions:

1. “Prepare for lectures” – While many turn up for lectures, possibly without even knowing the title of it, let alone the subject matter, you can walk in with a 20-minute basic understanding of the topic of discussion for that day. When you hear the lecturer speak, the words will make sense and you will sense the direction in which the talk is going. The content may be more focused and technical in manner, but your initial search on Google, a brief read of the main Wikipedia page, and flicking through the topic in your textbooks will be worth it’s weight, because you can get on with processing the information and asking questions as you go along, while others will be writing down whatever they hear, because they haven’t had the basic insight that you have.

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Exam Success: Top Tips from Brilliant Blogs

Exam Hall - photo by jackhynes

I heard from an A-Level student a few weeks ago and they wanted some help for revision and taking exams.

I want to do well but I don’t know how to do well in exams.  Coursework’s fine, but I always fail exams.  What am I doing wrong?

I compiled a list of links, with my favourite tips from each article.  My wife and I added some of our own words of advice for the student.  That help comes after the main list.

This advice is just as good for uni students, so here it is for you too.  Each post is worth reading in full if you have the time:

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