Differences between English and Americans

Originally posted by Acolyte
I remember seeing a list of words for these people. It's getting as long as the list of words for 'drunk'. I've heard of neds, scallies, chavs and pikeys, but not bams. At my school we called them 'shellies' after Shelthorpe, a local council estate.

I do find it worrying, though, when people talk about townies etc to mean the entire population of ...[text shortened]... Harrow, Eton, Westminister etc)! Why use a word like that to describe 99.9% of the population?

a lot of it's derogratarry, yes, but a lot of it's also an attitude (on their part...😛)

i was in springburn last week (a kidna rough part of glasgow) and at about 7 o'clock (before bed time) i hear an alarm going off, then i see a bunch of neds run past, one of whome had a rather large metal wrench type thing...we're talking about 3 feet long hear. i crap you not. but you know the kicker? all but one of them were wearing berghauss merry peaks. mostly read, but i think there were a couple blues, and a maybe a grey too...

they cost £250 each.

Originally posted by royalchicken
This is possibly way off base, but based on my experiences applying to university in both countries the American education system seems to highly value hard work and little else, while the British system seems a bit more lax on work et ...[text shortened]... cases only just passing, and a miserable fail in one or two).

I think that's because of the relative breadth of the courses at American universities. You might 'major' in maths at Berkeley, but if you read maths at a British university that's pretty much all you'll study. I know that all Trinity cared about was my ability to do maths.

English universities generally go by A-level results (exams taken at 18 or so), though for the more competitive courses, 'A's at A-level are pretty much assumed, so they need other methods of filtering candidates. The press doesn't seem to understand the latter situation, hence all the fuss about Laura Spence, a girl from a working-class background who failed to get into Oxford despite 'A's at A-level, prompting Gordon Brown and the media to rant about 'elitism'. She later went to Harvard. A current Trinity mathmo also got into the papers when she failed to get into Oxford a year or two ago, but it sounds like she had a more legitimate grievance in that the interviews apparently didn't cater for her deafness.

Originally posted by genius
a lot of it's derogratarry, yes, but a lot of it's also an attitude (on their part...😛)

i was in springburn last week (a kidna rough part of glasgow) and at about 7 o'clock (before bed time) i hear an alarm going off, then i see a bunch of neds run past, one of whome had a rather large metal wrench type thing...we're talking about 3 feet long hear. i ...[text shortened]... y read, but i think there were a couple blues, and a maybe a grey too...

they cost £250 each.

This concept of 'bling' bemuses me. If you want to show off how rich (😉) you are, you could at least buy expensive clothes that look nice.

Originally posted by Acolyte
I think that's because of the relative breadth of the courses at American universities. You might 'major' in maths at Berkeley, but if you read maths at a British university that's pretty much all you'll study. I know that all Trinity cared about was my ability to do maths.

English universities generally go by A-level results (exams taken at 18 or ...[text shortened]... ad a more legitimate grievance in that the interviews apparently didn't cater for her deafness.

that's how it works with english unis, but with most scottish uni's, there's a credit system, whearas each you have to use all of your 180 (or so) credits. most courses are 30 credits, but some are only 15.for my maths degree, in my first year i have 90 credits maths, but the other 90 are my own (well-actually-i'm doing a join honours, but i can't quite remeber the splitting up of it...it's something like 90 maths and 60 computing...😛). these numbers are probubly wrng vcause they're from memory, but thats the system...kinda...

Originally posted by Acolyte
I think that's because of the relative breadth of the courses at American universities. You might 'major' in maths at Berkeley, but if you read maths at a British university that's pretty much all you'll study. I know that all Trinity cared about was my ability to do maths.

English universities generally go by A-level results (exams taken at 18 or ...[text shortened]... ad a more legitimate grievance in that the interviews apparently didn't cater for her deafness.

Right. I am curious about how many A-Levels one does though (A-Levels comprise the last two years of school, right?). At my school, and this varies only by a small amount between schools here, one is required to have 24 distinct one-year courses to finish, so that in my three years of high school I have studied a bit of everything from biology to music theory. I would guess the American system even before university incorporates more breadth and correspondingly less depth.

Admission to US universities is pretty nonstandardized. While tests like the SAT (which is an utter joke in terms of measuring anything--about 150 multiple-choice questions which essentially measure one's vocabulary and ability to do arithmetic) are a factor,
the decision is made primarily on the basis of one's grades in high school, which are up to the discretion of one's teachers. Consequently, university admissions are largely a function of how able one is to do a lot of stuff one is mostly not interested in.

Actually, there is a very good national program in the States called 'Advanced Placement' wherein one takes exams (probably approximately on a par with A-Levels) in a variety of subjects if one so wishes in order to get out of some courses at university. I took five of these, and it was on this basis (as well as some other 'methods of filtering'😉 that the British unis made their decisions. (A good thing--my grades in school were pretty mediocre.)