The University Dilemma

Stanford: a view from Hoover Tower

I have mentioned again and again that I am torn between going to the US and staying in Europe for University. Do I want that campus lifestyle in a relatively foreign and exciting country, with some of the best institutes of the world, or do I want to stay within the culture I want to potentially live and work in [in later life, anyway] and learn a second - maybe even a third - language properly by having classes taught in them? The UK, despite it being a familiar scene to me, is also not out of the question. Cambridge and Oxford are both world-class institutions, and dirt cheap compared to the US. In this post, I would like to dissect this dilemma - in my signature broken and disorganised way - and hopefully reconstruct it in a somewhat coherent manner.

ETHZ: the main building

A European in America and Other Fun Things

As the summer draws to a close and the memories of it are still fresh in my memory, this post is almost a bit too late! As many of you know from my last post, This summer was potentially one of the most influential on me as a person and in my academic career thus far. I know, being only sixteen, talking about a “career” is a bit too foresightful, but in all honesty, I do not bother too much to think about that: I just do what I enjoy, and those activities are called by others “CV builders”. I am just lucky that the stuff I enjoy doing is actually helpful! Anyway, enough with my possibly condescending mini-rant, onwards with the adventures I had this summer! This post is likely to be very long, so beware!

First, but not the focus of this post, I was kindly invited to go to Imperial College to undertake a week’s worth of work experience, working on the European Commission Project, BioSonic. The aim of the project is to devise a system and build a proof-of-concept plant thereof, by which waste sawdust would be processed into commercial chemical products. I, along with a good friend of mine and, rather interestingly, an American from Edinburgh, spent part of the week in the lab conducting rough experiments to determine the most important factor in the processing stage: time, compound concentration or temperature. I am not sure of the level of classification the project planners want to keep the project at, so I kept the description as ambiguous as possible! Overall though, my time spent at Imperial was great and I would again like to thank all that made that week (and a bit) so enjoyable: The post-doctoral research fellow, the professor that organised the entire week and even the PhD students in the coffee room, who explained their PhD projects to me!

Me in my lab coat

Summer and Miscellaneous Events

Editors note: I have been exceptionally lazy. My presumption of the events described below being demanding were correct, so as such, I have not had time to post! I am at the EPGY course at the moment, dealing with their computers stuck on the silly 8.5x11” paper size and bemusing American spelling, but believe me when I say that there will be a very long and involved post in the near future regarding the matter.

My word, this summer has been, and is going to continue to be, fantastic! Much has happened and much more will happen. I have learned a lot and I shall be learning much more. Yeah, you get the picture: an action-packed, quintessentially nerdy, profoundly perplexing summer!

Let’s start as I always do with my infamous airplane posts: I am currently sitting on a United airlines Boeing 747-400 on hoe way from London Heathrow to San Francisco! Also, this is my first long-haul flight traveling alone, in addition to it being my first visit to the US west coast. The reason? I applied for the Stanford University Education Programme for Gifted Youths Summer Institutes and was somehow accepted, even on my extremely rushed application!

Me, a gifted youth! The thought befuddles me.

I will be at Stanford University for three weeks, studying Environmental and Earth Sciences; the quantum physics and AI courses were oversubscribed, I have been lead to believe. As expected, my entire family was spamming me with congratulatory messages, while my teachers told me that I "will never want to come back"! We shall see: I have recently come to the realisation that the UK is not half bad, especially having been down to the lovely Winchester to meet Alicia Cuddeford (see her guest post).

Education and the Examination Swindle – Part 4

Image from "Get the Best Grades Now Blog"

Editors note: The lovely Alicia Cuddeford has gracefully written a post to continue with our "Education and the Examination Swindle" series. As ever, I may or may not [suspense!] agree with her views, but I have written a few footnotes for the reader's amusement. Enjoy!

Hello again TheCompBlog readers! Since Nicolas didn’t think that my post last year was complete rubbish, I have been invited back to write for him about this darn education that keeps inconveniencing my life. For those who don’t know who I am, I’m Alicia and I am a student in the grand old city of Winchester. I wrote a post for Nicolas last April about my opinions on secondary education which can be found here, but now, seeing as my past year at 6th form college is fresh in my mind, Nicolas thought it would be nice for me to share them.

I feel like I should probably introduce my college, because I’m told that it is quite prestigious. Peter Symonds College, or “Hogwarts” as it is commonly known by a street urchin like me, is one of the largest sixth form colleges in the country. Ben Ainslie and Jack Dee came here, something which Peter Symonds really get off on – newspaper articles are smeared along the walls to let us know that we too could achieve greatness, while also serving the purpose of allowing cynics like me to snort at them. As previously mentioned, it is in Winchester, therefore the target student is from an affluent family who shop at Waitrose and dress in Jack Wills clothing. Because of this, I initially thought that I wouldn’t fit in well here, but I was wrong.[1]

The Trials and Tribulations of the GCSE - an Introduction.

Image from The Guardian

Well, what do you know. It's been a while, hasn't it? A wild ride of frantic revision - because you were too lazy to do any proper revision over the Easter holidays - and a wide variety of GCSEs, twenty-two, actually. For some reason, I am finding it very hard to write fluently, so please forgive me for the somewhat erratic nature if this post. It's been a while.

Notice that rhetoric technique there? No? Well, I probably got an A - as opposed to an A* - in English language, which would be rather disappointing, given that I was predicted ten A*s and a B.

B, you say? Yes, a B. sorry for the rather confusing nature of the previous structure and for my rather pompous tone! That B was for Ancient History. Interestingly, that was the one of two GCSEs I took, everything else was iGCSE. For my foreign audience, keep on reading and I shall explain everything in a moment. Anyway, having seen that mark, I basically ignored all other subjects and revised Ancient History like there was no tomorrow. As it is a GCSE, it's modular, which is annoying to the umpteenth degree, considering that it was the only qualification for which there were three exams.

Anyway, I feel like I did not screw any exam up hugely, so I am relatively confident for straight A*s, but we will have to wait for August.

A bit of context. The GCSE - the general certificate of secondary education - is a stupid qualification (see here, here and here). Despite its stupidity, it's the mandatory qualification all UK students have to do at 16 in order to get into a sixth-form college (or years 12 and 13 to get GCE A-level qualifications, the general certificate of education advanced level, to get into university. Silly naming schemes, right? You'll hear me complain about this later on!). There is also the iGCSE, the international  general certificate of secondary education. This qualification is done by only international UK schools, but private schools within the UK can opt to do it as well. Apparently, it is a more challenging qualification with a better syllabus. Stupidly enough, UK state schools cannot choose to do the iGCSE, they have to do the GCSE. Way to close the education gap, Gove. 

The Happenings of a GCSE Student

My word! It has been over 6 months since I last posted! Astounding how quickly time slips past. I remember those carefree days when GCSEs were a faint enigma in the distance, never to be seen or manifested. Alas, I am sitting here with five days to go until the horror story that is the national public exam of the Secondary Certificate of Education.

I have been wondering lately during those less-than-ideal revision sessions, why they are called certificates of education. I mean, yes, there is some aspect of learning and thinking involved, but I am convinced that most people will be able to pass with a C grade even the hardest iGCSE, just going over exam technique and how to, as my Ancient History teacher says, "play the game". It seems like a rather futile exercise to me!

On the same point, why do we even have this silly independent exam board system? I wrote a rather extensive piece on this a while ago, but the idea has just returned to me: In a nationwide standardised exam, designed to benchmark all students against each other, why do we have varying levels of difficulty? I am doing the AQA English Literature and Language certificate (or some other fancy name that does not mean much), and it is purportedly harder than their GCSE offerings. Silly, right? Even within exam boards there is variation! Astounding, If you ask (the very non-ostentatious) me. Get the joke? No? Most of my family don't either... I am not the funniest person...

Anyway, back to why I have not been posting: there has been a lot of stuff going on! To start with, there were my GCSE mocks, which went towards setting my predicted grades, which interestingly, I do not get to see. Then there was exam feedback (and the mountain-load of associated homework). Then there was this whole thing about Arkwright Engineering Scholarships and the relatively difficult processes in being awarded one [I find out in a month!], followed by working on our entry to the 2013 Toyota STEM Challenge as well as designing an experiment that went 30km into the stratosphere (and the associated difficulties). Oh, and then preparation started for the actual GCSEs. I will probably think of something else I would have done, but thats what I remember off the top of my head.

So, all in all, I hope that my readers will forgive me for my negligence to this blog. I have promised time and time again to move to Wordpress, and I assure you that it is in the works. The problem is that I am too cheap to pay for hosting and I want to challenge myself to create my own webserver at home, considering that I know absolutely nothing about webserver operation and maintenance!

Oh, yes. I remembered. We are also entering CanSat UK this year, where we have to launch a pseudo-satilite in a can to an altitude of 1km, conduct a primary mission of collecting certain weather data, as well as a secondary mission of our choosing. It will be fun!