Seems like the summary is that UK universities have the following characteristics:
- Student must be self-motivated and manage their own time with no supervision or hand holding.
- Grading is based only on the final exam.
- Student must choose a major earlier (on application), and changing major is limited.
Based on the above, it would seem like there is a continuum on the above aspects:
- US high schools (highly supervised with lots of hand holding, lots of smaller graded works, make-up, and extra credit, can remain in a more general path).
- … (big gap)
- US residential liberal arts colleges.
- US residential private universities.
- US state universities.
- … (significant gap)
- UK universities.