Oxford PPE vs. Georgetown SFS vs. Amherst Poli Sci + Econ

PurpleTitan
Wed, 25 Mar 2020 00:28:07 +0000

@Twoin18, yes, I’ve noticed the difference between the UK and US. Because a First from a good British uni is still quite difficult to achieve, it’s remarkable in the UK (a 2:1 is pretty much required for any good job or grad school, however, and most students at the top UK unis get those these days).

Because of grade inflation and wildly different grading standards across departments, profs, colleges in the US, GPA is almost meaningless. It’s not as extreme as Japan (where nothing academic you do or learn in undergrad actually matters–as companies figure they will train you for your lifetime career with them, solely where you got in to and maybe your club/circle activities, so Japanese undergrads pretty much just party,participate in clubs, and their participate in the Japanese undergrad hiring rituals; it’s like their 4-year rumspringa between the grind of constant study before college to get in to a good uni and the soul-sucking salaryman drone existence for those lucky enough to land one of those positions), but Americans are more . . . pragmatic, in a sense. A strong recommendation from a respected Prof signals to a PhD committee that you have potential in a field. Same with an internship with a prestigious company to hiring managers. In fact, the prestige industries (management consulting, IB, etc.) tend to fill many of their full-time slots from their ranks of interns.

I believe all the good English unis get outside profs from other good English unis to set the test questions and marking guidelines for the tests that determine everything at the end of undergrad, so there is more standardization there.