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

Twoin18
Wed, 25 Mar 2020 00:02:00 +0000

@PurpleTitan Yes, no one ever mentions how they did in Prelims after they have graduated (most people don’t know what a “double first” actually is, they assume it’s some form of double major). So it’s all down to how you do in your finals in the third year, when you have to spend basically the entire last term holed up in your room revising (or the library, though really that’s unnecessary unless there’s a heatwave and you need the aircon, since everyone has a single). Some courses offer the option to submit a project/thesis etc for a very modest percentage of the grade, but the exam is all important.

I agree that the pre-professional vs academic vibe is a hugely important difference and Georgetown vs Oxford are at completely opposite ends of this spectrum. Whereas in the US I see far more people (including his friends) taking notice of my S’s internship than his GPA, in the UK I’ve always felt it was the opposite way round (I recall for example my nephew in the UK recently characterizing his overachieving friend as “got a first from X” rather than “got a great job with Y”). I mentioned similar things before in the thread I linked to above, about how our college magazine is always about winning Nobel Prizes not about business achievements.