Though the bulk of the degree is research—as befits an MRes (Master of Research)—there was still a taught component, and this past week final exams marked the end of the assessed classes. I should first state the caveat that I should not generalize too much from this one experience taking English final exams, but having said that, I will now proceed and do exactly that.
Over the course of 7 weeks, we had 7 taught modules of about 8-10 hours of lecture each. The lectures themselves were quite interesting, and covered a wide range of topics, though not in very much depth given the time constraints. Each module was taught by 2-3 lecturers in sequence on related topics; for instance, in a biophysical techniques module, one lecturer spent 4 hours on NMR and another 4 hours on X-ray diffraction. The final exams were given by module, with 30 minutes being allocated for each, though in a fuzzy way—we had 2 hours last Tuesday for 4 modules worth of questions and 1.5 hours yesterday for the other 3 modules. For each module, we had a choice between two multi-part essay questions, usually one set by each lecturer of a module, though in the modules with 3 lecturers, we still only had two choices. Each subquestion would be worth some fraction of the total points for that module, and whether or not we passed the exams as a whole depended on a simple summation of the points we earned from all modules. The passmark for us is 50%, and more points are need to get merit (60%) or distinction (70%). For any American readers, I should remark that it is supposedly far more difficult to get 100% here than in the U.S., but will have to wait until I get my own results back before commenting on the grading scale.
As for the questions, I must say that I am in a way quite disappointed with the level of difficulty. Perhaps it’s because I’ve already taken full semester classes in biochemistry, genetics, etc., so I have an unfair advantage over chemistry/physics/electrical engineering graduates who haven’t taken any biology since A-levels. However, it felt like even for the subjects I hadn’t previously had, the level of the questions was only about that of CHEM-S117 (honors general chemistry) at IU, which I took when I was a fresher way back when. I suppose the grading might be extremely harsh, but I’d be hard pressed to figure out how they’d pull that off given the questions set.
Of course, this is a postgraduate course, and the primary purpose of the lectures was to give physical science graduates a crash-course in biology so that they’ll have some inkling of the why behind their research projects for the next 3 years and 9 months (or only 9 months, for the few of us overseas students who are on the 1-year MRes instead of the 1+3 MRes + PhD). Indeed, one of the lecturers (my supervisor, actually) explicitly stated that her question would be easy because the thrust of the program is the research component. The course directors themselves stated that it was largely due to University of London regulations that the exams took the form they did, and that they were looking into changing them now that Imperial has unaffiliated. Still, I had assumed classes and exams would get significantly harder upon going to grad school, which turns out not to be the case. Oh well, at least the research component is considerably more challenging and exciting.
I should now state that a decent number of the British students also felt somewhat disappointed by the exams. Hence, it might just be the postgraduate philosophy of this particular program to place little emphasis on taught material that’s behind how easy it was, and not British higher education in general. Still, this experience stands in marked contrast to the perception of some a few Imperial students, who have argued to me before that the coursework is harder and more in depth than at most American universities, due to the specialization inherent in British higher education and the better secondary school education (the A-levels every university-bound student take correspond roughly to American AP classes content-wise).
I’ll be following up this post when I get my exam results back, to compare and contrast the grading system. It’s also possible I’ll have to eat my words if I end up miserably failing, but I’ll deal with that then. In any event, I’ll be beginning my research project on Monday, so wish me luck!! ::squeals of excitement::
~William~
