If you have never been to Uni before you might not know what to expect. Every course is different so we cannot give you a full picture of life between now and graduation but here are the basics:
- You will get your timetable either before you come to Hallam or during Fresher’s week
- Expect more timetabled hours in Uni in your first year, with less in subsequent years. Don’t get too excited though, as you are supposed to be putting the same amount of work in during each year. It’s just the balance between self directed study and lectures and seminars that changes.
- Lectures run from 9am to 6pm Monday to Friday
- You will have a mix of lectures and seminars (smaller class room sized groups)
- You may be with different people in each seminar group, you will have a seminar group per module of study
- Expect to have to stand up in front of your class and do a presentation in seminars
- Lecures can have 100s of students in them, and some courses may overlap so you could have people from different degrees in your lecture
- A typical undergraduate degree is made up of modules and each module gets you a certain amount of credits towards your degree. Generally you will be expected to do 120 credits each year, and modules are usually worth a minimum of 10 credits or 20 credits. (So if each module you study is worth 20 credits you will do six modules over the year, three from September to January and three from February to June).
- You will generally have exams in January and May/June but you can have assignment hand in dates at any time of the year.
- Degrees are not graded with letters like A-Levels, the highest mark you can get is a 1st, followed by a 2:1, 2:2, or a 3rd.
- Holidays are longer when you are at university to allow you to work in the holidays, you will typically get four weeks at Christmas, three at Easter and three months during the summer. This is not the same for all degrees however.
- The library is open until late in the evening so you can get coursework completed outside of your timetabled hours.
- You will have to adhere to strict plagiarism rules when you hand in assignments, your course tutors will explain these to you.
- You may have scope to choose certain modules within your degree. You will get details of this from your course tutors.
