Union Flag / Reply to Comment.
Ever wonder how the Union Flag came about?
The first arrow represents the Union of the Crown in 1603 and which is finalised by the Acts of Union of 1707 between England and Scotland. The second arrow represents the Act of Union of 1801 between England and Ireland.________________________________________
> Chun Hang:
You can reply here. I decided to write it here because that post is a bit too buried already :P
1. I don't know where did you sense my 'unwarranted disdain' for the Cambridge system. I read through my replies and posts and nowhere did I say that their system is inferior to ours. I merely used theirs as a contrast to ours - we have no one to monitor our progresses while they have supervisors to help them, which in fact is a strength in their system - and from what I understand supervisions are a great help but they can also be a source of stress. It is the same for us.
2. I probably made a mistake when I placed academic freedom and the absence of close guidance in the same paragraph. Though assessed coursework and deadlines have no link to academic freedom either: academic freedom, in my definition, means that you can do whatever you want that is available (contrast allowable), and when it's not available, you can go do it somewhere else. Assessments and deadlines are limits to the freedom an undergraduate has; it doesn't mean that we don't have freedom because of these deadlines.
I give you a challenge: do a secondary major in classical philosophy or art history or English while you are pursuing math or BME as a primary major, and graduate with 1st class in both majors in 3 years, without compromising the depth of training in your primary major. For me, it is perfectly possible and I don't even have to seek permission to do that. The only thing that holds us back is whether we have enough capabilities to handle the work.
3. The classes that I placed out are Calculus I, Calculus II, General Biology, Chemistry and Physics, which teaches the students basic differentiation and integration, what is the Krebs Cycle, what is ionic equilibrium and the three laws of motion. That explains why American colleges offer 4-year courses while usually British universities offer 3-year courses.
4. Of course they take only 5 minutes to run through polar coordinates. You already know it - why would they bother teaching you again properly? It is different in the US - those guys that have to take Calculus I have NO OR LITTLE CLUE what dy/dx means! Why do you think it is incredible for me to place out those classes?
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A friend told me before: we shouldn't compare the US and UK systems too much (he's referring to the medical education system) because it's hard to tell which one is more superior - it's more politics than anything, and anyway, the emphasis of both systems are different. Also, research in the UK might be at a disadvantage because of problems with funding (which I would really wish to find out whether this is true through a summer internship), and it's unlikely to be because of the quality of the faculty, the teaching, and the students.
I am proud of my school. We have a short yet brilliant history - modern medicine originated in Baltimore, we have the best hospital in the US, a medical school and BME programme that are consistently top three, as well as a brilliant music conservatory and school of advanced international studies. We have people like Bert Vogelstein and Francis Fukuyama with us.
Though I didn't say other schools are not as good as we are. Cambridge has a long and even more brilliant history; Isaac Newton, Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe, Charles Darwin all came from there, they are the second best in the world overall, that's where the DNA double helix was discovered, and they have people like Andrew Wyllie and Steven Hawking with them.
I criticise but I don't hold anything as inferior. Tell me if you don't agree with me - here, via MSN, in your blog, on Facebook, etc. and I'd love to hear from you and discuss it with you. I learn more about the world this way - in fact through a few of my friends-cum-readers I have learnt a lot :P
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