The Academic System
Updated: 7 hours ago
We’re sometimes so caught up in the physical shift across continents (talk about student visas) that we forget to worry about the real reason behind the shift – the study part. Irrespective of what stage of academics you’re in, the switch to a different study is major. You could feel right at home or you could be as unsettled as Elon Musk on Mars (wait, that’s not a good analogy) – you know what I’m talking about. If you’d like to unpack the surprise of what awaits you at the University of Edinburgh, read on. Lots of important info incoming, take your time with it.
Courses
The uni follows a semester system. You do a certain number of courses per semester, which could be a combination of compulsory courses and electives. As an undergraduate, if you’re doing joint honours (usually if your degree has 2 subjects, like BEng Electronics and Computer Science), you'll have more compulsory courses and may not have any space for electives at all. Single honours courses are less demanding and give you more space to explore with electives. Each course has a certain number of credits associated with it (10, 20 or 40), you’ll earn those credits when you pass the course. There is a minimum number of credits you need to progress to the next year of study, to progress to honours and to graduate. Most courses last only for 1 semester and many of these run only in a particular semester (for example, Contemporary Cinema runs only in semester 2). Some courses, however, are year-long (typically 40 credits) so they’ll have classes in both semester 1 and semester 2. Courses can have pre-requisites (you may need a certain grade in your qualification or need to have passed a certain course beforehand), co-requisites (you may need to simultaneously do another course or may be prohibited from simultaneously taking another course) or may be a pre-requisite for another course (you need to pass this course to be able to take another course). Each course has a course organiser who you can reach out to with any questions about it, even before you’re enrolled onto the course. The course organiser may not be the same as the professor (or multiple professors, in some cases) who will actually be delivering your course. If you’re already boggled by this information, relax – everything I’m talking about is on Path (more on this in a bit).
Delivery
Almost all courses are delivered as a combination of lectures and tutorials (sometimes even workshops or Q&A sessions). Lectures are where your professors will be delivering new content. These are usually in-person (at least in non-Covid times, such as now) and don’t have a lot of room for discussion. You’ll attend lectures with everyone on your course, but sometimes you may be split in 2 groups depending on number of students and the capacity of the lecture hall. Tutorials are always in-person and are the place where you’ll actually assimilate everything you heard about in these lectures. Each tutorial group has about 8-15 students and is led by a tutor (likely a senior student). Here, you’ll have discussions about the week’s content and will discuss any assignments or tasks you may have been given. Both lectures and tutorials are compulsory, some courses even have like 10% of your grade based on tutorial participation. Technical courses will also have lab sessions, which will run similarly to tutorials. Workshops and Q&A sessions, if any, can be held online or in-person and are usually optional, but they’re an excellent resource if you choose to make use of them.
Grades and Assessment
All courses at the uni are graded. It’s typically easier to score a higher grade in a technical course (like STEM) than in a humanities course, simply because the former has more exams and the latter, more essays. If your education system didn’t train you for essays, 2021-me echoes your desperate cry for help. In high school, I would ace all my tests, and yet I’d never written an academic essay (a whole different ball game than creative essays). Be prepared for a drop in grades you may have been used to so far, but put in the work and you can improve quickly and significantly. I started out in low Bs but (3 essays later) made my way up to an A. If you’d like a blog breaking down essays, stay tuned. More on that in a few weeks.
Your course description will tell you the exact breakdown of your grade. Your final grade for the course will likely be based on a combination of quizzes, essays, exams, tutorial participation and more (any 1 or more of the above). Here’s a breakdown of grades against their corresponding scores, based on the uni’s Common Marking Scheme (applies to many courses, not all):
For undergraduate students, years 1 and 2 are pre-honours years; the grades for these don’t show up on your final transcript and don’t count towards your final grade when you graduate. This means you do have some time to work on your essay-writing skills and learn from your mistakes. The passing score is usually either 40% or 50%.
Timeline
End-sem exams take place towards the end of the semester. Classes end about a week before the start of the exam period. If you’re in a course with no exams (like mine), you’ll pretty much be free by the time classes get over, so if you need to go home around that time, you’re free to make plans. Otherwise, it takes a while for the exact exam dates to be declared so you may be in the dark about your schedule until halfway through the semester. Here’s the academic calendar for 2022/23 so you get an idea of term dates –
Resources
If there’s one thing that’ll make you feel your money is being put to good use, it’s for the resources the uni provides. Whether it’s textbooks, labs, study spaces, equipment – I can assure you that you’ll find everything you need.
The extensive library collections have every book you’d need for any course you’re doing, whether it’s your core textbook, secondary reading or just a last-minute reference for a 3000-word essay. The most frequently used books are in the HUB collection which is at the ground floor of the Main Library, and HUB short loan books can be borrowed for a week at a time (you can renew this, though). The less frequently used books are borrowed for a standard loan period of 4 weeks for UG students and 12 weeks for PG students. You only need your student card to borrow books and you can do issue books from any of the self-issue machines around the library (there’s some just near the entry/exit doors at the ground floor of the Main Library, in case you can’t find any). You can return the books (I say plural because you can borrow up to 100 books at a time – no kidding) from the return counters where you scan the barcode in the book and a conveyer belt swallows the book like a boa constrictor (at least how I envision it). You don’t need any member of staff for this process, just the books, the machines and your card, but if you’re stuck, you can always go to the EdHelp help desk (if they’re open) and they’ll walk you through the process. Also, in case you can’t go to get a physical copy or none of them are available (common during exam time), you can even ask to get a digitised version of a few chapters from the book you need.
I give specific details about the Main Library because that’s the one I go to 99% of the time. The logistics will remain the same across all uni libraries.
Books aren’t all you can borrow. There’s a handy space called uCreate in the Main Library (no surprise there). Think of it as the nerd hub – it’s a really cool space. There’s machines and 3-D printers and electronic component, pretty much anything you need if you wanna create or design something, and all equipment are free to loan. You can even borrow stuff like VR headsets if you wanna play around with some new tech. Thanks to 2021-22 sabbatical officers, you can borrow laptops for both short-term and long-term use, for free of course, which comes in handy when your laptop decides to betray you and needs desperate, urgent repair. There’s a lot of degree-specific and course-specific equipment too – I took Sound Recording as an elective and I had access to a bunch of modern, fully loaded recording studios and rehearsal rooms and could borrow any recording equipment from the Music Store (including the world’s most expensive preamp, if I could draw the courage to take it down to the studio). The most useful thing the uni will give you, though, is a free Microsoft subscription, so you don’t need to pay for Word, Powerpoint, Excel, Outlook or whatever Microsoft software you need to use. If only they’d give Spotify premium too (I can swear it’s an essential).
Websites
I talked about Path earlier on, a handy tool that lets you see every single course the uni has (or had) on offer and every detail about it (delivery period, prerequisites, lecture hours, the like). Path has so much more than that. You can shortlist courses and play around with timetables to see what your schedule would look like, very helpful if you need to pick electives and want to avoid clashes (more common than I’d care to admit). You access this from the program builder, and click on Timetable > Semester 1 on the right side of the screen. Much more importantly than Path, you’ll need to get used to Learn. The newly updated website has received quite a bit of abuse from a whole bunch of students, but what you don’t know won’t hurt you. Learn is amazing (but the old Learn is *chef’s kiss*). Even if it wasn’t, Learn is essential. You’ll see all your courses on here, whenever they get updated, and you can access lecture recordings, assignment details, up-to-date instructions and so on. The website is pretty easy to navigate and will be on your browser favourites list in about two weeks’ time.
If you’re overwhelmed by this info, like I said earlier, take your time with it. You don’t have to understand everything right away (I know I didn’t). Words on a screen don’t do the process or the importance any justice but I sure hope they make you feel less awkward about stumbling through things everyone else seems to be a pro at.
If I’ve not answered one of your academic concerns or any questions at all (they’re not lame, I promise) – feel free to drop a comment and I’ll get right back. I’ve put in a bunch of hyperlinks in this blog for you to peruse, but even if you don’t read through them all, you’ll be a pro at this stuff by the end of the semester anyway. The library also runs a library tour (Main and Kings) in Welcome Week and Week 1 – feel free to join them to get a better idea of everything they have to offer. I may or may not be leading some of them.
I’ll see you guys around on campus. Cheers!
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