Dissertation easier than I thought?

willhub said:
On my course the degree can be passed on the dissertation alone with the dissertation weighing in at 70% of the whole course.
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Are you sure that you dont have to meet a minimum threshold in the coursework section?

Mine was 60% dissertation and 40% course work. But even if you got 100%(60% total mark) on dissertation and 0% on course work you would fail. You had to make a minimum of 40% in each sector to be eligible for an award.
 
bhavv said:
Well first of all you dont even understand how your own university or course works, so any claim at stating you are attending a superior university is moot. At mine everything was clearly explained and I spoke to the lecturers several times to understand it -

Honours Degree - 120 credits in years 1, 2 and 3 (360 credits total)
Ordinary Degree - 120 credits in years 1 + 2, 60 credits in year 3 (300 credits total)
Diploma of Higher Education - 120 credits in years 1 + 2 (240 credits, equal to a HND)
Certificate of Higher Education - 120 credits in year 1 (equal to a foundation degree).

If you actually research how the grading works at most universities and on most courses except Physics / Maths / Engineering / Chemistry related subjects, you will find that most of them follow a similar method.
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Why would I need to know what happens if someone fails? I'm not going to fail :confused: By your own admission, it's a walk in the park, 48hours work tops :p I'm not claiming to be at the best uni in the world, rather that, either you went to a poor one or you are pretty much a genius.

I just think it's funny that you try to discredit the majority of degrees when you couldn't even do a dissertation. Laughable :p
 
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sigma said:
I just think it's funny that you try to discredit the majority of degrees when you couldn't even do a dissertation. Laughable :p
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I could do it, I didnt need to, and didnt want to do any lab work. I spent a long time requesting alternatives to lab work and they said no, so I said no too. simple.
 
Is it not that the 3rd year as a whole weighs in at 70% of the overall degree mark? Presumably to get an honours you need to complete 120 credits in the 3rd year with the dissertation being 40 of those credits?

That's how it works at Manchester too, apart from the final year is worth 75%.
 
sigma said:
You must have gone to a pretty crap uni then? If we fail our dissertation we, well I'm not even sure what happens, but it would no doubt drag our grades down into the gutter. We don't even have the option to drop it.

You failed because you couldn't do something as simple as a dissertation, that's a pretty big fail, IMO.
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Surely he just got the ordinary degree without honours?
 
DanTheMan said:
That's how it works at Manchester too, apart from the final year is worth 75%.
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I think mine was 33.333...% for the second year, £66.666...% for the third year, and the first year was pretty much just foundation modules / recaps of everything we already did at A Level in a single year.

sigma said:
I meant an attitude failure more than anything. Especially for someone who makes such bold claims.
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Zero revision done for GCSEs, 6 B's, 2 C's.

Zero homework / effort done at A Levels, and skived 75%+ of my classes, just 1 week of revising, 2 C's, 1 D.

Zero effort at uni besides doing everything the day before it was due or even on the day it was due, only attended fewer than 10% of my classes, 57-59% average (narrow miss on a 2.1 average, which made me lose all interest in my dissertation), spent all day everyday playing video games, partying, working part time, and participating in the choir and orchestra - 75% on my Genetics Exam, brilliant essays and presentations in all modules, and the Genetics lecturers pretty much thought I was a genius savant or something while presenting something I cant even remember now and the lecturer was sat while whispering to his second grader 'That is really really good', and giving me an A for that presentation (which I prepared in an hour).

I would have been much better off doing an open university genetics degree or something instead, but that would have been far too boring compared to living on campus and I wouldnt have gotten a single thing done due to not having any motivation.

I personally dont consider myself to anything more than above average, never have been, never will be. Anyone that cant manage to do at least what I did is a herp derp.
 
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I can't believe that on some courses Dissertations are optional! why would anybody choose to do spend months writting a massive paper!?
 
Jay794 said:
I can't believe that on some courses Dissertations are optional! why would anybody choose to do spend months writting a massive paper!?
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They arent fully 'optional', you cant get onto a masters without doing it.

If you dont want to ever do a masters (I couldnt with a 2.2 anyway), why would I waste time with the dissertation?
 
bhavv said:
The dissertation was only required for an honours, which I decided right at the start of year 3 that I didnt need nor wanted to do. I cant fail something that I actually dropped and never even attempted!
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Ultimately Bhav, the proof is in the pudding (the end result).

Without having actually completed a dissertation you're not in a possition to be able to comment on difficult they might be, hence why some of us are finding it a bit strange to imply that they don't take much effort with some level of authority (when in reality it is a pretty empty claim).
 
bhavv said:
Well first of all you dont even understand how your own university or course works, so any claim at stating you are attending a superior university is moot. At mine everything was clearly explained and I spoke to the lecturers several times to understand it -

Honours Degree - 120 credits in years 1, 2 and 3 (360 credits total)
Ordinary Degree - 120 credits in years 1 + 2, 60 credits in year 3 (300 credits total, what I personally decided entirely based on my own choice to go with.)
Diploma of Higher Education - 120 credits in years 1 + 2 (240 credits, equal to a HND)
Certificate of Higher Education - 120 credits in year 1 (equal to a foundation degree).

If you actually research how the grading works at most universities and on most courses except Physics / Maths / Engineering / Chemistry related subjects, you will find that most of them follow a similar method.



Yes, same as mine was, your dissertation is only 1/3 on your final year. Its funny that most people dont even understand how university grading works, yet they are attending them and even in their final years :rolleyes:

Its a pretty universal standard, 120 credits per year composed of 20 credit (rarely 40 credit) modules, and a 40 credit (rarely 20 credit) dissertation.
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Are you saying I'm stupid for not knowing the exact % of my university grading?
 
Nitefly said:
Without having actually completed a dissertation you're not in a possition to be able to comment on difficult they might be, hence why some of us are finding it a bit strange to imply that they don't take much effort with some level of authority (when in reality it is a pretty empty claim).
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Well I genuinely find it odd that people are finding their dissertations so easy, because I strongly believe that EVERYTHING else up until then other than the calculation heavy subjects are easier than the dissertation :x

Really, how easy is uni getting these days? There is next to nothing about studying that is hard unless you are doing maths / physics / chem / engineering (or anything else with calculations).

willhub said:
Are you saying I'm stupid for not knowing the exact % of my university grading?
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No, that post you quoted was a reply to Sigma not you:

You must have gone to a pretty crap uni then? If we fail our dissertation we, well I'm not even sure what happens, but it would no doubt drag our grades down into the gutter. We don't even have the option to drop it.
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I hate any 'My uni is better than your Uni' type comment, especially when its coming from someone who doesnt even understand how their uni works (Hint, I doubt its any different to mine or yours).
 
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Perhaps if we all start saying that talk about dissertations is compulsory, Bhavv will say 'no' and leave the thread?

ps3ud0 :cool:
 
ps3ud0 said:
Perhaps if we all start saying that talk about dissertations is compulsory, Bhavv will say 'no' and leave the thread?

ps3ud0 :cool:
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Well, it is a no:

http://www.internationalstaff.ac.uk/degree_classification.php

Dissertations are compulsory to pass with honours, which is what most people need to do to get onto a masters.

But I decided very early into my course that the BSc was it for me, even if I had managed to pull it all off with a first, I still wouldnt have wanted to do a masters, so I simply didnt need an honours.

I spent over 6 months attending appointments / interviews with the universities staff to discuss everything regarding this before making the decision, it wasnt simply a case of 'OMG I cant do it, I'm gonna fail', it was a very thought out and planned decision I made after a lot of guidance from the universities 'academic studies' staff who discuss everything and anything to do with your course. I absolutely 100% did not need my dissertation for anything, so I dropped the module, simple as that.
 
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Because you get Hons tagged on to the end of your degree and I think it gets you more credits/ a higher mark too.

My understanding is that if you don't do it, you are limited in terms of the mark you can get overall.
 
Bes said:
Because you get Hons tagged on to the end of your degree and I think it gets you more credits/ a higher mark too.

My understanding is that if you don't do it, you are limited in terms of the mark you can get overall.
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You dont get an overall mark without an Honours anyway, its only required to go onto further education, or get a post grad training course.

Even if I pulled off top marks on my dissertation, due to how the grading system worked it wouldnt have bought me up to to a 2.1 (I got a 2.1 average in genetics and microbiology, but only got 57% in all my other modules, only 80 credits of 2.1 average or better would have still only gotten me a 2.2).

I thought I did well on all my exams, but I missed a 2.1 average on all my other modules by a few percent and gave up.

What good is a 2.2 in any straight Science degree over an ordinary degree? Nothing because you cant do anything with it. Though I could have pulled it off if I wanted to, why waste all that effort on the dissertation for nothing?
 
Putting the finishing touches to my dissertation now and will likely finish just shy of 12k words. Have been doing it on and off for the past 2 years and at times it has been very time consuming but I would not say it has been overly difficult. Probably been in the region of 400 hours field/lab work and maybe 100 to do the data analysis and writeup.

The hardest part will start when I have finished it as my supervisor wants me to publish which means condensing it down to 5000 words or splitting it into two papers of 5k words each.

/Salsa
 
sigma said:
That's all I see. From someone claiming that degrees and dissertations are easy.

I don't really think much more needs to be said.
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If they werent easy then I should have failed with the zero effort I put into it all.

And there was nothing bad about my grades, they were so easy to get and most people dont even manage to get that much.

How can I claim that education is hard when I did absolutely nothing and still passed?
 
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