I just realised that there's probably an entire generation of first year undergraduates out there who think that they're the class of 2010, not the class of 2007.
*blink* They're not? Is this some weird Rightpondian convention?
Because, here on the left side of the Pond, "class of" has referred to the graduation year as far back as I've seen alumni photos.
(Also, pedantically, this year's first-year undergraduates would be class of 2011, not 2010, since they'll be expecting to graduate in May or June of 2011.)
No, in the UK, your year is the year that you start, not the year that you finish. Except on Facebook. And undergraduate degrees generally take three years, not four.
Like date formats and floors numbering, our way makes more sense. What is your class (in the US), for example, if you don't know when you start your course whether it's going to be a three-year or four-year degree?
Heh; there's a parochialism that I didn't realize I had, with the three-year rather than four-year degree bit.
In the U.S., your question makes no sense; virtually everyone does a four-year degree program, and is assumed to be doing so until/unless they decide otherwise.
The fact that this system makes things confusing for people who take (say) five years to complete a nominally four-year program is an accuracy, not an inaccuracy -- generally, a person who does that will be taking the early classes with one set of classmates, and the later classes with a different set of classmates, so that an undergraduate who started this year and takes five years to graduate will have classmates in both the "Class of 2011" and the "Class of 2012". Whatever officialdom counted their class-year would probably consider them the "Class of 2011" until they informed it that they expected to graduate in 2012 instead, at which point it would consider them "Class of 2012". Depending on where most of their friends were, they might attend either one of the reunions, though the official invite would be to the "Class of 2012" one.
(I am not at all sure how this works for programs that are intentionally five-year programs, at the end of which one gets an undergraduate and a master's degree simultaneously. Those are constructed largely as a normal four-year program plus an extra year, and thus one would have close classmates who graduated the year previously from the four-year version of the program....)
"No, in the UK, your year is the year that you start, not the year that you finish."
er ... are you sure? At both my seats of learning we'd considered such things on the basis of when you concluded the course and passed all the exams (which may or may not be the same year as the Graduation ceremony, of course)
OTOH, in the case of the first establishment (Imperial) I arrived in 1974 but left at the end of my second year in 1976, and was part of the Class of 1977 when I wasn't actually there! It is all complicated ... (at least the end-year convention doesn't make me sounds quite so old ... ish
You almost certainly are...:-) Cambridge and Oxford doing things differently would be, well, normal.
The norm here is that if you were, say, MIT '82, it would say you graduated from the Institute in 1982, so you probably matriculated in 1978, though MIT has many, many students on atypical schedules. Atypical, that is, compared to the vast majority of colleges and universities in the US -- indeed, people talk about "the typical four-year university."
When you're a freshman in 1982, you could think of it as "Class of 1986 (presumptive)."
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drplokta
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-26 07:51 pm (UTC)Because, here on the left side of the Pond, "class of" has referred to the graduation year as far back as I've seen alumni photos.
(Also, pedantically, this year's first-year undergraduates would be class of 2011, not 2010, since they'll be expecting to graduate in May or June of 2011.)
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-26 07:59 pm (UTC)Like date formats and floors numbering, our way makes more sense. What is your class (in the US), for example, if you don't know when you start your course whether it's going to be a three-year or four-year degree?
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-26 08:12 pm (UTC)In the U.S., your question makes no sense; virtually everyone does a four-year degree program, and is assumed to be doing so until/unless they decide otherwise.
The fact that this system makes things confusing for people who take (say) five years to complete a nominally four-year program is an accuracy, not an inaccuracy -- generally, a person who does that will be taking the early classes with one set of classmates, and the later classes with a different set of classmates, so that an undergraduate who started this year and takes five years to graduate will have classmates in both the "Class of 2011" and the "Class of 2012". Whatever officialdom counted their class-year would probably consider them the "Class of 2011" until they informed it that they expected to graduate in 2012 instead, at which point it would consider them "Class of 2012". Depending on where most of their friends were, they might attend either one of the reunions, though the official invite would be to the "Class of 2012" one.
(I am not at all sure how this works for programs that are intentionally five-year programs, at the end of which one gets an undergraduate and a master's degree simultaneously. Those are constructed largely as a normal four-year program plus an extra year, and thus one would have close classmates who graduated the year previously from the four-year version of the program....)
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-26 08:14 pm (UTC)er ... are you sure? At both my seats of learning we'd considered such things on the basis of when you concluded the course and passed all the exams (which may or may not be the same year as the Graduation ceremony, of course)
OTOH, in the case of the first establishment (Imperial) I arrived in 1974 but left at the end of my second year in 1976, and was part of the Class of 1977 when I wasn't actually there! It is all complicated ... (at least the end-year convention doesn't make me sounds quite so old ... ish
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-26 08:17 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-26 09:18 pm (UTC)The norm here is that if you were, say, MIT '82, it would say you graduated from the Institute in 1982, so you probably matriculated in 1978, though MIT has many, many students on atypical schedules. Atypical, that is, compared to the vast majority of colleges and universities in the US -- indeed, people talk about "the typical four-year university."
When you're a freshman in 1982, you could think of it as "Class of 1986 (presumptive)."