Schols

Time Magazine · 30-03-2007 05:53PM

Congrats all.

Keep that chin high, no matter how you did you've done it now and you can focus on the future with a hell of a lot of hard study done.

Pet · 30-03-2007 06:16PM

FREEDOM IS MINE.
and you know how I feel.
It's a new dawn, it's a new day, it's a new life for me; and I'm feeling..

..well, tired. but okay. sleep now. dissect later.

30-03-2007 06:41PM

Well done! Many people wish they had bothered going for Schols by the time they ended college (myself included in that), so whatever the result, congrats on pushing yourself to an incredible level.

europerson · 30-03-2007 07:10PM

Congratulations to all! You've achieved an awful lot over the last while, and the work you've done will really pay off. Well done!

Pet · 30-03-2007 07:19PM

..one more thing before the X Files ends and I shuffle off:

Many people wish they had bothered going for Schols by the time they ended college

These people are fucking insane.

In the membrane.

I'm willing to imagine that there are people out there who just revel in spending the best part of a term alternately panicking, tearing their hair out, wanting to give up on academia forever, and becoming ever more socially withdrawn; as they cling to some vague glimmer of hope, only to have it dashed callously without so much as a by-your-leave. These people would do well to sit the schols exams.

But for anyone else with merely misguided romantic notions; let me fill you in.

It's not all that hot. So don't feel too bad. You didn't miss much.

Edit: that sounds mighty bitter. I'm honestly not bitter about it though (maybe a little regretful); I didn't get hard done by in any fashion; there are many who fared much worse than I did, and I will direct you to them if you wish. I just think it's important to be realistic, is all.

ApeXaviour · 31-03-2007 11:22AM

shay_562 wrote:

(Someone might wanna unban Hils at some stage, but really, there's no rush. Although one of the first things she said in the Pav today was "I get to post again!"...)

Done

and well done all for getting through it

Tricity Bendix · 31-03-2007 12:04PM

Pet wrote:

These people are fucking insane.

In the membrane.

I'm willing to imagine that there are people out there who just revel in spending the best part of a term alternately panicking, tearing their hair out, wanting to give up on academia forever, and becoming ever more socially withdrawn; as they cling to some vague glimmer of hope, only to have it dashed callously without so much as a by-your-leave. These people would do well to sit the schols exams.

But for anyone else with merely misguided romantic notions; let me fill you in.

It's not all that hot. So don't feel too bad. You didn't miss much.

Edit: that sounds mighty bitter. I'm honestly not bitter about it though (maybe a little regretful); I didn't get hard done by in any fashion; there are many who fared much worse than I did, and I will direct you to them if you wish. I just think it's important to be realistic, is all.

obviously we had very different experiences of doing schols. I suppose it very much depends on the disposition of the individual. I know I wouldn't have done a lick of work in second year if it weren't for schols.

Awayindahils · 31-03-2007 06:39PM

[QUOTE=PetThese people are fucking insane.

In the membrane.

I'm willing to imagine that there are people out there who just revel in spending the best part of a term alternately panicking, tearing their hair out, wanting to give up on academia forever, and becoming ever more socially withdrawn; as they cling to some vague glimmer of hope, only to have it dashed callously without so much as a by-your-leave. These people would do well to sit the schols exams.

But for anyone else with merely misguided romantic notions; let me fill you in.

It's not all that hot. So don't feel too bad. You didn't miss much.

Edit: that sounds mighty bitter. I'm honestly not bitter about it though (maybe a little regretful); I didn't get hard done by in any fashion; there are many who fared much worse than I did, and I will direct you to them if you wish. I just think it's important to be realistic, is all.[/QUOTE]

I'm really glad that i did schols.

sully-gormo · 01-04-2007 05:41PM

how do you think you did. Im considering doing them(in bess) next year, but id only do it if I thought id could be getting them. Itd be such a terrible feeling not getting them IMO, itd be all or nothing if i went for them

01-04-2007 06:14PM

Well, apart from the exemption from summer exams?

sully-gormo · 01-04-2007 07:27PM

Myth wrote:

Well, apart from the exemption from summer exams?

Well youve worked your arse off for at least 9/10 weeks in HT and you would be keeping much more abreast of things in MT than you normally would; for 6 weeks off college. In some courses(engineering) they dont even tell you if you got exemptiuons until Trinity Monday! I already know I can apply myself and work hard and all that; i just ponder to myself if i stand a chance after putting in all the work.
In Fairness, the least they could do is give you exemptions after taking up a gauntlet like this, and putting in such a volume of work.

For me the most daunting thing about it is the statistics. On average 20% of SF go for them, and 20% of those succeed(5%). Id be worried that they have a kind of quota, that theyll only give a certain amount of I grades out, no matter how good you are.

01-04-2007 07:49PM

sully-gormo wrote:

For me the most daunting thing about it is the statistics. On average 20% of SF go for them, and 20% of those succeed(5%). Id be worried that they have a kind of quota, that theyll only give a certain amount of I grades out, no matter how good you are.

You talking about engineering? Perhaps have a looksee at how many people actually complete them! An awful lot of people go for it, but after one bad exam just give up.

sully-gormo · 01-04-2007 08:28PM

no thats college wide over the last three years,see this, page 6(appears i was slightly off with the stats, oops). ill be in BESS probably.
Ill probably be doing:
Int.Econ / Econ of irl / Maths-stats / WEuropean Pol / HistPolThought / Law

I think id go for a I on the Essay Paper,maths, law, and Int.Econ ; a II1 on EcIrl and the easier of the two politcs subjects; and id pass the other Politics subj. AFAIK you dont need all I grades, just an average. I think in BESS you need 4xI and 2xII1; or 3xI and 3xII1 with the arithmetic avg. for you to be elected scholar

ApeXaviour · 01-04-2007 08:31PM

sully-gormo wrote:

In some courses(engineering) they dont even tell you if you got exemptiuons until Trinity Monday!

I don't know, but I'd be very skeptical if that's the case.

sully-gormo wrote:

In Fairness, the least they could do is give you exemptions after taking up a gauntlet like this, and putting in such a volume of work.

This argument fails to convince me. I know people who've sat the exams to motivate themselves to study, so they'd do better in the annuals. They've failed or gotten III's and II-2's. It's good practice. It's not really a gauntlet unless you make it one; they're exams like, ipso facto -> you're a student. Personally I found JS exams a lot more stressful (wasn't nearly as well prepared and so had to fanatically cram).

sully-gormo wrote:

For me the most daunting thing about it is the statistics. On average 20% of SF go for them, and 20% of those succeed(5%). Id be worried that they have a kind of quota, that theyll only give a certain amount of I grades out, no matter how good you are.

In Science it's less than 2% (that's the course as opposed to the faculty. People doing Theoretical Physics, human genetics etc. throw those stats off). There is no quota though. If you get the grade, you get the scholarship. They're damn hard exams though.

Comhra.... · 01-04-2007 08:37PM

I have to say that i did schols in second year and didn't get exemptions. I was 2 marks off and found out in a personal e-mail from my head of department. I thought that they did the exemptions by individual subjects, but nope, that wasn't the case. But not getting exemptions is not the end of the world, I came fourth in my class in the summer exams and I had all my photocopying done and didn't have to fight my classmates for books.

College don't have to give you squat just because you signed up for extra exams. They aren't forcing you to do it, you sign the piece of paper, you know what you are doing. Exemptions would have been nice but because of my subject choices I haven't had exams since those second year drama exams and I have none this summer either.

Tacitha · 01-04-2007 08:43PM

There really aren't quotas - I am very willing to suspect this sort of thing, but there's not much incentive to apply quotas on schol, and it would be very hard to do in practice.

No incentive because your school or cluster - whatever pays the bills - can have any number of scholars but pays the same amount towards the system as the next.

Applying a quota would be difficult because of the way examiners' meetings work - people turn up knowing only your grade in their paper, and the meeting looks at how it lines up with the other papers. Majority firsts/average first (I think there are faculty differences here) and you're in. So they know the criteria going in, find out what mark you've got once they're inside, and could only disqualify you from schol by changing your grade on one of the papers with full consent of everyone in the room - impossible to justify and I hope not likely to get past any group of staff.

Numbers getting schol tend to bear that out - the numbers have been increasing I think at a more than the rate of student population, though they're proportionately lower than they were historically. And the numbers and proportions from different sections of college aren't at all consistent year on year.

Might be worth mentioning that tomorrow (Monday) is the last day to send a comment in on the scholarship review - among other things, exemptions, timing and separate examination are up for discussion.

http://www.tcd.ie/local/scholreview/index.php

01-04-2007 08:46PM

Comhra wrote:

I haven't had exams since those second year drama exams and I have none this summer either.

Damn you vile woman!

james80000 · 02-04-2007 12:13PM

sully-gormo wrote:

no thats college wide over the last three years,see this, page 6(appears i was slightly off with the stats, oops). ill be in BESS probably.
Ill probably be doing:
Int.Econ / Econ of irl / Maths-stats / WEuropean Pol / HistPolThought / Law

I think id go for a I on the Essay Paper,maths, law, and Int.Econ ; a II1 on EcIrl and the easier of the two politcs subjects; and id pass the other Politics subj. AFAIK you dont need all I grades, just an average. I think in BESS you need 4xI and 2xII1; or 3xI and 3xII1 with the arithmetic avg. for you to be elected scholar

I did them this year in BESS, I did pretty much what you are doing and tried to predict the grades, hoping for a I in maths and economics, and then those exams went crap.I think its prob better to just aim for a I in 6 six subjects and let your 7th subject slide a bit. Just in case some exams go badly and then ur screwed.... Its a lot of work in BESS as in the other courses, but probably a little more crammable because the lecturers are sound in the sense that they tell you exactly what you have to cover. Plus you dont have to cover any material from first year. I think if you are thinkin bout schols BESS is one of the *easier* subjects to do it, but still lots of extra work....

Pet · 27-04-2007 06:25PM

Question about exemptions: Should they be on one's online student record by now? Mine is still blank, and I'm feeling a little uneasy..

27-04-2007 06:30PM

I thought they'd go up on the noticeboard first?

Tacitha · 27-04-2007 07:11PM

No, don't worry - can't imagine that they'd do one round of updates for exemptions and one for scholarship. They can't give you your grades yet (because then you'd know who'd got schol) so presumably nothing is added to the record until after Trinity Monday, which is when they post everyone's grades.

shay_562 · 29-04-2007 04:14PM

sully-gormo wrote:

Well youve worked your arse off for at least 9/10 weeks in HT and you would be keeping much more abreast of things in MT than you normally would; for 6 weeks off college.

Saw this comment at the top of the page now that the thread has been bumped, and just wanted to stress that (assuming you're in a course where prper exemptions are offered, ie you'd hear at the start of TT) while 6 weeks doesn't sound like that much, it's worth noting that a) it's more like 9 weeks, when you take into account the 3 weeks of exams that follow TT and b) that those 9 weeks are utterly fantastic - all the fun of summer, for over 2 months longer, and before the summer drought where everyone goes away. You get to work properly again (money is good), then spend that money on beer while there are still people around. Exemptions are the most fantastic thing ever - they're enough of a reward in and of themselves that, had I realised beforehand how much fun they'd be, I'd have sat Schols purely for them even without the potential for free crap at the end. Just throwing it out there...

Originally Posted by sully-gormo
In some courses(engineering) they dont even tell you if you got exemptiuons until Trinity Monday!

I don't know, but I'd be very skeptical if that's the case.

It is. As I understand it, it's a relatively new thing, but this year's engineering students don't find out til Trinity Monday. Fun times!

sully-gormo · 30-04-2007 12:16AM

Yeah I kinda realised recently since Trin.Term started that even exemptions would be class. Still; I would only make an attempt at schols if i thought I had a chance at getting them, it wouldnt be worth going through all that for exemptions on their own

shay_562 · 14-05-2007 10:33AM

Boo-urns. Not that I was expecting much better, but still, boo-urns. On the other hand, getting my breakdown made me realise how perilously close I was to having to repeat three subjects, so I'm suddenly even more grateful for my full exemptions.

Well done to all the scholars, especially the ones who know me and are likely to let me sleep on their floors from time to time.

Crash · 14-05-2007 12:43PM

Anyone I know get schols I wonder?

14-05-2007 01:02PM

http://www.tcd.ie/Secretary/FellowsScholars/

Check for yourself!

Crash · 14-05-2007 01:17PM

Know three of them, and one of the new fellows.

Stargal · 14-05-2007 01:19PM

Well done to claire_h who got schols (the only boardsie I recognised on the list).

Pet · 14-05-2007 01:34PM

14 out of the 76 are very good friends of mine - bastards! I'm insanely jealous.

europerson · 14-05-2007 01:50PM

I know a couple too: they look so good in their gowns. I'm looking forward to wearing a gown, if I graduate. It looks like fun!

Schols

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