American schools was[Sca-cooks] Re: bundt cake?

[Kirrily Robert]

Maire asked:
> What do y'all have in Australia?

Australian school is usually 13 years, separated into "Primary" and
"Secondary".  Primary school consists of "prep" (preparatory, a bit like
your kindergarten) through grade 6.  Years 7-12 are secondary school.
There is no such thing as Junior High in most cases.  Most kids go to
kindergarten (age 3-4) before starting prep in primary school.

When you finish year 12, you may choose to go on to tertiary education.
There are Universities, which offer degrees, and a range of
non-degree-offering institutions.  Bachelor degrees are more often 3
years than 4, but many have an optional 4th year called "honours".
After a Bachelor's degree, you may go on to post-grad work.  Med school
and law school don't exist as such... you simply study medicine or law
at any university that offers it, and you can start doing so straight
out of high school (though it does still take many years to become fully
qualified).

The complication in terminology, if you're an Australian trying to
understand Americans, is that Australian schools and unis don't use
freshman/sophomore/junior/senior, but simply refer to the year: "year
10" for 10th grade (i.e. high school sophomore), "first year uni" for a
university freshman, etc.

The other complication is to do with "majors".  In Australia, the
terminology is totally different:

US                          Australia
-------------------------------------
course                      subject
major, degree program       course

So where an American would say "What's your major?" an Australian would
say "What course are you in?"  You choose what course to do before you
start university, usually sometime in year 12 of high school, and your
course basically dictates what subjects you will take and what degree
you will end up with.  For instance, you could answer "I'm doing
Engineering at Monash" and that would imply that you're "majoring" (in US
terms) in Engineering, and will graduate with a B. Eng.  Yes, that means
that you have your major in your first (freshman) year, and are already
doing specialised subjects at that point.  That may be one reason why
Australian bachelor degrees are mostly 3 years.  Instead of "choosing
your courses" you choose "subjects", but you may be quite limited in the
selection depending on what course you're doing.  For instance, someone
in the Engineering course might have 50% of their classes pre-determined
by the simple fact that they are in Engineering, and then choose the
rest from elective subjects offered by the Engineering Faculty and other
faculties within the university.

Other American educational concepts that are alien to Australians
include SATs, mid-terms, dorms, fraternities, professorial ranks, and
the fact that the school year starts in September.

Yours,

Katherine

--
Lady Katherine Rowberd (mka Kirrily "Skud" Robert)
katherine at infotrope.net  http://infotrope.net/sca/
Caldrithig, Skraeling Althing, Ealdormere
"The rose is red, the leaves are grene, God save Elizabeth our Queene"