Hey everyone! Dana here and on today's Ask An American, I’m going to be talking about
high school, university and college, in the U.S. Is there even a difference between college
and university? How long are Americans actually in high school for? And what's all this talk
about graduate versus undergraduate programs? All of this and more.
So, let’s start with high school. High school in the U.S. usually 4 years of school from 9th grade
to 12th grade. And so you’re in there from about age 14 about age 18. And the grades that you get
in high school are more important than the grades you got in middle and elementary school
because your high school grades are what universities are going to look at when deciding whether
or not to accept you.
Getting into college is a competitive process in the U.S. and universities look at your
GPA - grade point average - which is on a 4.0 scale, where 4.0 is actually the best,
so unlike here in Germany where I believe a 1 is then an A, that's the best you can
get, is a 1. In the U.S., an A equals 4 points, so you want to be as close to 4.0 as you can.
Universities also look at your SAT score. The SAT is a standardized test that you take toward
the end of your high school career. And universities also look at any kind of volunteer work or
actual paid work that you did, any kind of extra-curricular activities that you did,
clubs that you were in. Or maybe clubs that you were a leader of! So what they are really
looking for is often a well-rounded person. So that's kind of the catchphrase that's tossed
around when applying to university. They're looking for a well-rounded individual.
Okay, so before we go any further, let’s talk about the terms college and university
because I’ve kind of been throwing them around, sort of interchangeably here, so what
is the difference or are they just the same?
Eehhh, Trying to make a distinction and explain out these two words gets a little messy, because
they can be used interchangeably as I did, um, use them to sort of mean the same thing.
But then they do also have their own separate meanings as well.
So it's a little complicated.
Technically a university is generally a school that offers an undergraduate and a
graduate program. So what do I mean with that, then? Well the undergraduate program is the
one you would go to right after high school. You graduate from high school and then you
go to a four-year undergraduate program, and you graduate with your bachelor’s degree.
After that, if you want to keep studying you could get your master’s and then your PhD,
and both of those are then part of what's called the graduate program.
So technically a university has both. Being a university kind of comes with more
prestige than the word college, although not always because there’s Dartmouth College,
which has college in the name and not university, but it definitely has a graduate and an undergraduate
program and lots and lots of prestige. So that's not always the case.
As I did in this video, when we talk about getting more education after high school,
in the U.S., we often we often generally talk about it as going to college. So: I’m going
off to college, I have to study a lot in college, it's hard to get into college. And so in that
way, it does then mean the same as university. We talk about the university as the actual
establishment. I go to blah blah university. But I'm in college. So, in that case, they
are kind of interchangeable.
But not always! So often within one university you will have different colleges, and that’s
just what they call the different areas of education in that one university. So you'll
have the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences or the College of Business. And those are
areas of education within the one university.
And then there’s also something called a community college. A community college is
different from a 4-year university. At a community college there is no campus to live
on like at a 4-year university. Classes are usually cheaper, you stay at home with your
parents or you rent an apartment, and you commute each day to the, the classes, and
they accept everyone. So, it’s not a competitive process. No matter what your SAT score, no
matter what your grades in high school, you can go to community college.
And community colleges actually play a really important role. They offer lots of different
things for different people. So for people who perhaps can’t afford to go to a 4-year
university right away or for people who didn’t get the best grades in high school, they can
go to the community college for the first two years, study for those two years if they
need to show that they can get good grades, you know work their butt off, get straight
As or as good of grades as they can get, and then use those grades to apply and go into
a 4-year university to finish the last two years and graduate with their bachelor's degree.
It's kind of, for people who didn't get such good grades in high school, it's kind of like
a chance at a re-do. They can still go to university. And community colleges also often offer
some kind of vocational training. So we don't really have the Ausbildung program that Germany
does, but at community colleges you can often learn some sort of a skill. So you can get
certificates and, yeah, training in a certain field that doesn't necessarily require you
to go to university.
Okay, but so what if someone wants to be a doctor or a lawyer? Do they just go to university
and study to become doctor or a lawyer. No. So, in the U.S., even if you want to be a
doctor or a lawyer, you still have to do that first 4-year undergraduate program. So you pick
a major that has something to do with the field you would like to go into. So, for example,
if you want to be a doctor, maybe you would get your undergraduate in biology. And if
you want to be a lawyer, maybe you get it in political science or something like that.
And so you still study for four years, and you graduate with that bachelor's degree, and
then after that, you go on to medical school or law school.
And how about switching majors? Let's say you start out in history and then you realize
that your passion actually lies in chemistry. Can you just switch to the other major? Sometimes.
It depends on how far along you are and how similar or completely different the two fields
are from each other. Generally speaking, in your first two years of college you’re often
taking general education courses. So, English, math, science. And so these courses are often
required by a lot of different majors, so if you’re in your first year or beginning
of your second year, it's usually not too hard to switch because it's often the case
that the classes you've been taking are also required by the other major as well.
But as time goes on, that history major requires, of course, for you to take more and more history
courses, and the chem. major requires that you take more and more chemistry courses.
So at some point, you've diverged so much in the other direction that it's not so easy
to then just switch majors. You've taken a whole year of history courses that the chem.
major doesn't require. You don't have those chemistry courses, and so perhaps you could
switch but then you would "lose" a year. You'd have to make up all those courses that you,
that you haven't taken yet. And perhaps if you're on some scholarships they don't allow
you to just add on a 5th year to your undergraduate education. If you can afford it, you know
if you can pay for it, well then okay. But also, even if you can afford it, it's been
my experience that universities make it a little tricky because they don't really want
you to go into a 5th or a 6th year in the undergraduate program because it looks good
in their statistics if they can tell parents and the rest of the world that people come
in and make it out in that four years. So generally within the first two years, it should
be possible to switch majors, but after that, it often gets a lot harder. That's not to
say it can't be done, but it gets harder.
Now, in this video I was alway going to talk about college tuition, costs. I mentioned a little
bit about scholarships and paying for university. That the community colleges are cheaper. But,
yeah, when I was looking at all the information I had and everything I wanted to say, I just
realized if I also talked about college tuition, this video would be a 20-25 minute video.
So I will make a separate video just about costs of university in the U.S.
So my question for you is: how was your college experience? How does it work where you live?
The same or different from what I described in this video? Please let me know in the comments below.
Thanks so much for watching. Please don't forget to subscribe for more videos, and hit
that like button if you enjoyed watching this video. And also to connect with me more and
find out about other video projects that I'm doing at the moment, see more photos, you
can check me out over here on my Twitter and my Facebook page. Until next time, auf Wiedersehen!
Oh, oh, oh! And something else that I wanted to mention: if you want to see more videos,
you can also check me out now on the Telekolleg Facebook page. I'll put a link down in the
description box below. Um, once ever couple of weeks now there will be a video up there
where I'm teaching some sort of short, little, interesting thing about the English language.
So I hope you enjoy those as well.
So my question for you is: what was your...
This is also something that's good for people who didn't get that very...
Eeeh! Trying to ex...
And the grades that you get in high school are more important than the grades you got
in military...military? Middle school. What? Ah, 14...