Before leaving to study abroad for a semester, one of the biggest things that GW drills into our heads is that the United Kingdom school system is incredibly different from the United States system. In the UK, students only attend university for three years instead of four. They only take classes from one department, and they only learn about things that pertain directly to their major. Most students only attend classes for ten hours a week or less, and a lot of the assigned readings are optional, not mandatory. Furthermore, a score of 70 or higher is considered to be an A. These differences between the two schooling systems make it a little difficult to adjust at first, but by far the most difficult thing to adapt to are the midterm exams.
As an English and Creative Writing major, I'm rather lucky; I don't have to take any actual exams or quizzes. I don't need to study and cram two months worth of information into my head, or hunt down expensive exam booklets the morning of the test. Instead, I have to write about 15,000 words (or the equivalent of 40ish pages, double-spaced) in various essays.
This is, unfortunately, the biggest difference between the UK and US school systems: the UK has a designated midterm time, during which all of the classes will assign a midterm exam or paper. In the US, professors are allowed to test their students with exams or essays whenever they desire: once a month, once a week, or even twice a semester. Because the American professors have a little more freedom in choosing when they test their students, American students don't have 15,000 words worth of papers due all on the same day.
Yeah, you read that write. I have 15,000 words total due on November 11th in my four different classes.
The fact that there's one designated due date for all of King's college midterms wrecks havoc on the students here. As the date gets closer and closer, you see more students huddled around their computers, franticly studying or writing papers. Because the sad fact about the UK schooling system - what it really comes down to - is that it's impossible to do everything. I can only exert my full attention on my most important classes because there simply aren't enough hours in the day. With two weeks to go until the November 11th deadline, I have hours upon hours of research and writing ahead of me. I mean, I'm a Creative Writing major, for crying out loud! I can write 1,000 words of fiction in an hour, and even I think 15,000 words of academic writing and research in less than two weeks is incredibly excessive.
The bottom line: midterms in the UK are nothing to joke about. While at GW, many students have what we playfully refer to as "midterm month," in London you have one day. That's it; nothing more than one long, endless day and the hellish two weeks that lead up to it.