My Grades

One of my biggest concerns about moving to Asia for a semester was how my grades would be affected.

The honest truth: My grades would not be this high if I had spent the whole year in Swansea.

I appreciate that this won’t be the same for everyone, but I excel in coursework while exams drag my average down.

You have to arrive at your host university for the beginning of the second semester, meaning you won’t be in the UK for the Swansea January exams. Therefore, your teachers will have to provide you with alternative assessments; i.e. coursework. Don’t get me wrong, shelling out three essays over Christmas was not fun, but I left swansea averaging a 74, which is a strong first. This provided a sort of safety net; even if I messed up all of my classes in Hong Kong I probably wouldn’t fail the year.

The second factor is that you are marked as equals with the local students in Hong Kong – even though english is they’re second language.

This isn’t all good, to try and get a more level playing field you will be put into groups consisting of you and 2/3 local students so you can help with their english and they can help with any translations from books/sources. This will be done for every single presentation and essay. I guess it was useful to a certain extent, it was handy that they could translate, but be prepared to rewrite a whole essay literally hours before the deadline: the locals call themselves ‘midnight worriers’ and will hand in work seconds before deadlines.

However, exams are a lot easier to get higher marks in. Lingnan does use a percentage grade system that only allows a certain number of people each grade but at the end of the day you have a huge advantage over everyone who’s second language is English (apart from the Germans).

I left Lingnan University with 3 A’s and a B. I passed second year with a 72. I went out to Hong Kong’s version of Wind Street and/or sightseeing every week and had three holidays during term time.

You will pass second year.