Barbara. My husband would have been at Falkirk High at about the same time as you were at school. He went to St. Andrews after taking his highers. He got an ordinary degree in three subjects after three years and then did single honours chemistry in his fourth year.

Barbara, even in the 60s, ordinary degrees took 3 years and honours took 4. The English system is a bit different from teh Scots one because of the focus on a single subject. You can get an honours degree in England in 3.

The idea that a degree (especially a BA/BSc) from Cambridge may not be marketable in the US is just plain nonsense. As a Yank who did a degree at Cambridge I know from personal experience - a Cambridge degree is marketable throughout the world.

The main strength of undergraduate education at Cambridge per se is the tutorial system. In addition to attending lectures and seminars, each and every student is required to meet regularly with a tutor in groups of <=4. Tutors range from advanced PhD students through to Readers (and even, sometimes, Professors), and are arranged either through college or the academic department concerned. This facility provides a highly personalized and constantly challenging intellectual environment (look at Wittgenstein and Russel), and represents the main difference between Oxbridge and other universities.

What a great forum this is. Can't imagine where else one might find this wealth of intelligence. At present, it looks like we might follow the course suggested by Jerrymrehs. Ben will be hearing from Yale about his early action application at roughly the same time he's supposed to be in Cambridge for the interview. And there are other good U.S. schools he's applying to. So he might able to start here and work in a few U.K. semesters. That would make his mother happiest, I think. As for his father, he's amazed that any offspring of his can even consider a list like this.

Personally I would go on the strength of the course. How many research papers, post-graduate opportunities and quality than whether it is Oxbridge. I would take another look at Sheffield before discarding it so out of hand. Their courses tend to be very modern and they are rated 5* in a large amount of subjects.

When I visited Cambridge I was not enamoured with the college-centric approach and dickensian characters spinning around on bicycles. The people that I met were not very well-grounded as they would be from a place like Sheffield, Newcastle or even where I studied Southampton. Cambridge seemed more like Hogwarts than a modern, progressive forward-thinking university.

Sylvia and Sheila, I know honours take/took four years, but nobody was talking about honours, just an undergraduate degree.

In a small, almost exclusively academic, field, such as philosophy, a degree from a foreign university will not be an obstacle to success. If Guy's son had alternative career goals and planned to apply to a US Law school or MBA program, however, I would anticipate some issues, particularly if he attended a UK university that did not have the name recognition of Cambridge or Oxford. Every competent university administrator understands that an undergraduate degree from MIT is a more impressive accomplishment than an equivalent degree from Clark's College, but they almost certainly would not appreciate the difference between a degree from Leeds and one from Leicester. Even with Cambridge, there could be issues if a degree represents fewer years of study or significantly fewer hours of classroom attendance.

Although the integrity of many of these universities is unimpeachable (that is not the issue here), I have witnessed firsthand the difficulties that people with foreign university degrees sometimes experience while pursuing a career in the US. This may be less true of degrees from UK universities because the designations (BA, etc.) tend to be familiar, although problems may still exist. As I alluded above, hassles are more likely to occur in larger, less insulated and less academically-oriented fields. While these issues seem unlikely to apply to Guy's son, someone wishing to pursue an undergraduate degree at a foreign university with minimal international name recognition should be advised to consider the long-term career implications.

A similar thread I started earlier this spring that might be of interest to you.

http://www.fodors.com/forums/threads...p;tid=34406743

Best wishes,

Rex