Do teenagers in Europe have to spend their entire day for years preparing for entrance examinations?

14 comments

1. At least in Germany that’s not the case.

   We don’t have entrance exams at universities but a big school leaving exam. Your final grade from school is the most important factor for most study programmes with limited places.

   However, most people don’t spend the whole day studying for this exam. In fact, school days typically end in the early afternoon and at least in my case the burden of homework was never excessive so as a pupil I had many hours of free time every day.

2. I would say no. I studdied CS and I think that almost everyone was accepted. That doen not mean that everybody finishes it. For example in my class there were aroiund 250 students at the beggining while in second year there were only 90 while only cca 30-40 recieved their diploma.

3. It is different from country to country. In the UK and Germany, at least, it is usually just your final grades at school that determine if you can go to university or attend a specific course. These are partly based on exam results, partly on course work in your last few years of school.

   Where competition is tough (e.g. if studying medicine) there may be additional criteria.

   Most British and German teenagers in their final years of school spend some time preparing for their final exams, and it may be “all day” in the last few weeks. But I doubt that many people revise for more than 8 hours, and it would certainly be very rare to do so for longer than a few weeks. It would be actively discouraged by most schools and parents, in fact, as it is not seen as healthy.

   We had a Chinese kid living with us for a few weeks a couple of years ago. He went to an elite boarding school and the routine he described was pretty alien to us – nothing but work basically 7 days a week throughout his teenage years. He very quickly made plans to move to Europe!

4. There are no entrance exams no get into university in Switzerland, if you have the matura (diploma at the end of a type of school called gymnasium) then every Swiss university must accept you into any of their programs (except for Medicine for some reason, for Medicine there is an exam called the Numerus Clausus, it is a hard exam, the people I know who did it studied for months, but not years).

5. It’s nowhere as extreme as countries in Asia, but in Ireland we have the leaving cert, which is an exam that decides what course you can do in College. The whole year is dedicated to the tests and it’s very stressful, but the tests in China/Korea/Japan etc are in a completely different league altogether.

6. Switzerland:
   No we dont have that. Our education system is much different and going to university is by no means required to get a well paying and respected job.

   Plus you can always go get a degree at a uni or a variety of other higher education schools at any time later in life. So there isnt really a deadline like this, where one single exam will determine your future lifepath so much.

   My gf is from Hongkong and her stories from school and “childhood” are quite mind blowing to me, even tho that was 15 years ago and only seems to have gotten worse since. Altho to be fair i was also a particularly lazy student by our standards.

7. No, we don’t have entrance examinations in the same way; rather, we have two ways of applying for university, one is based on your high school levels and grades, the second on old-fashioned written application. There are variations, some of which include a test or exam, but those are the minority.

8. No. Some colleges have no entrance exams (and cares about your final grades or highschool maturita exam grades), some don’t really care about the grades and have entrance exams. And then it depends on the type of exams. Some don’t need any preparation (I didn’t prepare for any of the 4 faculties I tried since they weren’t ones with known hardcore exams, just fairly easy school tests and demented SCIO test in one case – just general knowledge test about general everything having nothing much to do with the school itself you can pass with no regard to education from pretty hated “educational company”), some need bit of studying (usually most prestigious with harder tests they prepare themselves), some like arts need some portfolio, but really no, nobody prepares for years, perhaps few days? The first year of college is mostly seen as the true sieve.

9. We dont have entrance exams for universities. You have to take 4 exams in the final year of high school but they’re just normal exams that count as much as a regular grade. As long as you pass them you’re all good.

10. In Germany and many other Western countries your Student years are as much about partying as they are about studying. Nobody really cares about your degree once you’re a few years into the ‘real world’.

11. Austria: for State universities, the entrace exam is relaxed by the school leaving exam. Yes, you need to thoroughly prepare for the school leaving exam, but not for years and years.

    Applied universities and private universities usually have entrance exams in addition. Difficulty varies a lot.

12. In France not really, the national exam at the end of high school is the BAC and it’s a Joke. But then you can go to college or if you are really good you will go the “prépa” (preparation classes)(there scientific, economic and literary prépa) where you will indeed study 8-15 hours a day to prepare the “Concours”(contests) Those contests open doors to the best schools(for the example Polytechnique, the ENSs,HEC,Centrale-Supelec) in france and are the main to way to becoming an engineer in France.

13. No. You only need to do an binding entrance exam for dentist and medical doctor in the dutch speaking part of belgium.

    There are non binding test to see if you have enough knowledge and mental ability to get a university degree. These are not binding at the moment but that could change but I doubt it.

14. I’m studying on one of the best technical universities in my country. I haven’t learned for entrance exams at all. It was the same stuff we had in highschool graduation exam but slightly harder.

    It depends on what highschool you studied I’d say. We got special highschools that teach all subject to a sufficient level, so that you can choose whichever university you want when you’re 18 and not struggle so much. This was where i studied, 1/3 of our class went to med school, 1/3 went to social science and 1/3 to tech. I’d say that nobody studied more than a year in advance.

    You also got your specialized highschool. But if you don’t choose a university that isn’t from your field, i wouldn’t say you have to learn super hard to get to uni.