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Academic preparedness of first-year students at tertiary level

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Academic preparedness of first-year students at tertiary level

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How academically prepared or ready are you for university?

Many students join university thinking that since they survived high school, they’ll cope well with university. That’s not the case at all.

Many students have passed high school, some just scraped through. Maybe with the help of the department, their teachers, maybe they’ve been given extra marks to get through, or the pass-rates have been lowered so that they get through. Now they find themselves in a situation where they have to work extremely  hard, which they weren’t doing in high school, they aren’t prepared or ready to take on this level of academic studies and find themselves sinking.

On tertiary level, lots of students will struggle with language inefficiencies. At high school, they were allowed to speak their home languages, so it was easy for them. Now they find a new challenge, having to speak, read and write in English. Some students cannot form paragraphs and essays as they’re expected to, and university requires students’ English to be on such a level in order to execute assignments and presentations correctly.

Have you been ‘spoon-fed’ at schools, and now finding yourself having to sink or swim all by yourself?
On this university level, there is so much to do! Are you prepared for the volume of work coming in? Will you be able to keep up and handle the pressure?

You have to have a completely different mindset. You have to be mature. Some students are academically immature and therefore there is such a high failure rate.

Are you willing to sacrifice your time and your sleep in order to put in the extra effort?

This is what you have to ask yourself when joining a university.

In order to be successful and come out on top, you have to work hard, sacrifice and be dedicated. Are you?

Are you ready?

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i finished high school with the thoughts of 'UNIVERSITY IS WHERE I WILL THRIVE' ,however the transition from secondary to tertiary education is a lot harder then i anticipate. i have worked well throughout high school however the lack of assitance and constant guidance compared to the increased independance i now have has lead to my downfall. i have grown accustomed to an educator being there to assist me that i struggle now to work out the way things are different now. while i havent been spoonfed i definitely had a shoulder to lean on making things difficult as i navigate things on my own.i am prepared for the workload and have been able to prioritise however being someone who does not handle pressure well , i have definitely begun to feel the weight of university. whether or not i am ready ? this is a question i still ask myself but what i can say is that im not giving up

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Honestly I did not know how dependent I was on my teachers for assistance in high school, also the pace was so much slower than university. The amount of work we have to do on our own has thrown me slightly off and the assignments come in faster then they are going out. However I have found that this makes me want it more and you are basically doing it on your own,learning the work understanding it all. It really is a faster pace but hopefully I'll get back into my high school groove soon.

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Back in high school I really had alot of sleepless nights where I went to bed around 4 or so ,but I really thought that was as bad as it could go. Honestly it went even worse. Back then I usually had these nights during weekends ,to finish what I couldn't during the week. Nowadays it's everyday just no sleep and alot of work. I have turned into a walking zombie. I look so tired at all times and I feel like I need a facial care routine coz I can't keep looking like I woke up on the wrong side of the world. Honestly I really under estimated this life but bruh noooo😭😭😭😭. One person can't deal with this much. The most pressure I get from group tasks ,where I feel like it's not only for me ,I need to do it for the team and if I do lose marks I'm letting am y pplz down and that's something I can't afford. I'm really hoping to adapt to the life in varsity before I find myself going mad and crazy.

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The transition from high school to university 

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The transition from high school to university 

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The jump from high school to university has definitely been a big one.

In high school, teachers would constantly monitor our progress and run after us if we haven’t handed something in. They would make countless exceptions for and sometimes even tell us exactly what will be asked in our exams ! The work load was not much. Well not much in comparison to what we get now , and our parents were notified if we weren’t doing too great.

University has been a totally different ball game but I feel as though I am quite well prepared. I believe that some of my teachers did not give me the assistance I needed and I had to work really really hard to achieve a good result. I can now say that I am a hard worker and I have developed good working habits. I am used to going the extra mile and putting 110% into every task and assignment.

The only thing that really worries me is the essays. In grade 12 we were required to write a 400-450 word essay for home language and now we have to write pages full ! Insane. I think that high schools can definitely do more in terms of preparing their students for tertiary education.

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The transition from Secondary to Tertiary

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The transition from Secondary to Tertiary

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Ons school as learners we had protéges that made sure we are fine, however on university you need to be mature in the sense of knowing the workload and being prepared to handle pressure. Often we don't get support because "we must know the work". The language barrier is not a problem, but not helping one another is. There are a lot of students who applied at other universities that was not successful and CPUT in Mowbray was/is the only option they had, and chose it- then language is the probleme in this sense.

On school we had support systems that explained every assignment, but on university it is not that clear and the transition from high school to university is visible!

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I have to say that the transition from high school to university is not something easy and I throughly believe that high school does not prepare students.
Many students are spoon fed through high school, whether schools want to admit it or not but they do push students over. Students lack the responsibility of the consequences and this is merely because many schools make provisions for students work choose not to work through out the year and gets pushed through to the next grade.
This alone gives learners the idea that university is going to be simple. It's not! Students still feel like they are able to fool around and not do work and depend on other people to do the work for them.
University surely tests everyone and it doesn't allow people to just walk through as they want.

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high school has really dropped its quality on the kind of students they produce, and with the drop in the marks it's pathetic to see how the pass mark dropped and with that many students don't feel the need to work or study hard and expect the same kind of energy once they enter university. High school makes everyone lazy and they think they can take that same energy with them but that wont be possible. A change needs to be happen within our schools or else there won't even be new registrations for university in the foreseeable years to come

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This would be my second time doing this, de-javu, is an understatement.  Never been spoon sped, but still feel like its hard to swim. The volume of work has always been comparative to a truck full of coca cola cans that crashes and the pressure just makes everything spill out like a volcano.

Every student needs to have a sense of responsibility to be able to balance and succeed in any degree on university.

sacrificing sleep is not even a choice Laila, its a pre-requisite to doing well and managing all these assignments.

Don't really believe any person can be ready but thank you Jesus that this is my re-run, been here before and have a better understanding of what todo next!

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should the high schooling system be adjusted so that it better prepares students for Varsity?

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should the high schooling system be adjusted so that it better prepares students for Varsity?

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At the high school i was at everyone was encouraged to get better grades than one another and honestly i struggled a lot in high school so when people were breezing through class like it was nothing it was kind of hard trying to catch up. Luckily i found a love for reading in high school, and that helped me understand some of my school work better and peak my interest in certain subjects especially life science and physical sciences mostly chemistry though.

The teachers at my high school did believe in trying to help us understand how a lecture at university would work, so in a sense we were receiving some preparation but not a lot. As for the effectiveness of the preparation, Majority of my grade and the grade to graduate after me are all successful in their respective fields.

Honestly though uni is no joke once you take your pedal off the accelerator thats when all those piling assignments and test dates come to fetch their urgency from you living your best life.

I'm trying my best to be as prepared as possible, but sometimes its hard to stay motivated.

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In highschool I did the most🥱. In Highschool I had teachers support ,because they knew my ability , they knew my name and they were encouraging.
In University I  am just a number , 1 person amongst 800+students that the Lecturer might be teaching , so they Lecturer doesn't know me , they don't know my story. That's the biggest thing that I had to learn and understand

In terms of work , because of my Field and Majors , I felt like I was in Grade 13 because I'm doing Poem analysis again and writing Essays , but the essays are more than topics  , it goes more in depth.  I've learned processes of life, that everything in life has a theory placed on it , that everything  has a process  to it that needs to be followed. The things I've learned made me analyze my own Highschool teachers methods of teaching. And I can proudly say that they have been doing a good job.

University gave me some independence since I travel to school , A 18 year old in The streets of Cape Town , travelling by bus on her own, sure makes on grow up fast. I get to apply the lessons that were taught to me by my parents. I get to showcase my skills.
Another thing that I had to get use to is the fact that now this degree is for myself and no one else. No one will help me , I'm all on my own . I'm working towards my own Future.

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A major transition! One has to be academically prepared for the tertiary journey!

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A major transition! One has to be academically prepared for the tertiary journey!

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No one can enter a university unprepared. University requires one being academically prepared, as a student transcends from being dependent (also known as being spoon-fed) to entering a world we one has to be independent.

Our world revolves around the statement "Its the survival of the fittest." Everyone is not cut out to live in particular standards relating to academics. This all depends on our academic preparedness for what awaits us in the future. Our readiness will determine whether or not we will do well on university, graduate after completing our choice of study, and whether or not we are fit to enter the work force.

In this era, everything has been made easier for young individuals, but they do not realize that when things are being made easier, things are becoming more challenging and difficult at the same time.

It takes grit and hard work when one ventures on the academic journey. It is not a walk-in-the-park journey.

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there is a lot of work in Universty yhooo.