READING THE SECOND TERM Variant 1 1. Read the text below. Match choices (A—H) to (1—5). There are three choices you don’t need to use. More than a quarter of the working people in Europe have it. Cairo, Bologna, and Paris have been offering it the longest. And you can now possibly get it by sitting at home at a computer. What is it? A university education, of course. So who goes to university and what do they get out of their experience? (1)___ Most universities don’t let just anyone in. Grades in the subjects you take in the final years of secondary education are what is usually looked at. In many countries people also have to do an entry examination. (2)___ Take a quick name check of the leading writers, politicians or scientists in the UK or the USA and you should find the majority chose to spend their student years at Oxford and Cambridge or Harvard, Princeton and Yale. (3)___ For the majority of students, attending a university in a town or city near the place where they live is the only financially possible choice, but in Britain for many years going to university meant leaving home, with all the freedom and independence that implied. Universities traditionally offer cheap and clean accommodation in hostels or student houses. (4)___ A common feature of any university is attending lectures, which involves taking notes while a lecturer, a university teacher, is speaking to large groups of students. In Britain, you are also expected to present a subject perhaps once a term and comment on it in tutorials. These are small group discussions led by a lecturer at which closer analysis of a particular area is undertaken. (5)___ There is an old saying that «all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy», and prospective students expect a rich and varied social pastime. Friendships and varied clubs and societies that exist at most universities may last a lifetime. And what does university education all add up to? There was the opinion of Theodore Roosevelt, a former American President: «A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car; but if he has a university education he may steal the whole railroad». Or is it as an American journalist, Sydney Harris, said? — «The primary purpose of a liberal education is to make one’s mind a pleasant place in which to spend one’s time». 47 A Accommodation B Social Life C Admission D Teaching and Learning E Special Courses F Which One to Go to G University Library H Sport and University Teams