Page:EB1911 - Volume 10.djvu/58

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The laboratory examination may be used in subjects like physics, chemistry, geology, zoology, botany, anatomy, physiology, to test powers of manipulation and knowledge of experimental methods. In some cases (e.g. in certain honours examinations) the examination may be prolonged over one or more days, and may test higher powers of investigation. But

such powers can only be fully tested by the performance of original work, under conditions difficult to fulfil in the examination room or laboratory. At the French examinations for the prix de Rome the candidates are required to execute a painting in a given number of days, under strict supervision (en loge).

In medicine the clinical examination of a patient is a test carried out under conditions more nearly approaching those of actual work than any other; and distinction in medical examinations is probably more often followed by distinction in after life than is the case in other examinations.

For the doctor’s degree (where this is not an honorary distinction) a thesis or dissertation is generally, though not invariably, required in England. Of recent years the thesis has been introduced into lower examinations; it is required for the master’s degree at London in the case of

internal students, in subjects other than mathematics (1910);

both at Oxford and London, the B.Sc. degree, and at Cambridge the B.A. degree, may be given for research, although the number of students proceeding to a degree in this way is at present relatively small. In certain of the honours B.A. and B.Sc. examinations at Manchester and Liverpool, candidates may take the written portion of the examination at the end of the second year’s course of study and submit a dissertation at the end of the third year. Theses are generally examined by two or more specialists.

5. Competitive Examinations.—The arrangement of students in order of merit led naturally to the use of examinations not only as a qualifying but also as a selective test, and to the offering of money prizes (including exhibitions, scholarships and fellowships) on the results. In 1854 selection by examination as a method of appointment to posts in the English public service was first substituted for the patronage system, which had caused grave dissatisfaction (see Macaulay’s speech on the subject, The Times of the 25th of June 1853). The first public competitive examination for the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, took place in