Education, Study and Exams
Schools, subjects, qualifications and exam vocabulary — including the false friends that make CVs go wrong.
Education vocabulary is high-stakes: it appears on your CV, in interviews and in every conversation about your background. It also contains several genuine false friends.
The system
primary school (about 5-11) → secondary school (11-18) → university / college
Careful: in British English, college usually means further education for 16-18s, while in American English it usually means university. On a CV, say what you mean explicitly.
People
pupil (school) · student (university, and increasingly school) · teacher · lecturer · professor · tutor · headteacher · classmate
Professor is not a general word for teacher in British English — it is a senior academic rank. Calling your school teacher a professor is a common and noticeable error.
Subjects
maths (US: math) · physics · chemistry · biology · history · geography · literature · languages · IT / computer science · economics · PE
Note: maths is singular — maths is my favourite subject.
Qualifications
degree · bachelor's · master's · PhD · diploma · certificate
I have a degree in economics. (not of economics)
I graduated from Warsaw University in 2019.
I'm studying for a master's.
Graduate from a place, graduate in a subject. I graduated the university is a very common error.
More false friends worth checking
These are the ones that quietly damage a CV, because each is a real English word meaning something else:
| You may mean | Don't say | Say |
|---|---|---|
| department / school within a university | faculty (in the US this means the teaching staff) | department |
| postgraduate researcher | aspirant | PhD student / doctoral researcher |
| someone applying for a job | candidate of sciences | PhD |
| top grades | a red diploma | first-class honours / graduated with distinction |
| a year of study | a course (in Britain a course is the whole programme) | a year |
| practical training | practice | an internship / a placement |
Exams
- take / sit an exam (British: sit)
- pass an exam = succeed · fail = not succeed
- Do not confuse: pass is the result, take is the act. I took the exam but I didn't pass it.
- revise for an exam (British) = study for (American)
- resit = take it again
- a mark / a grade · a pass mark
❌ I passed three hours in the exam. (pass does not mean spend time) ✅ I spent three hours in the exam.
The verbs of student life
apply for a place · enrol on a course · attend lectures · hand in an essay · meet a deadline · catch up on missed work · cram (study intensively at the last minute) · drop out (leave without finishing) · take a gap year · graduate
I applied for three universities, enrolled in September, and nearly dropped out in the first term.
Talking about your studies
- I'm doing a course in data analysis.
- I majored in history. (American)
- My dissertation was on urban planning.
- I'm self-taught.
- I'm doing it part-time, alongside work.
- It's an online course, so it's fairly flexible.
Say it the way the reader's country says it. College, faculty, course and diploma all mean different things in Britain and America, and a CV is read by someone who will not stop to work out which system you mean. Name the level explicitly — a five-year master's degree in civil engineering — and the ambiguity disappears.
In an interview
A: Tell me about your background.
B: I graduated from Warsaw University in 2019 — I have a degree in economics.
A: And since then?
B: I did a part-time course in data analysis last year, and I'm largely self-taught in Python.
A: Did you finish the course?
B: I did — I passed with distinction.
Graduate from, a degree in, do a course, self-taught, and pass used correctly as a result rather than an action.
Test yourself
The quiz below includes the false friends.