Say I am a third year student. I find myself frequently need to refer to "some student" in their fourth year and fifth year. For example,
"A student of higher year than me" helped me with project.
What is the right term to replace those in the quotes?
If you guys know Chinese, there is simple term for this purpose, "xue zhang" or "xue jie". However, I seem not able to identify a corresponding term in English.
Thanks!
The word used in my experience is upperclassman. The dictionary definition is a student of the junior or senior year of either high school or college, but for new first-years, it is often extended to sophomores, juniors, and seniors.
Note that this word is not (politically correct) gender neutral, and so may be phased out in the next twenty years or so.
x "year(s) ahead of" me
y "year(s) behind" me
He is fond of casually dropping the names of his drama school contemporaries. Ewan McGregor, Joseph Fiennes ('We would potter next door to see Ralph playing leads at the RSC'), and more long-term friends such as Dominic West, whom he knows from his Eton days. 'Dom was a couple of years ahead of me,' Lewis recalls.
President Obama was four years ahead of me at Harvard law school....
That reminds me: Lee Harvey Oswald, a year or two behind me in school, lived in Covington in those days.
Prince Harry had started at Sandhurst in May 2005 and was a year ahead of his older brother.
variant:
My favorite Stanford summer was 1979, when a woman engineer in the class ahead of me helped me get a summer job at Chase Manhattan Bank in NYC.
In the United States, we would say the following:
The following terms work both for high school and college, both of which are typically four years. In other English speaking countries, they would usually just say first year, second year, etc. Even in some American Universities, this is becoming more common as fewer students complete their degrees in four years as is traditional. Personally, I went to a school where the typical degree took five years, so we used the term middler to describe a third year student, while junior and senior described a fourth and fifth year respectively.
Additionally, for simply contrasting two students of different years, you could say lowerclassman and upperclassman. The former refers to a first or second year student, while the later refers to a third or fourth year student.
If I were saying that another student helped me with something, I wouldn't consider it important to mention whether that student was of a higher year, a lower year, or the same year. Maybe this could be considered a bit of a cultural difference.
If, for some reason, I did consider it important to identify the year of the student who helped me, I'd be more likely to do it by identifying the grade level (e.g. "a tenth-grader helped me") or by using the terms "freshman", "sophomore", "junior", or "senior" if those terms are applicable. But I still generally wouldn't emphasize the relationship between that student's year and my own.
In a pinch, I could say something like "an older student" or "a more senior student", but those strike me as phrases characteristic of more formal or clinical speech. It's just not something I would include without a strong reason to do so.
There are often regional names for students of specific years (the most common in the United States being freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior for 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th year of a four year program, respectively). For a more general term, I would typically say, "A more senior student" or "A more advanced student".
In England you'd say " In the year above " for someone who's been there longer and " in the year below" for someone who's not been there as long as you - this is also sometimes express as an " upper " or " lower "
If your at university you'd generally refer to them by the year of their degree "a Third year helped me figure out X" or " a graduate student helped me out"
its common in other areas of the world to use "upperclassman" and "lowerclassman"
Just say "another student". It should be enough, and it's not disrespectful to them in any way. If you have to clarify, say something like "John help me with this project: he's in his fourth year."
I'm Korean, and my language also makes that distinction all the time. When I joined a graduate program in the US, it took me some time to adjust: I'm a first-year student, here's another guy who joined two years ago, but we can be friends! Unthinkable in Korea.
It is very unfortunate that my native language (and social custom) forces one to make such unnecessary distinction all the time, and it sounds like the Chinese language also does it to some degree, but for some reason, English does not have this particular problem, and there's no reason to import the unnecessary distinction into English.
(If I sound too preachy, consider a more neutral situation: imagine a language that makes distinction between male and female doctors, and one asking, "I want to say 'I went to see a doctor.', but I want to explain the doctor was female. How do I make the distinction in English?" The correct answer is: you don't, unless the doctor being female is somehow relevant, in which case you can simply say "The doctor was female, by the way.")
In England, when I was at school, years were arranged as so:
Years 1 - 6 were at Primary School, and Years 7-11 were at Secondary School.
Then if the school had a Sixth Form:
If someone went to college instead (college is 16-18 typically in the UK, 18-21 is University) then you'd simply say they were in their xth year of college (i.e. 1st year, 2nd year)
As such, if I was in Year 10 and I wanted to talk about some a year above me, I might say:
"A Year 11 helped me out with homework"
Or if I wanted to talk about an activity I did with someone a year below me
"I played football with some Year 9s"
